Separate but Together – A Father/Son Journey – Part 1

Here we are: me (left) on one of the main corners of the Ginza in Tokyo last month (Dec 2025) and Dad (right) in the summer of 1979. Somewhere near Seattle, if my memory serves. The same Canon IID1 rangefinder hangs around our neck. Heck, it’s even the same camera strap! The case rotted away over time and I replaced it with a similar one.

As a kid, I felt Dad and I never had much of anything in common – he seemed to connect more with my older brother who was in sports and liked tuning cars and other undisputedly male activities. I was into SciFi, computers, and photography (girls came later).

BUT Dad liked photography and he spotted my interest when I was young. He built a dark room for me and lined me up with some photo projects and, later, bought me my first camera: a Canon FTb with a 50mm/F1.4 lens. That was in 1979 and I was 15 years old (the image of Dad, above, was taken by me with it). I still have the camera and the receipt. Dad never bought me anything “big” before or after that – gift buying was Mom’s job.

Fast forward a few decades. My interest in photography firmly established, Dad gave me his Canon rangefinder system with original receipts. He had been stationed in Korea in 1953 and 1954 and during one of his R&R trips to Tokyo, he bought the camera and lenses at the PX in Tokyo.

The one on the left is hard to read but it’s dated 16 Sept 1953.
Name: Arnold Follstad (Dad)
Address: 8th Medical Group
It lists a Canon #93994 for $100.00

On the right, he returned for a 35mm lens on 28 Jan 1954. $49.00.  And now that I’m looking closer at it, I can see he filled in his own name and address.  Definitely his writing.

The lens on the camera in the opening images is that same 35mm lens. I still have the press-on lens cap… what are the odds of that? I assume the viewfinder came with the lens as well since Canon rangefinders didn’t have 35mm frame lines.

After Dad gave me the camera, I sent it to Kinderman in Toronto and had it serviced as Dad hadn’t used it in years and it was now 2009. Gerry Smith did a great job on it. I showed it to Dad – fully functional – and he laughed out loud. I know he was surprised and immensely pleased I had his camera up and running after so many years. I have used the camera on and off since then.

In 2023, at age 94, Dad knew he was dying. I took a leave of absence from work and spent a day every week driving him wherever he wanted to go. I took his Canon camera, loaded with Ektachrome, along for the trips. He’d do his dialysis in the car.

Dad had never moved more than 150 miles since 1960 so all the places we visited were places from his post-college years and as I was born in 1964, I remembered many of the places as well.  On one outing, I drove for hours to the house we had all lived in decades ago.  It was the first house he and Mom had bought and most of us kids were born when they lived there.  When we arrived, he was too weak to get out of the car.  Instead, he rolled his window down to see it better … maybe to smell the air and hear the sounds of the nearby playground where my older sisters once played.  I drove slowly.  As he looked out the window at our first home, I didn’t say a word.  I didn’t need to.  He wasn’t really with me at the moment — he was 60 years away.

On our earlier trips, I could help him from the car and, leaning on me and using his cane, I could get him 30-40 feet from the car. He would be winded from the effort and would have to sit down, often panting for breath. But he made himself do it. On one outing we had Brandy Old Fashioneds overlooking the St. Croix river and on another we had ice cream at a DQ in northern Minnesota (I was there as a kid). In the car we often talked – a lot about the early days in our family – or we just enjoyed the silence. I shot ten rolls of Ektachrome with Dad over those few months.

I shot the eleventh roll at his funeral, later that summer. And in a cruel twist of fate, it was the only roll of my film Dwayne’s Photo ever ruined.

I had a chance to take my first trip to Japan this past December.  I knew Dad had bought his camera and lenses in Tokyo on the Ginza but the receipts didn’t show an address.  I looked for the address of the Tokyo PX in 1953.  Some Internet sources stated the PX was moved from the Ginza to Yokohama in late 1953, other sources disputed that claim.  In 1952, Japan was beginning the transition back to Home Rule and a lot of specifics about what happened when are unclear.

The building where the PX was located prior to its supposed move was on one of the main corners of the Ginza: the Yonchome corner.  This building still exists today and is easily recognizable by its curved façade and clock tower — much the same form as it was pre-WW II. (Surprisingly the building was not significantly damaged in the war.)

Ginza Wako (Pan up in Google Street view to see the rounded façade and clock tower as it is today.)

(If you want to see older photos of the PX on The Ginza, you can find them here. Some of the photos on that site are from the immediate post-WW II era when Dad would’ve been there.)

Last month, I took Dad’s camera back to The Ginza (opening image of me, on left). Sadly, I don’t really know where the Tokyo PX was when he bought his camera – The Ginza or Yokohama – but many of the photos taken with his then-new Canon were of buildings on or near The Ginza.  I returned to that same corner where the PX once was, holding the same camera with the same lens as my Dad did over 72 years ago and I shot a roll of 36 exposures for Dad. It was TriX and I developed and scanned it myself. Thirty-six perfect frames.

Here are some photos from The Ginza taken by Dad’s camera. Lens was Dad’s original Canon 35mm/F2.8 lens (at F5.6 or F8):

Stay tuned for Part II, set in Korea…

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