Recently hired as the Post's only photographer, he was at work early on July 24th, 1915 for no reason at all. Upon hearing the report on the Eastland, he snatched up his equipment and took off for the river. After taking many pictures from the docks, he climbed on the overturned vessel and witnessed a fireman coming out of the hull with a dead child held tenderly in his arms with a look of horror and sorrow on his features. This picture really brought the reality of the disaster to life for the citizens of Chicago.
Despite
the nervous strain of constant competition against the large
number of rival photographers on other Chicago papers, Jun always
remained calm and unruffled. Not only did he hold one of the most
trying jobs in Chicago, but at that time was the only Japanese
newspaper photographer in the country.
"When the other papers each have two or three men on the same story, I have to work like the dickens... I have a harder time getting around because I have no automobile and must depend upon L trains and taxis."
"Of them all I like Theodore Roosevelt best," he said. "He was the most human and democratic celebrity I ever photographed. Woodrow Wilson was very dignified and formal, but at that I think he was more likable than Calvin Coolidge. Hoover was always nice, before he became President."
Al Capone and other notorious gangsters knew him, as well as the movie stars who were always passing though Chicago en route to Hollywood or New York. Single-handedly he covered the Loeb-Leopold trial and did a good job in competition with the battery of cameramen sent out by newspapers from across the country.
After he left the news field, Fujita developed his own commercial photography business. In 1935 and 1936, he was commissioned by the federal government to picture federal works projects all over the United States. In his spare time, he painted delicate oriental water colors, sketched sand dunes, and wrote poetry in a rigid Japanese style known as a tanka. He was the author of a book of poems printed under the title, Tanka: Poems in Exile (1923).
Jun Fujita was granted American citizenship by special congressional action introduced by the late Senator James Hamilton Lewis.
"My dream... is to go far away from civilization some day and lose myself in the wilderness. I already have the spot picked out--the northern end of British Columbia, which I believe is the most beautiful country in the world. Nature and the drama in it are all the companions I need. There I shall do what I like best to do, read and write. And I don't propose to take another picture!"
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