The newcomers' studios: Roggen, Copenolle, Ozaki, Kaung

1902 — 1935

The trade in an immigrant city: Adolph Roggen was born in Germany in 1864, immigrated in 1873, and reached Fort Wayne by way of Chicago, Galveston, Deadwood, Nebraska, Iowa, and Ohio, keeping a studio at 1122 Calhoun from 1902 to 1911 and serving as president of the Turnverein Vorwärts. Interviewed in 1905, he declared, "Nothing short of an earthquake can jar him loose from this burg. He likes it" — and left anyway about 1912, ending as a restaurant manager in Chicago. Francis "Frank" V. Copenolle, born in Belgium about 1853, kept a studio at 1835 Calhoun from 1905 to 1917, then was listed as a lawyer; he died in Fort Wayne in 1923 and is buried in Catholic Cemetery.

The deepest story belongs to Henry Yoshinobu Ozaki. Born in Shimane-ken, Japan, on 31 January 1886, he immigrated through Seattle in 1907 and worked for Charles W. Miner, taking over the Miner Studio at Miner's death and carrying it under his own name from 1917; in 1921, while he was away, another Japanese immigrant, Joseph Tsurumi, was listed as the studio's proprietor. Ozaki moved the studio to 115 West Wayne in 1923 and to 2426 South Calhoun in 1929. The Genealogical Society's research carries his record past where Beatty's directory lost him — Beatty could only write that he "later left the city and died at an unknown location, possibly in the 1940s." The fuller record: Ozaki applied for United States citizenship in 1912, and the Allen Circuit Court denied his petition in April 1920. He named his son, born in 1923, Wayne. The family returned to Japan in 1935, and an order published in the Federal Register on 19 January 1948 seized two life insurance policies owned by Yoshinobu and Suye Ozaki of Japan, under the wartime vesting powers. His portraits survive in the Indiana Album — sitters in Fort Wayne, photographed by a man the law of his adopted country would not let become its citizen. Harry Bon Kaung, born in Korea about 1893 and an immigrant of 1903, was proprietor of the New York Studio at 1122 Calhoun in 1920, enumerated with his wife Mamie as aliens on that year's census. The studio photograph on the immigrant city's own terms: a German, a Belgian, a Japanese, and a Korean kept Fort Wayne's portrait rooms in the same decades — the directory record of a trade open to whoever could work a camera.

Sources:

1. John D. Beatty, Directory of Fort Wayne Photographers 1843–1930 — entries for Adolph Roggen, Francis V. Copenolle, Henry Yoshinobu Ozaki, Joseph Tsurumi, Harry Bon Kaung, and the New York Studio, citing Griswold, Some Fort Wayne Phizes, pp. 49–50, Fort Wayne city directories and the federal censuses.
2. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, O-surnames biographical page — Henry Yoshinobu Ozaki: citizenship application and the April 1920 denial, the family's return to Japan in 1935, and the Federal Register order of 19 January 1948.