A Night on the Town, Tokyo, 1954

Two Drinks Each—Colorized detail of a photograph taken of my parents in a Tokyo nightclub in 1954. My dad was stationed in Japan in the early 1950s before being transferred to Germany where I was born in 1957. The entire photograph is great, see below, but this detail says a lot. Both of my parents are drinking what they always drank in later life, too, daiquiris for my mom and rum-and-cokes for my dad. I still have the tie he's wearing, so those colors are correct, but I guessed on the rest of the objects.

I was also able to identify my mother's Mikimoto pearl engagement ring, which I have in its original box. Pearls were definitely my mother's choice in jewelry all her life, be they necklaces, rings or brooches. I also recognize the Lucky Strikes cigarettes, their choice back then. I'm just surprised they're not housed in any of my parents many, many decorative cigarette cases. In fact, one of the more interesting "objets" in my collection is an unopened box of Lucky Strikes from the late 1940s, in a beautiful case from the Ivory Mart in New Delhi, India.

Original photo. My parents are on the left, next to a good friend of theirs, also in the Army. I'm guessing that this picture was taken by one of those classic nightclub photographers of that period.