Densho Digital Archive - Take Murayama Interview (denshovh-mtake-01-0006)

<Begin Segment 6>

[Translated from Japanese]

TY: You returned to Japan once, didn't you?

TM: Yes, we went back to Japan. We were there for a while, but we gradually started wanting to go back to the U.S. Back then, we still didn't have airplanes to go to Japan. So, we came back.

TY: I heard the year your family went back to Japan was 1924, the year of the Great Earthquake in Japan. Then, you came back to America again in 1925...

TM: Yes, we came back...

TY: Could you talk about it? Your family came back to Seattle, right?

TM: Yes, we came back to Seattle again.

TY: What kind of job did you have then?

TM: At that time? Back then, what were we doing, I wonder. Let's see...

TY: A grocery store.

TM: Yes, in the beginning, there were not so many Japanese. So, my husband came here, and what did he do...some sort of business he had. My husband did. I didn't have a talent like that, so I just worked. I don't really remember what kind of business we had. Back then...

TY: You two had a grocery store. I heard that you had a family grocery store.

TM: What is it?

TY: A grocery store. Grocery store. You had a grocery store, right?

TM: Yes, that's right. Yes. We had a store. It was a grocery store. And, we made a scanty living by running the business somehow. We had never run a business, but we had to do something, and there was no good job opening at that time. So, we decided to run a business.

TY: Was the store in Nihonmachi?

TM: What about Nihonmachi?

TY: The grocery store.

TM: Yes, I mean, no, it was an American grocery store, selling American food like canned food. We had two places where we bought milk from, you know, the fresh milk. I think we got it from those places. Yes, we bought it from there. So, that kind of grocery store it was. We owned it. Yes. But, people really didn't call us Japanese "Japs" there. It was in uptown [Ed. note: She actually used the word "uptown". She had a business on 25th Street and Dearborn Avenue.], not in Nihonmachi. It was like there were two streets -- uptown and downtown. There were not so many grocery stores in the area like that. So, we ran the grocery store there in uptown. People didn't call us "Jap." Rather, the customers came to see the store out of curiosity and bought groceries from us because they thought it was so rare that Japanese owned a grocery store. So, we ran a business like that. But...

TY: The customers must have been mainly non-Japanese since it was away from Nihonmachi.

TM: Yes, nobody spoke Japanese. Japanese, I don't think they had even seen Japanese before. It was like, some came to shop at our store just for fun, and some just came to peep through the windows to see what was going on. We had a grocery store there. I think we were doing pretty well since we could make a sufficient living. [Laughs] We couldn't even speak English well. Now I look back and think that we were just so bold, and I wonder how we could have done such a thing. We did it in our youthful ardor. We didn't care how we looked to others. Speaking just several words was enough for our grocery store, I guess. [Laughs]

[Interruption]

TY: Now we are going back to the story of the grocery store. I heard that you also had a delivery service. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

TM: Let's see. It was uptown there, and it's funny saying "low" [Ed. note: She said "low" indicating downtown.], well it wasn't like that, but it was in uptown. That was where we had a grocery store. People didn't see that many Japanese at that time, so we were blessed and made a sufficient living by running the grocery store. People were curious about the store owned by Japanese, so they often came by to see what it was like. Then, they bought groceries from us. At that time, we had a car, like a small truck. So, we delivered groceries using the car. The customers were happy. It was really hard because just two of us ran the store. We had to do everything from buying to everything else, you see. Of course, my husband worked with me, but it was a very hard work. Neither of us spoke English that well, either. But, we were blessed and we made a profit in our business. We made it. It was fun. Now I think back and see how we didn't know much about things. Now I look back and think how rough we were, well, not rough, but more like, how bold we both were. If it were now, I don't think I would be able to do the same thing because I would be too scared. We did it because we were in our youthful ardor. Anyway, we had a delivery service. We did a lot of things like that, and that made our customers happy and our business prosperous. It worked really well.