<Begin Segment 38>

AI: Oh, you know, in addition to the, to the friendships and the relationships among the Nisei, I wanted to ask you, you had mentioned briefly, earlier, a little bit about your contacts with some of the old-timers and I think you had mentioned an Issei who received the New York Times, and another person who helped you with your knife sharpening.

FM: Yes, okay, those are interesting. The man who read the New York Times, very unusual person, so he's an exception and I don't know what, I wish I had been enough of, mature enough to try to find out more about his background, but what I imagined was that this is a man who came from Japan, he was from Japan, of a very good family back there. I mean, he, this is a man who knows about bonsai, reads Shakespeare and knows literature, he must have come from a good family in Japan, but was a black sheep, perhaps, of some kind, maybe he gambled too much, or what... he just didn't fit in, I mean, couldn't stay in Japan in the kind of background so he's over here and I don't, really don't understand where he fits into the Issei society over here. He must have drifted around. One of the things he, that was unusual about him was that he came to camp, he was in the same bunk room with, he was there the first year I went, when I was fourteen and we bunked in the same room maybe three years. So he was coming to our camp at least three years. And he, his job was at this "iron chink" machine which is one of the highly skilled jobs as we thought of it, which means that he had been going to Alaska many years before. So he knew... and this is a man, maybe forty-five years of age at the point when I, where I know him. And he came to Alaska with, as I said, a shotgun, or a rifle -- no, he had a rifle, very unusual for... but he had in mind that in Alaska you can hunt, and this is what he would do. He probably had done hunting in Alaska and therefore had a rifle with him. Now, Issei with rifles, not very many, certainly not in Alaska, I mean, people who went as cannery workers, not many who had this kind of hunting orientation. That's a kind of upper-middle-class point of view, isn't it? And you didn't have that ordinarily. So, this man was very unusual. He was a very handsome man, could have been a movie star, Japanese movie star, trim moustache, you know, and a way of speaking that gave you the sense that he had a command of the situation. And I learned a lot about English literature from him because he taught me about the New York Times, about literature and things like this. And he took an interest in me because I had a kind of an intellectual orientation that most Nisei probably did not have. But he probably saw me as pretty naive also, so he didn't try to... give me a little sophistication, a little understanding of what the world, the real world is like. He, I don't know, just a very unusual man as I say, I wish I'd learned more about him. I simply sensed that he must have come from a very good family background in Japan. In 1930 we didn't have Issei in the Seattle community who had this kind of breadth, a man who reads English and the New York Times, a man who has an interest in bonsai, a man who will go hunting, not a very common type of Issei. The Issei of 1930 were people who came from Kumamoto, village of some farming background. This is more typical of the... or Hiroshima was a common background. But they were, again, from villages in Japan with relatively limited background. So I think this man had a good family background but was a black sheep, he didn't fit into the family, got thrown out and so he comes over here and wanders around doing whatever. He might have been married as some point and, but he was not when I knew him. He was just an independent soul. And, as I say, he took an interest in me because I had a kind of an intellectual orientation that he wanted to train, perhaps. But yeah, I wish I had learned more about him.

Now this man who taught me how to sharpen the knife, he was, he was a man who I used to see at the gambling table occasionally, not very often. He played shogi very well. My brother -- I mean, my cousin who played shogi said he was very good at shogi. But also, a man who had a lot of experience in Alaska, he told me about going to, to Kodiak or someplace where he met this Chinese man who showed, who had a skill in sharpening knives. And this Chinese would not tell him how it was done but he knew that this fellow had the sharpest knives around, so he says, "I used to watch him, when he was not aware, late at night. The last thing he would do is sit at the, at his bunk and sharpen knives, ten, fifteen minutes every night." And he said, "You do it this way," and that's what I observed. And he himself was very skillful at handling fish and cutting fish and things like this and he was, he thought I could learn so he taught me how to do some of these things. Well, my relationship with this man was simply in that setting. He just took an interest in me because I was doing a job of cutting fish and so on where I needed sharp knives and he felt he could... and he also showed me how to handpack, which is the job I took over. In fact, I guess I took over the work from him. He was, he had the assignment of doing these king salmon handpacking and I think I took over the job and he taught me how to do it, therefore.

There were other Issei... there was a man, one man named Osumi, I think, who, very quiet, very genteel kind of person, but he was not exceptional in any educational or any other sense of that kind, just a very... and another man who worked at the "iron chink." So he was kind of top level among the Issei and, but a different type of personality totally from this Mr. Nagai whom I described a moment ago. So we have these various individuals. I guess --

AI: May I ask you --

FM: -- we're pretty much at the end of our...

AI: We are, but may I ask you, what is the secret of sharpening knives?

FM: Ah, well -- [laughs] -- isn't that... really there's nothing much to it except spending time regularly. Your knife edge has to be, you use a stone, what do you call these?

AI: Oh, the whetstone?

FM: Yeah. Anyway, you have these, well, if you have a large stone on a wheel you may want to sharpen it initially that way and then use the small stone to work on. And essentially, the point is that you need to... the knife makers sharpen it in such fashion that it'll be sharp enough initially but not so the points will break easily, however, for most purposes you're not gonna use a knife heavily so the bevel on it ought to be lower than... usually the bevel is such that it's too, the angle is too, too sharp. And so you increase the bevel on it. That makes the edge sharper, like a razor and it's a matter of doing it systematically ten minutes a day, whatever, and well, for, I would say, if in your kitchen knvies, why, if you would sharpen your kitchen knife once a week using this kind of technique, and then, in addition to that you have to use an iron, what they call it. And I got pretty good at that kind of thing. You angle the iron and if you do that every time you use the knife, why, then you can keep a knife very sharp, even kitchen knives. So work on your knife once a week with a stone. And then use a knife -- I mean, with the bar. Well, I don't know if... we can go on and on, but...

AI: [Addressing TF] Well, did you have any other question? [Addressing FM] This has been tremendously interesting and we really appreciate your time and your thoughts and the information you shared.

FM: Well, I, yeah, I'm happy to give the information.

AI: Thanks very much.

FM: Thank you.

TF: Thank you very much.

<End Segment 38> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.