<Begin Segment 42>

TK: And so, you got into the insurance business.

MT: Yeah.

TK: How did that happen?

MT: Well, I wanted to get into the insurance business because I didn't know where to find a job, I mean, you know, I looked around and so, but insurance, being an outside salesman before, insurance intrigued me, the fact that I started with life insurance with Occidental Life Insurance Company. And Occidental Life Insurance home office is in Los Angeles and Occidental was owned by the Bank of America. But I knew that in life insurance, being a salesman, that if you're gonna sell anything, you want life insurance, it helps to protect your family. But again, nobody had any money coming back from camp and so the next program was to save money as much as they possibly can. I mean, live as best they can and get settled and buy homes or whatever they could. And so life insurance seemed the most logical thing to get into from a savings standpoint. And I thought Bank of America owned Occidental Life and if Bank of America went haywire, well, then there wasn't much to worry about anyway. So I signed up with Occidental in October 1946. And went into life insurance business there. So I sold life insurance --

TK: And then became a broker and very successful.

MT: Day after day there was people I didn't know and... but again, having gone through and had in my mind that right after the war, First World War and the economy just dropped to nothing, I thought, God, we might run into the same situation there, so I was willing to work hard and every night six and a half days a week to seven days a week because they told me, "Min, if you can get say five hund-, yeah, five hundred clients in three years then you're pretty safe." So I worked on that schedule and I did it and...

TK: Very nice.

MT: So I didn't make a draw or anything, I just went on commission basis and, but everybody, like I said, didn't have any money and so we talked life insurance and, which was usually in Isseis about twenty-year endowments you buy insurance and twenty years later you cash it in and you got your, if it's five thousand dollars, you got five thousand dollars. And they bought that kind -- but it was only fifty dollars a year per thousand and they couldn't afford that. And in fact, when I used to call on people, a lot of people came back from camp and it's the first time along First Avenue I saw a flophouse where Japanese, when they came back, the only thing they could get into was hotel business. And the only ones that were available was on First Avenue, Second Avenue along Alaskan Way and things like that. But I never saw a flophouse before. It was with mattresses all on the floor and I asked the Nihonjin, "How much you charge?" and he said, "Twenty-five cents a night." And, but that's all they could get into is that hotel business. And so, at one time I think the most was over three hundred hotels and apartment when I was in the casualty business and the Japanese Hotel and Apartment Association handled it, though. They started pure from the bottom and started working up and then they clean it up, paint it, and then they'd sell it to the next guy and get a little bit more money and he'd clean it up and bring in more people and they'd sell it. And it was, they really pulled themselves by the bootstraps, I would think. And...

<End Segment 42> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.