Densho Digital Archive - Grace Sugita Hawley Interview (denshovh-hgrace-01-0002)

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MA: And then you mentioned that your family also ran a bakery.

GH: Uh-huh, the bakery was their mainstay there. Bakery was kind of like a wholesale bakery, and all the brothers were there. One, two... two of them were bakers in the back, and my father was the manager, more like... he was sales. And another brother did that, too. And then the rest they hired. They had bakers, other bakers making cakes. And they had a little retail store, but they didn't, they didn't concentrate on that as much as bread. Because bread was their main business, wholesale, you know.

MA: And who were their main customers for the wholesale business?

GH: The schools, public schools throughout the island, and restaurants. Restaurants, my father had a lot of restaurant friends. He made a lot of restaurant friends. And so he had quite a lot of restaurant business, and all the schools. And he had delivery trucks going all around the island.

MA: What was the name of the bakery?

GH: Holly Bakery, H-O-L-L-Y.

MA: Did you ever work at the, at the bakery or the store or the cotton factory?

GH: The only time... it seems that as we grew up and become teenagers, at some point, we all had to put in some time in the retail store. And so like in the summer, my one cousin, she liked to bake, and she wanted to learn to decorate cakes, so she worked in the back with the baker who did cakes. But we all took turns, we had to work in the store. One at a time, 'cause the store was very small. And so we all did a little bit of that. [Laughs]

MA: And were the bakers, were they all Japanese?

GH: Uh-huh, I think. Yeah, I think they were almost all Japanese. The deliverymen, too, were Japanese.

MA: But it seems like the customers were, sort of, the schools and larger organizations, the companies?

GH: Uh-huh.

MA: What about your siblings? Can you tell me a little bit about your siblings and their names?

GH: Okay. There were four girls. My oldest sister is Lillian... do you want their last names?

MA: Sure.

GH: Lillian Nakano, and then next to that is Julia Murakawa. And then Liz Horiuchi, and then myself, and then my brother is the oldest, he's two years older than Lillian, and he's Robert.