Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Cedrick M. Shimo Interview
Narrator: Cedrick M. Shimo
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary), Martha Nakagawa (secondary)
Location: Torrance, California
Date: September 22, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-scedrick-01-0002

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TI: Let's first talk about your father. Can you tell me your father's name and where he was from?

CS: Tamori Shimo, from Okayama, Japan.

TI: And can you tell me a little bit about your father's family's business? What did they do?

CS: Yes, they had a huge brewery up in the Okayama mountains there. And in the Japanese tradition, the eldest son takes over and my father was around the fifth or sixth son. He had no chance of taking over. In fact, he was the only one of all my relatives, the only one that came to the United States. And first he came early as a schoolboy to go to school. And (when one of) his brother died, he went back to Japan, and he came back here and then he worked in Little Tokyo for a while, and then he opened up a sizeable cotton ranch. Because World War I was just started, and there was a demand for cotton for gunpowder and uniforms.

TI: Okay, so before we go too fast on that, I want to go back to Japan. So your family had this large brewery, so this is like sake brewery?

CS: Yeah.

TI: And when you say "large," how much, did they own the land?

CS: Yeah, they owned the land. In fact, when I visited that place, it was now a huge residential, they showed me a picture in a Japanese magazine that showed it. They had the cemetery right there, and they taught me how to, I didn't know how to do the ceremonies in Japan, to the ancestor. And then my, I guess my uncle or cousin that was there, he had an album of mine. And I went there only because the Honda people, I was traveling with them, and he was so nice. He said, "Well, we're in Okayama, let's visit your home." And then we got on the taxi and the taxi just shut off his meter, 'cause they were going, winding up the mountains. And finally I went to that place. It was a huge, huge brewery.

TI: And that was the first time you had actually seen the land.

CS: Yeah.

TI: And so how did that business work? So they owned the brewery. Now, the rice that would go there, did they also own the lands for the rice, or just farmers?

CS: That I never knew, how it operated.

TI: And after they made the sake, do you know who their main customers were?

CS: No, I don't know anything about that business. I never inquired. [Laughs]

TI: And do you know anything about their reputation or the quality of their sake.

CS: No. It's in my blood, I think. [Laughs]

TI: And at what point did that business -- or is the business still in the family?

CS: Oh, no. In fact, the, one of the sons became the... what's that big investment firm in Japan, financial firm? He was the vice president of that, and he didn't want to take over running the brewery, so it just slowly died down. Nomura Securities.

TI: Okay, Nomura. And so after, so your father was the fifth son, so he came to the United States. And you mentioned around World War I, he started cotton farming in the Imperial Valley?

CS: Yes.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.