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Title: Hitoshi "Hank" Naito Interview
Narrator: Hitoshi "Hank" Naito
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: June 11, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-nhitoshi-01-0002

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TI: You mentioned your father earlier. Tell me a little bit about your father. What was your father's name?

HN: My father's name is Yasutaro Naito.

TI: And where in Japan did he come from?

HN: Kambara-cho, (Shizuoka-ken).

TI: Okay, and do you know anything about the family, in terms of what kind of work they did?

HN: Oh yeah, my, okay, my parents' side, my father's side came... my grandfather on my father's side, the real name, their original name was Seki. And because my grandfather was from the Seki family, who owns a big brewery, sake, you know, brewery company in Japan, in Kambara-cho, Shizuoka, and... owning a sake brewery, factory, you need to own a big piece of land for raising rice and so forth, and that family was probably the biggest landowner for Kambara-cho. And my grandfather was about the third son of the family, so, in olden days Japan, the eldest son always take over the family business, so the other sons get part of that, of the assets and they go out and start their own family. My grandfather didn't like what he received from the family, so he told the family, he said, "If you're gonna treat me like this, I quit." Then he adopted the name of Naito, who, which came from my maternal side, my grandmother's side. Grandmother's side was Naito.

TI: Interesting, so he did this on his own.

HN: Yeah, he did this on his own. Crazy guy, I don't know why. [Laughs] And maybe then I got some of that from him.

TI: So he's a very proud person.

HN: Yeah, oh, yeah.

TI: And even standing up to his father, which was a very wealthy landowner, rather than be adopted from the family, he adopted another name.

HN: Yeah, another name, yeah..

TI: Interesting.

HN: Interesting, yeah. Maybe because my grandmother's side, at that time -- this was in eighteen, eighteen-something, maybe '70s, '60s -- at the time, my grandmother's side was a lumber company, and then they, they used to call it the chouja banzuke, it's the list of millionaire in Japan at the time, and that family, they were on that list during the time. So my grandfather, or my father always says, "We discarded Seki's name, but Naito is a good name," and he used to tell us about that. And it is. When I went to Japan, we checked our family background and that story's authentic.

TI: So you can, because they were fairly wealthy, there's a well-established family registry, generations and generations back.

HN: Yes, right.

TI: Okay, so that was your father's side.

HN: Yeah, my grandfather, my father's side.

TI: And your father... so how many siblings did your father have?

HN: My father? One brother and one sister, as far as I can remember.

TI: In birth order, where was he?

HN: The younger brother was in the U.S., too. He, my father called him over from, when he was in San Diego, my father brought him over. This must have been how he got here.

TI: So your father was the eldest son?

HN: Yes, the elder son for that Naito family.

TI: So why, and given that there was probably some land involved...

HN: Yeah, there was, when my father came over from Japan, that was a time when the Russian-Japanese War started.

[Interruption]

TI: So he was essentially avoiding conscription?

HN: Yeah, conscription. Yeah, I think so. (It was not the only reason).

TI: Into the military. So that's how he got to... and so he came to the United States, ended up in San Diego. Why San Diego?

HN: As far as I can remember, they, I really didn't go into too much, but I know they were talking about living in Bay Area first. Then they went down to Imperial Valley. That's where... them days, the Japanese farmers were developing the area. He got down there, then -- he was not a farmer from Japan. He was more or less a business type, so he, I don't know how he got it, but he got a franchise for the beer distributing. It was Budweiser. He was saying "Meyer," so I looked it up. And it was, you know, Budweiser is Meyer's. Meyer's is a Budweiser... so he got that, and the beer distributing franchise, and was distributing beer all around the Japanese farming ranches and so forth. Then we, then his eldest son... well, my mother got pregnant. Then, in those days, Imperial Valley is a very hot area, and summertime it goes over hundred degrees, and so my father was concerned about a baby being born in a hot area, you know, and not able to survive and so forth. So they searched around and they found the Japanese community in San Diego, so he moved over to San Diego and a cooler climate. That's the story I got from my parents.

TI: That's good. So he started off in the Bay Area, went down to Imperial Valley, tried his hand at farming, realized that wasn't for him, became a beer distributor, and then when his wife got pregnant, your mom got pregnant, then decided to go to San Diego.

HN: Yeah, San Diego.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.