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JG: Let me ask you a little bit about, thinking about the community, I mean, it's clear you're... it's interesting when you look at your life 'cause in some sense, from what you've said, as a youth you weren't necessarily involved to a great extent in Japanese American cultural activities, but here you are now, very involved, and I'm just curious, how did that transition take place? I mean, at what point did you become, start becoming more fully involved?

GF: Well it wasn't because I wanted to. I was probably anywhere in my mid to, to late twenties, and I was asked to help... let's see, what did I get involved in first? Was it Nisei Week? Can't even remember now. I think it was Nisei Week. I was asked to help in Nisei Week from a friend who I knew who was involved, Randy Oba. And he asked me to help and I said, "Oh, I don't know if I want to help, but that's okay, I'll help." And then that's how I got involved in that. If I start something I finish it and I don't slack off on it, and so I was very efficient in doing it, so... "This is a good guy to keep," so they would ask me to do again the next year and then the next year, and next thing I knew I'd been cemented in there and I can't leave. So if you have any ideas how I could get out of there I'd like to. But as I mentioned, growing up very spoiled, you just want to do your own thing. You want to work, make your money, go home, go with your friends, go have a beer, go to the movies, go fishing, and do all this. And then all of a sudden you find that people ask you to get involved in the community. My dad used to me a member of the Japanese American Optimists Club, and one day the vice president of membership, John Fukushima, came by the office and he was coaxing me to join the Optimists Club. I was very reluctant and I didn't want to get involved, obviously, but he was going around town asking kids of a lot of the members, and some of these members, like Archie Miyatake, I guess you know the name? Alan and Gary, he went to Alan and Gary. He went to the Mayeharas, he went to the, I don't know if you know the Minakas? F.I. Insurance. He went to the Aiharas. And all of us, a lot of us joined the club at the same time, so a lot of us were second generation Optimist members, so that's how I got involved. And then next thing you know I'm being asked to join other organizations, so LTBA, JACCC, Keiro.

JG: So why did you do it, though? I mean, it, you know...

GF: Initially, Nisei Week was fun. You're working, I'm young, I'm working in the community, I'm working with the girls, and that's always interesting for a young man. But Nisei Week is probably a less stressful organization if you're gonna work for, to work for. And then JAO, it's the Optimists Club, only because this John Fukushima asked me to get involved. It wasn't until later on I realized, you know what, this is probably best for my business, too. And so then when people would ask me to join JACCC, for example, or, or LTSC or Keiro, I realized it's probably good for my business, and it is. It is, because we do find that people will use Fukui Mortuary as opposed to the other mortuary because of my involvement in the community. And so now my nephew, the fifth generation, thirty years old, Eric, I'm trying to get him more involved, for the same reason, because I'm not gonna be there forever. I don't want to be there forever. I've been there forty years. If my kids weren't in private college, I'd probably be retired, but I'm bone poor now 'cause I'm paying full tuition and my son is going to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and if you Google that, at least last year, Forbes Magazine, it said the most expensive college in the nation or possibly the world. And then my daughter goes to Loyola Marymount University, which is also a private college.

JG: What are their names?

GF: Sarah, that's my daughter. She's twenty-one. And then my son is Cary, like Cary Grant. Cary. And he'll be turning twenty in a couple weeks.

JG: So has there been any discussion about them continuing in the family business?

GF: No, not really. I know Pam, my former wife, says, "You know, if you want to go in Dad's business it's up to you." But they don't want to, and I wouldn't force 'em to. My daughter was gonna go into medicine and she, when she was freshman, sophomore, she really wanted to go into pre-neo, neo-natal care, and she realized going to med school meant another, what, eight years? And so she doesn't think she wants to do that, so she's looking into child psychology. She's thinking of something shorter, such as pharmacy, optometry or something along that line. My son entered George Washington, well, it was great, he had a scholarship, twenty thousand dollar scholarship for engineering. First semester, "Dad, I don't think I want to do engineering." So there goes his scholarship. And so now he's in environmental studies, but doesn't know where he wants to go with that, whether he wants to go into law or where.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.