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MN: Now, during the 1950s there was a uranium rush, and that's very similar to the gold rush, and you folks also got into this. Can you share with us your experience trying to find uranium?

BK: Well, Kiyo Maruyama and I were partners in accounting and we were approached by some of the Manzanar Friends who said there was a group of miners or prospectors who were looking for getting some backing. They were going to go to Arizona to look for uranium, and being poor and thought maybe if it would be a lucky strike, that would be very fortuitous, so Kiyo and I called some friends together to see if they, they would back this group from Pasadena, couple of miners. And they didn't need much money, so we formed a partnership and backed them up for their operation. They had a truck, they had the maps, they had the know how, where to go, and Arizona is one of the richest areas as far as minerals are concerned. There was a federal depot where they stored strategic ores at Wenden, Arizona, and people there would mine different kinds of strategic ores, could then take them over to Wenden and report 'em and get 'em weighed, assayed, and later on the federal government, if it was assayable and worthwhile they would be paid from the San Francisco office. So we were looking for the right kind of things, but the only thing that they were able to find that was mineable was manganese, and manganese came in, it'd be known as seams, and the seams would be, from the top you could find the seam and it would go down, so we had to find miners who would work at it, physical pick and shovel, and there weren't many people out there looking for jobs, but there were ex-miners and people who were out of jobs looking for something. And so they were able to find people to go and work and mine and dig out the manganese, and then they would take the rich manganese that was part of the seam, the black seam, and put it aside and later on mix it so that you would have the weight and not give away all the good stuff, balance it out and then deliver it to the depot. And then the depot would take the product that you would deliver and they would then assay it and then report to San Francisco what the property that you turned in was worth and they would send you a check. With the check, that would give us more money to pay salary, still looking for the big gold mine. [Laughs]

It was a experience that I thought was a little... well, I think being young, you're willing to try it, but they said what if someone, you're delivering cash because the miners don't have checking accounts over there. All they do is receive cash. You can't give 'em a check because they don't have a bank account. The only thing they know is, "Give me cash and I can use that." So we would have to, well I forget, once a month drive over to the site where they were mining and deliver cash to them. We would have the figure for the amount we would pay them, and so Kiyo and I would figure what it would come to in cash and make an envelope for the cash, and for the number of employees, usually it's no more than four or five, make envelopes and put the money in, and I would usually drive it out to the site. You'd get off the regular road and then you take the path up to the campsite. There's nobody around. Somebody says, "Well, what if someone knew you were comin' up with the cash?" I says, "Yeah, that's pretty bad." Nothing happened. We drove up there once a month and we gave 'em the envelope and they opened it up, and before they do that they would have to sign, and a lot of 'em would sign, would only sign an X because they didn't know how to sign their names. They were not educated, or they didn't have the know-how how to... It, it was an experience to know how some people lived, and they promptly found a place to spend it. It was hard to find them over the weekend. They're out there boozin' it up. [Laughs] But that's life out there in the Arizona mines. So that was an experience, I think, that taught me a little bit about how other people live and how other people are educated or non-educated, and how people are looking for the big one. Everybody's looking for the gold mine or whatever. Taught us a lesson, Kiyo and I, that nothing is easy. So we stuck to accounting.

MN: Did you at least get a return on investment?

BK: We were still looking for investments. I think as accountants, we did set up a group that met once a month, of investment-oriented accountants, and they used to meet in Gardena, at my office, and we had about ten members, and each of us brought a check. Our meetings, we went out to eat Chinese food, and after that we would go to the office and have a little meeting, and each one would bring in a check for, I think it was a hundred dollars. And so we would try to build up our cash reserves, and we decided that our best bet would be to go into real estate, and so we kept doing that for a while and it turned out that one of our investments was to purchase land in Colorado. Taul Watanabe, my brother-in-law, was starting savings and loans, like merit savings and then guild savings up in Sacramento, and he went to Denver and started another savings and loan there, and while he was there he met some attorneys and he himself was a graduate of, of the university in Colorado in law, and he heard of some land that's available for investment going south towards the air force academy. And so some of the attorneys that he was involved with knew of landowners along the road, along the highway, so we started quarrying land in Colorado. And we wound up with, I think all told we wound up with about three thousand acres, and with different ownerships. Ours was a little piece, but as time went on and we kept making payments on it, and it came to a time when development started coming in, population started increasing, and speculators were coming in to buy land ahead of development, so we were offered a pretty good price for our land that we had specked on and so our accountants group decided to sell. And so after we sold it and got cash, then the question was, what are we gonna do? Are we going to reinvest it or spend it? So the fellows decided they're working too hard, we got to use it.

So we decided to divide the money and some of us decided to take a trip that we would never ever think of doing, and so we contracted for most of the investors to go on this trip overseas and to go on this Mediterranean trip and we'd go visit the Greek Islands. And so we did, and it was a fascinating trip that our wives and our associates would never forget. We would never even think of doing anything like that, but it was a one-time opportunity, and so we all enjoyed this ship in the Mediterranean, going from island to island, finding out about the old populations and eventually winding up in such places as the, all the Greek Islands that we know of, and I went to the, Egypt and also to Israel and visited the place where Christ was born, and, and it was an eye-opener. And my wife got on a camel outside of the Cheops, the pyramid, and she wouldn't answer the, the camel trainer. He says, "Madam, I am having a difficult time," and he's trying to get some baksheesh, a little tip, but knowing my wife, she wasn't about to give any baksheesh, so she wouldn't say a word. But he wasn't gonna give up either, so we came to a time where everybody was to get off and so he's still talking to her, "Madam, I would like to have a little donation, baksheesh." But she wouldn't answer, so he took her around again and she still wouldn't talk. He finally let her off, but he was so disappointed. She's, I think, the only customer that never tipped him. [Laughs] I didn't know she had such a stubborn streak, but that's, you find out in life as life goes on. But they were all looking for tips because when we went to visit the pyramids, people are walking up to the pyramid and going into the pyramid, and the opening is much smaller because back when they built it, they weren't very tall, so everything that was built was built to their size and so you had to hunch down to get into the, the, I guess it's a hallway to go all the way to the main room where they buried the famous people. And so everyone nowadays is much taller, bigger, but the Egyptians were waiting there and trying to get people together to lead 'em into the pyramid, into the inner room, chambers and then out and then collect some money, but a lot of the people, they wouldn't, they wouldn't listen. They would just go out on their own and they were fairly frustrated because, like me, I just went ahead and he's chasing me, then he thought about all the people waiting in the back so he went back. By the time he went back and got them going I had visited the chamber and then went out by another exit. But that was an experience because you find that everywhere you go, especially in Egypt, and if you had to go to the restroom, there's a lady sitting there at the door and you have to pay to get in. If you want other services you have to pay, so that's the way it was.

MN: Now, for these investors that, this group that went, was this, would you say this was the first real vacation that you folks had?

BK: I would say so, the first real foreign vacation. We wouldn't have ever even thought of going overseas if it weren't for that fortuitous sale of real estate that all of a sudden came in, and some of the people kept the money. They didn't want to go on a trip. That's alright. But for us, having done that, I never regretted it and my wife never regretted it, and a lot of people says, we go to church and people say, "Well, one of these days I'm gonna go and visit Israel, find out where Christ was born." "Oh, we've been there." [Laughs] Yeah, when they talk about the different places, yeah, we did visit, and it became more real in terms of the, the street where Christ carried the cross, you go, walk right by it and they say this is that particular street, and find the place where he was born. It makes the story much more vivid and more realistic.

MN: Just so we have a time frame, this group bought the property in Colorado probably in the 1950s and then you went on this trip in 1977?

BK: Yeah, it was quite a while before it really blossomed out to the point where it was saleable. You don't sell land until the investors are ready to develop the land. When we bought it it was just bare land. I don't know if they grew wheat on it or what, but it was farm land, acres and acres.

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