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MN: And then around that time you got a call from attorney Kenji Ito. He wanted you to help with a client from Japan. Can you share with us who this client turned out to be?

BK: Yeah, while we were in Little Tokyo, Kiyo and I in our offices, we were part of the Optimists' Club, we were part of the organization that was promoting Little Tokyo and Nisei Week and all that, and Ed Hiroto was a real organizer and we were involved in trying to better our businesses. And the opportunity to meet new clients was not through our contacts so much as attorneys. Kenji Ito was the one who called us in and he was a partner to Taul Watanabe at one time. This is another, I digress, but Kenji Ito and Taul Watanabe were partners in a lawsuit that involved the shoyu. There was a case where people were using shoyu and it was damaging to them. They lost their hair, they had physical problem, and so Taul heard about it and he and Taul Watanabe partnered to find others that were damaged or injured by the use of this shoyu, and they filed a lawsuit against the company. And so I don't know too much about it, but they were eventually successful in a product liability suit and the company had to compensate them, and so Mr. Kenji Ito was the main attorney and Taul was the one who went around looking for people who were damaged or injured, and when they settled Mr. Ito built his house in Alhambra and they called it the "Shoyu House." And I think Mr. Ito's daughter heard about it long after, afterwards. She asked me, "Is it true that my dad's house was the 'Shoyu House'?" I says, yeah. [Laughs] That's how it turned out, so it was unusual situation, but Taul had a long relationship with Mr. Ito. Mr. Ito was formerly from Seattle and came down. There's a real estate man, Asajiro Nishimoto, that also came down from Seattle and he was in real estate in this area, Little Tokyo, and he was a wheeler and dealer for the Isseis to find places for hotel operations and real estate. His English was adequate, but he was a Issei and he was a fine gentleman. So Asajiro Nishimoto and Taul Watanabe got along very well because they were looking for opportunities for people coming back to Los Angeles. So a lot of the hotel operations, apartments around Little Tokyo were deals that were put together by Mr. Nishimoto. He did very well.

MN: So let, let's go back with Kenji Ito and his phone call to you, and you went to his office.

BK: Oh yeah, well, Kenji Ito was very involved in the Japanese American community and he was the president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce for many, many years, and one thing about Kenji was that, very qualified person in terms of the Japanese language. He could read, write and spoke, and he was one of those erudite, educated people that would speak Nihongo in the most polite form and the most educated terms, and when Japanese corporations came overseas they came to know Mr. Ito because he was able to not only converse with them but also convert the Japanese into English, proposals, and corporations, and he was well thought of. And being the president of the Chamber also gave him access to the consul general and other corporations, so he was in good shape.

MN: Who was this client that he introduced you to?

BK: Who, who was the what?

MN: The client.

BK: Account?

MN: Your, this new client that he, he said they needed to do some audits.

BK: Oh yeah, one day he called me up and he said he had some Japanese clients that were looking for some accountants and would I be interested in talking to them? I said absolutely. We were starving, Kiyo and I, so we arranged for a time and went to his office and met and found out that the Toyota company from Japan was opening its offices in Los Angeles and that Kenji was gonna form three corporations, one, Hollywood Toyota, the retail, then Toyota Motor, I think the importer, and then Toyota Motor USA, the main corporation doing business in the United States. And what they needed was the year-end financial statement certification for the bank, and since they didn't have much in assets it was really no problem for us to certify what they owned, because they had the property they were leasing in Hollywood for the retail and the rest were leases for the main office, and that was about it. Then after they were formed, then they started importing some of their products. The two products they imported were the, the automobile, the Toyopet, and then the four wheel drive, I forget what, I always have a problem remembering (the land cruiser), it was a jeep. And it turns out that the Toyopet was built like an English taxi, square, upright and no guts, so if you took it on the freeway -- because my wife was driving one because I bought the first one -- and it just didn't have the poop. It just didn't have the power. It's dangerous, so I told the management that. I says this is not the kind of car for this society here. It's too dangerous. You can't take it on the freeway because you can't speed it up. And so they finally canceled the Toyopet and they later came in with the Corolla, which sold like wildfire. And their jeep, (the Land Cruiser), but it's still being sold, the four wheel drive, and that's kept them going while they were coming up with the new car. It was being sold up in the northern states. The people that were hunters, the people that had the large farms, the people that needed four wheel drives, sportsmen, fishermen, they liked the four wheel drive, so they kept selling all during the time they were coming up with the new car. So they kept busy just servicing that, and when the new car came and it hit, then they started branching out because then they got dealerships. And when that hit, then they were thinking about dealerships all over the United States, and when that happened our accounting firm could not keep up with the year-end confirmations because we would have to go to visit every site and we didn't have the staff, so a large accounting firm took it over. Didn't like that. They wouldn't hire Japanese Americans either, at that time. Anyway, that's history.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.