Densho Digital Archive - Bruce T. Kaji Interview II (denshovh-kbruce-02-0006)

<Begin Segment 6>

MN: So I have here that on November 21, 1962 is when Merit Savings held a grand opening. Do you remember that groundbreaking, the grand opening?

BK: (Yes), we didn't have a building. We leased a storefront on First Street next to Joseph Menswear on First Street. There were some stores there we leased from the Kusayanagi Investment Company, and so we started our first office of Merit Savings on the ground floor there, and as time went on we were then able to buy the property where Toyo Miyatake was. John Maeno owned that and we negotiated with John and he finally sold it to us, and we tore it down and we got Tosh Terasawa the architect to design the building and we built the four-story building there.

MN: Now, what's the significance of Merit Savings? I mean, it's groundbreaking, but for you, what is the significance of Merit Savings opening?

BK: Well, it was the first financial organization for Japanese Americans, I think in all of the United States, and so it was significant in that Japanese Americans had never been in the financial field before. It was only the Japanese banks, like Yokohama Specie Bank and Fuji Bank and those, that did any banking at all amongst the Japanese Americans, so this was the first financial organization among the Japanese Americans to be formed and so that was the importance of it.

MN: And I'm gonna read the names of, that I have as charter members, and tell me if I skip, if I've missed anybody. I have George Aratani, Joseph Ito, Dr. George Kambara, Joe Lepresti, George Maruya, Kiyo Maruyama, Dr. Wallace Nagata, and yourself. Did I miss anybody?

BK: Did you have George Maruya?

MN: Yes. I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people.

BK: I think you got everybody there. You got Kambara, Joe Lepresti... I think you have everybody.

MN: Now, early on the Japanese government had a complaint about the Merit Savings logo. Can you share with us that story?

BK: Where'd you hear that? [Laughs] Did I tell you that? Okay, well, the chrysanthemum is the official flower for the emperor of Japan. When they looked at our logo, which we adopted, it looked exactly like the Japanese emperor's chrysanthemum and I really didn't know too much about the background, except when we talked about it. I think the official chrysanthemum for the government is sixteen? One or the other, but we argued that we did not try to copy the government because ours was twenty-four and there's a difference between twenty-four and sixteen, and so there is no reason for you to think that we're trying to act like the government because numbers are very important, and so they finally accepted that.

MN: And so when you say sixteen and twenty-four, you're talking about those petals on the --

BK: Petals, the petals.

MN: And so you won that argument?

BK: Oh (yes), they couldn't do anything else because it's obvious that when they have their mon and you counted it, it was, I think, sixteen and ours was twenty-four, or the opposite. I don't remember exactly. But George Aratani was on our board, he says, "Oh no, it's not the same. If you go to any family and they have a family crest, even one thing that's different makes it different." So the leaves made it different.