Densho Digital Archive - Frank S. Kawana Interview (denshovh-kfrank

<Begin Segment 23>

FK: And then the Japanese surimi continued so good thing that continued. Then in about '77 I saw this sample of a product that came from Japan, it was a frozen imitation crab, and I said this might be my key to success in the United States. And then my head started to grind and then I went to Japan immediately and I talked to the machine manufacturer and he said, "I've never made this machine." His competitor makes it, "So why don't you buy from him?" "No, I don't like your competitor, I want to buy it from you." So he made a machine for me and then I brought it back to Los Angeles.

SY: So it was his idea? Or whose idea was it to make this imitation crab?

FK: No, it was an idea that the Japanese kamaboko (industry), they too since they had to do something different and they started to make this imitation crab.

SY: They called it imitation crab?

FK: Yeah, they called it kani kamaboko.

SY: And there were only the two companies?

FK: No, there was several, there was a couple of big companies that were making it, so now I had to get the flavor base and I had to get the equipment and I didn't know how to do it. And then I needed some money to do all of this, so I started thinking and you know where there's a way, there's a will there's a way, and I started thinking and I said well, I got my ex-partners in Alabama that might be interested because they were interested in surimi and then I was going to go to Japan to see Suzuhiro Kamaboko and tell him that I need some help and would they help me. And so when I went there they said, "Oh, good idea, we'll help you, this out of our..." they're fifteen, no, over ten generations of kamaboko men, so there's many, many years so they can't do that in Japan but they said in the United States, "Yeah we'll help you." And then it got to a point where rather than that I asked them about three four five months later as they were sending all the people to help me, got the equipment, they sent people to help us and I said, "Would you care to join us?" and he just says, "Oh, that'll be wonderful." And he says, "I got a number two son that's in Jochi (Sophia) University in Tokyo that I'm willing to give to you," so I adopted him and he came to me and his name is Teisuke and we call him Ted. He was my adopted son from Japan, and so the father asked me, "Well, how much are you going to be willing to share?" And I believed a number of years earlier that I failed in some partnership because of the dividing of the partnership. So I made up my mind many years before that if you want a good cooperative happy partner, you got to be fair, and so I said, "How about thirty-three percent each?" And he almost fell over. He thought he was going to get maybe four or five percent but he said, "Oh, that's wonderful." So I had a happy partner there, he sent his son who eventually became the president of the company a number of years later. And then I told my partners in Alabama, we're starting this, and he said, "Frank, (...) we love you like a brother and we have highest respect for you and all that, but no thank you. Because you come to Alabama and we got the hurricane, we got this, we got all these natural disasters," and they said, no, no, no. I said, "Alright, that's okay, you're in regardless of what you think, and one of these days when you feel like it you can pay me."

SY: Was this a Japanese family or no?

FK: No, the Japanese family was very happy to join.

SY: Yeah, I know, but in Alabama.

FK: That's a white family.

SY: Yeah, got the Japanese family from Japan and then the Alabama people.

FK: Alabama people the reason I like him because every time I used to go for the surimi project they would house me in their house except the times when I brought the workers, the equipment workers or things like that or when the Suzuhiro people, came they put us in an apartment. But every time I went by myself I would be in their master bedroom and I would say no, and they said no and they would always put me in the master bedroom. And so they treated me like family and I got to know the children, they all call me Uncle Frank and we still have a very close knit. Well, anyway, we started and the Japanese company, Suzuhiro, they were fantastic, they taught us everything. And my cousin happened to be in the flavor business so we got the flavor base of the crab flavor. Now crab flavor is not getting crab and squeezing the juice out. Crab flavor is made from various different seafood and vegetables and plants to make the flavor of crab. And so we made the unique flavor for ours which was acceptable, and we had the research development in Suzuhiro at our beck and call, whatever we wanted, our information or whatever, they helped us. And so we had a fantastic relationship with my partners. And then about a year later my partners in Alabama sent me a check and they put in their amount of the one-third partnership and so we took off and it was the most enjoyable business of my life. Every year we doubled, more than doubled, we started off very small, first we had about four months of the year and we had about 600,000 in business, the following year one and half million, three million, seven million, fifteen million, then twenty-five million. I mean, we were just growing leaps and bounds, we were the first one in the United States making that but I realized that if I just let it as is, that the Japanese companies are going to come and take over the industry in the United States. So I let out the news that I'm willing to teach any company that's willing to get into this business and help this industry succeed, so gosh, a lot of big companies, Quaker Oats, Kraft, a lot of them came and then said, "This is not our thing," so but then I ended up sharing with three other companies and one was International Multi Foods, it's a very large, two billion dollar corporation and they came to us and became our... well, we taught them and we charged them a fee. And then there's another one, of all places two of them in Minnesota, two plants in Minnesota and then one in Seattle, Icicle Seafood we taught them also. And then within five years there was fifteen imitation crab manufacturers in the United States. We were by far the largest, and now the competition started and they try to infringe on our territory and for them to get in they had to lower the price, and that's where the problem started. Everybody started to make lower cheaper product, and being the spokesman for the industry, no matter where I went, whether it was Washington D.C., Seattle, Anchorage, or wherever I went I always ended up with look, competition is fine, let's compete on quality and not making cheap things. And they would foo foo me and tell me, "Frank, the housewives don't care because they put it in a salad. With the mayonnaise and the ketchup and everything, you can't tell the difference between the high quality and a low quality. So never mind, Frank, we're going to get you," so they started making cheaper and cheaper product. And I saw the handwriting on the wall about six or seven years into it. I said, no, we got to get out of it. The industry in Japan has been in existence for a thousand years, we're in year six, year seven and we're headed toward the ways where if we lasted twenty years we'll be lucky. And the gross sales of all the surimi industry at the time was heading the peak of 400 million for the industry in the United States and going up. Today it's not much more than that, it's slowed down, because their theory, the cheap stuff is going to sell is true. The Chinese cheap stuff is coming in, now they can't compete with the Chinese so they're being defeated with their own... they're not quality but they're getting beaten up. Well, anyway we sold in 1989, eight years after we started and we did very well.