<Begin Segment 26>

SY: Now, okay, since you mentioned your wife let's talk about her. I feel sorry for her at this point.

FK: You should feel sorry for her she has stayed with me for fifty-one years.

SY: Fifty-one years.

FK: Yes, we're going on fifty-one years and she has stuck by me through thick and thin and if it was me I would have left her a long, long time ago. She has stuck by me.

SY: So you met her then... let's see.

FK: 1960 we were married.

SY: Oh, I see, so it was after the Korean War and you came back and so it was when you came back from and you were just starting the middle of your kamaboko business. And she happened to be a friend?

FK: Yeah, a friend of a friend. And she used to work at the Rafu bookstore before the war, no, after the war. Weller Street there used to be a through way and our factory was on Weller Street and then there's a parking lot back door of Enbun and then on the other side of the parking lot there was a Rafu bookstore and then the second, the branch was on San Pedro Street right next door where Modern Food Market used to be, where the Union Bank is now. Well, I used to see this nice looking girl walking back from the Rafu to the other store, back and forth, on Saturdays and I would look forward to Saturdays and I would see well, it was about time she walks and sure enough she'd be walking by and so I said, that's the gal I'm going to marry. She didn't know me from Adam. And about a year later I had my friend who knew her, we were all at roller skating and then she happened to be there and that's when he introduced us and that was it.

SY: That was it.

FK: That was it. It was a one-sided affair and that was it. [Laughs]

SY: She's put up with you all these years.

FK: Well, it took me almost ten years to get her accept.

SY: And what is she doing today?

FK: She became a businessperson and she's running the Yamasa operation with my youngest son.

SY: And does she come home and not talk to you about it?

FK: I don't ask her.

SY: So that makes it good.

FK: Yes.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.