<Begin Segment 2>

SY: So if we could back up a little, because I'm curious, how much do you know about them, about our grandparents coming to Hawaii? Do we know anything?

PM: I really don't know very much. They got married in Japan and came across to Hawaii, and I know that our dad, Eddie Kaichi was born in a small town called Papaikou, but it's right next to Hilo. And he was born in 1901, and then he came to Los Angeles, as far as I know, before 1923, because he started the Yamato Service Bureau in 1923.

SY: In Los Angeles.

PM: In Los Angeles.

SY: I see.

PM: And he was, he had the Hawaiian hospitality, I should say, and he always wanted to help people, so when he came to Los Angeles from the small town of Papaikou he felt so lost at the airport. He wanted to find something to do to help anybody coming over, and that's why he started the Yamato Service Bureau. He actually got an insurance license, but he also did immigration, he did accounting, he did income tax, immigration, anything to help the Japanese people. So he continued that work until we went to camp, so that was 1941, 1942.

SY: Right. Because his parents really weren't in the same line of work. They ran a hotel.

PM: Yes. Well, the mother had not gone to school. She really couldn't read or write because she probably came from very, very much country, and I'm not sure her husband had very much education as well, so our dad was kind of unusual. He finished high school, but he had so much intelligence and so much sales ability that we were lucky. [Laughs]

SY: Because when he, they ran this hotel, was it, it probably was mostly Japanese immigrants that stayed there?

PM: Right. Yes.

SY: And workers.

PM: Right.

SY: And so it was our father who kind of, was he the one who kind of helped with that business as well?

PM: I think that he was put into a boarding school, and I think it was run by Catholics or Christians, I was told, so he got his education, so he didn't help in the hotel.

SY: Oh. And how about, and all of his younger, younger...

PM: They were very young.

SY: They just went to public school then?

PM: I don't know where they went.

SY: But his father, whose name do you know?

PM: Yes. His father was Kotojiro Yamato.

SY: Kotojiro. So he was, I wonder what he did in Japan. Do you know?

PM: I know he was born in 1866, and I would think he would've done something connected with fishing because he probably lived very much in that area where there were sea --

SY: It was more of a coastal, coastal town. So then when he came here he didn't start the hotel right away. He had to find --

PM: Ten years they the, he did some fishing and selling the fish to the people, like a fishmonger.

SY: I see. And do you know how he died?

PM: No, but he died in 1925 in Honolulu. So he was born in 1866 and he got married in 1893 and he died in 1925, so he was pretty old. That doesn't make sense, does it? I'll have to check that. [Laughs] That doesn't make sense.

SY: [Laughs] As I recall he was fairly young when he died.

PM: Yeah, I think so, so this is a mistake. We'll have to... [laughs]

SY: We'll have to look it up, because his, our baachan, who lived to be very old --

PM: Ninety, yeah. She was born in 1871 and she died 1963 in Pasadena, so that would be ninety-two.

SY: Ninety-two. Wow.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.