<Begin Segment 33>

SY: Can you describe a little of the cooking that you do, do traditionally for New Year's?

PM: Oh, it takes about three days, but we, the biggest thing is the nishime, the vegetable dish. Takes about two hours to make it 'cause I do all the vegetables separately, and we make all the other salads, like kyuri sunomono, we do gobo kinpira, we do green beans. We also have fish dishes. We have, I think there's about thirteen things that I do.

SY: And it takes you three days?

PM: Well, to buy it and then to prepare them and then to cook it.

SY: And it's just you and your daughter, Joanne?

PM: Yes, but last year she did it by herself. She knows what I do. She's been helping me all these years. I called from Japan and, "Joanne, how many of the dishes are you going to make?" 'Cause she had first said, "I'm not gonna do everything," but then when I called her she says, "I'm doing it all, Mom." So I was very proud of her, and she did a good job.

SY: That's great.

PM: Very good.

SY: Yeah, amazing, really.

PM: She had made a cookbook called Mom's New Year Dishes, New Year's Dishes, and so she knows all the recipes. And she's helped me all along.

SY: So she clearly enjoys it too.

PM: I hope so. [Laughs] We buy sashimi, about five pounds, and that I did cut after I came back, but I enjoy it. We even had barbecue beef, and it's really not a New Year dish, but Gary says, "Mom, that's tradition for us," since I had started making it.

SY: So you taught your children these Japanese traditions that you try to maintain. Did you do that consciously, or was it just that's what you do?

PM: That's what we do, and even the grandkids like Japanese dishes, so whenever they came over I always had Japanese dishes. So they enjoyed it, teriyaki fish, niku dofu, sunomono.

SY: And that's very much who you are. I mean, you really do sort of... is it, do you think it's from being in Little Tokyo for so many years that you maintain all these?

PM: No. No, just because I like to do it. Little Tokyo doesn't have anything to do with it.

SY: And your friends now, are they mainly old friends, old Japanese American friends? Or you have a lot of friends in Japan too, right?

PM: Yes.

SY: But the people that you feel closest to, are they Japanese Americans?

PM: I don't really classify them, but I just have a lot of friends, all over the world. [Laughs]

SY: So it's very, very, it's not...

PM: My Christmas card list is four hundred, so it keeps me busy Christmastime, but it's so fun to keep in touch with them.

SY: Wow. And that's business and personal friends?

PM: That's true, but a lot of the business people have become my personal friends. Like Daddy used to do.

SY: Same thing?

PM: He made them his personal friends from business.

SY: Yeah. I know, that's, it's interesting to me that you have, you keep, it's kind of like he, what made such an impression on you and that you recognize that as part of who you are.

PM: Right.

SY: And how you characterize him as being so important to your life, do you feel the same way about Mom? Or how, how do you feel about that relationship so much and what kind of influence she had on your life?

PM: Mom was really a nice person, and she loved coming over to our homes when Victor set it up so that she spent weekends with us, and that was just really nice.

SY: When she was sick.

PM: Right, right. And I enjoyed that and she enjoyed it too, so it was good that Victor set that up.

SY: But she was not nearly the influent, the influential person that Dad was.

PM: Right. Sometimes she could be a little bit, in her, in her remarks it might not be as nice as what you wanted to hear, but it's still Mom, so... [Laughs]

SY: Right. And they had a rather tempestuous relationship in terms of his being, his anger was directed more at her than at anybody else.

PM: Yes. It was really very sad to see, yes.

SY: For her. But she was still strong, right?

PM: Right.

SY: Because she ran the business even after he passed away.

PM: Right.

SY: And what was that like, because you were kind of working alongside her?

PM: It wasn't easy, but it's okay. I put up with it. Because she knew that it was still Yamato Travel Bureau, so she would come over and say, "Well, why are you doing that? You should do it this way." But I just had to ignore her because I was trying to run the business. So after a while she quit saying those things, but during the first few days, first months or first year, yeah.

SY: And did our, did Uncle Kiyo have a role in helping you?

PM: When Dad died he was so well-known in the community I asked him if he'd like to at least have his name in there and he said yes, so without any money I just put his name in there. He wasn't an investment, he wasn't invested in the company. But after a while it didn't work out, so I just...

SY: Took his name off. So he really didn't have an active role in...

PM: No.

SY: But he managed still to --

PM: But he was referring people to us because he's so well-known in the community.

SY: I see. I see. And he, yeah.

PM: So in way it helped us start out. Bruce Kaji is one of those. [Laughs]

SY: He referred Bruce Kaji to Yamato Travel? Wow. Yeah, 'cause most of your clients, you have a lot of prominent clients, right, in the Japanese community?

PM: Yes.

SY: Yeah, so that's, that's --

PM: They're all from referrals.

SY: But you maintain a low profile. [Laughs] You don't go out and advertise too much, right?

PM: No, I don't.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.