Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Eiichi Yamashita Interview I
Narrator: Eiichi Yamashita
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: September 18, 2014
Densho ID: denshovh-yeiichi-01-0007

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TI: So what did your father do next after the lumber?

EY: You know, there's a lot of stories. He, primary thing that he did was he tried to go into the seafood business importing tuna from Japan, and to sell to people like Van Kamp seafood. And he had Mr. Matsudaira go down there and pack some samples, but that was not successful.

TI: So let me understand this business. So from Japan, they would catch the tuna, they would freeze it, and then they would ship it to Seattle.

EY: Or to Los Angeles.

TI: Or to Los Angeles. Then your father would purchase the fish, and then he would then try to sell it to, like, the canners and people like that?

EY: Yeah, like, Van Kamp seafood, he would make arrangements with them, and they will take it. But the trial didn't succeed, and I don't know, I was too young then, so I couldn't say, but I think Mr. Matsudaira was a labor recruiter rather than a cannery operator, and I think there might have been some reasons there that it didn't succeed.

TI: So that didn't work. So the importing...

EY: The oyster seed, okay.

TI: So next is the oyster seed, okay.

EY: Oyster seed. Because the growers was in great need of seed, oyster seed...

TI: So the growers in...

EY: Here.

TI: Here. And why was that? When I think of the Puget Sound...

EY: Olympia oysters were all harvested, and they ran out.

TI: Oh, so they were overharvested and they ran out, now the beds were all just empty.

EY: Yeah. And so first they --

TI: Did they have Olympia seeds here? Why didn't they just re-seed them?

EY: Well, you know, I think at that time, at that time there must have been a great deal of impact from the pulp mill. And the Olympia being a very sensitive animal, people had difficulty growing them.

TI: Oh, interesting. So it's kind of similar to actually today, where I was reading how there are some, sort of dying...

EY: CO2?

TI: Yeah, the carbon dioxide, and the seeds are really sensitive to that and they're having a hard time.

EY: Before that, with the Olympia oysters, we had the problem of the pulp mill. Sulfide liquor was the (culprit) that was causing all kinds of problems. And so, but the Pacific oysters were, in spite of that, were a little bit better, they were able to survive. The conditions of the oysters were not very good. But, so, the people tried to grow the Olympia oysters, but the pulp mill's impact was too great. And so people tried other things. Well, pulp mill sulfide liquor affected the Olympia oysters. The industry imported Kumamoto oysters, which was a smaller oyster than the Pacific. But that was really not very successful. Today it's doing a little bit better, but it was not. And so the industry imported some of the Kumamoto oysters to take the place of the Olympia oysters because the Olympia oyster population was practically none. And, but it was not so obviously successful.

TI: Were there other Japanese oysters that were even more successful than the Kumamotos?

EY: They didn't try any other smaller oysters to take the place of the Olympias. But the Pacific oysters did survive...

TI: Now, the Pacific, did they come from Japan?

EY: Yeah.

TI: Okay, the Pacific and the Kumamotos. When you say the industry found these, who was doing this? Who was, like, going to Japan and getting these oyster seeds and bringing them back and trying this?

EY: Well, after. Up to the start of the Pacific war, my father was... and his associates in Japan, were the only ones getting the oysters imported here.

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