<Begin Segment 8>

TI: But I was wondering, I mean, who first discovered that this would be a good idea? Who really first said let's...

EY: Mr. Miyagi and Mr. Tsukimoto, I think, imported about a hundred cases of Pacific oysters. And when they, the oyster seed arrived, they were pretty much all dead. So they dumped a good many of them overboard, but they decided they would retain a few and plant them out to see if any of it would grow. And so they planted it in Samish Bay. The next spring, they decided to go and check on it. And to their surprise, there were oysters that were growing. It turns out that the larger oysters all died, but the seed, the tiny ones, survived, and they were growing. And so Mr. Miyagi and Mr. Tsukimoto said, "Well, gee, this is great."

TI: So were they kind of the... I guess what would I call it, like the fathers of Japanese oysters in...

EY: Well, yeah. Certainly they were the first successful.

TI: And this was in Samish Bay.

EY: Yeah. And so after that, the growers contacted the importers, different people, saying, "I want to get some seed," "I want to get some seed," "I want to get some seed oysters.

TI: Because the word got out that the Pacific oysters...

EY: Yeah, somebody succeeded. And so they tried. And I'm sure that my father was one of those, too. But he, along with other... the other thing is Samish Bay, alien land law was there, and that's why Mr. Tsukimoto and Mr. Miyagi sold the land that they had over there to a Mr. Steele, who had the Rockpoint Oyster Company. And so... and then my father was doing some of the importing, too, of the seed. But no big deal. And there were many people with interest, but the growers keep on going to the producers over in Japan trying to get the price down on the seed because they had all kinds of expenses sending the flatcar loads of seed to Yokohama, and then loading that onto the deck of the ship, and a small quantity, handling was very expensive, and they had a problem.

TI: So let me make sure I understand. So at the beginning, a grower here would place, like, an order for maybe fifty cases, or some small order.

EY: That was the problem.

TI: And then so that, they would pack it up, ship it by train to Yokohama, and then shipped over part of a larger ship, just one shipment, and then it would come and they would have to go get it, so there was no scale. It was kind of a small operation.

EY: Yeah, and it was very expensive. And these people --

TI: Plus probably a lot of the oysters died, too, because there was so much --

EY: That's right. And these people would complain about poor quality. And so the poor growers over in Japan couldn't get much money out of it. They were always being told, "You've got to cut the price so that we could pay for all the freight and things." And so my father, Mr. Miyagi and Mr. Tsukimoto controlled the farmers. And my father, along with, I think, Mr. Yamada, got together and decided that they will form an oyster seed producers cooperative, and that way it'd be one price from one source. And they were able to do that, you know. (My father became the sales agent for the co-op. The seed remained the property of the co-op until delivered to the buyer by the co-op.)

TI: So they would go to Japan and go to all the seed producers.

EY: Well, by that time, Mr. Tsukimoto and Mr. Miyagi was in Japan.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.