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[Ed. note: This transcript has been edited by the narrator]

VY: Okay, and then you said eventually some of your siblings returned. Did they help your father with his business?

YY: Did they what?

VY: Your father's carpentry business. Who ran the business?

YY: I guess I didn't get the first part.

VY: Oh, your father's business, the carpentry business after the war.

YY: Yeah, I mean, it was still the same, people still needed help to fix things up or to add things. And a lot of restaurants started opening up, and they did a lot of restaurants in Japanese town as well as, like, Yamato Sukiyaki, they were more downtown, but they still worked for them. [Narr. note: My two older brothers continued to support my father with the business through the '50s and '60s, until retirement.]

VY: And did your brothers help with the business?

YY: Yes. My two older brothers were part of the group. And my brother, my oldest brother who went to Cal, had majored in business so that he could take care of that part of the paperwork, and taxes and paying salary or giving estimates and that sort of thing.

VY: And did the business always stay in the basement or did it move somewhere?

YY: Until the city bought the house and tore it down (in the late 1950s). My father was gone already. And they rented a place in the Mission district, and (used it just as a workshop). My two brothers have two sons, I mean, a son each, and they worked under their father. Four of them kept the business going (for a few more years until the city bought the house and tore it down in the late '50s. My father had passed on by then, so my brothers rented a workshop in the Mission district. They, with each of their eldest son, kept the business going until retirement).

VY: Do you know very much about the business itself? Like did their clientele change? When they moved the business from one neighborhood to another neighborhood, did they start getting different customers?

YY: Did they what?

VY: Did they start, were their customers different, did they change?

YY: No, not really, because they (kept) the same phone number (...), they didn't have much to do with the (workshop location). [Narr. note: The clientele remained basically the same, a generation younger perhaps. Location of their shop made little difference since it was used mainly for preparation and storage, and the actual work was at the clients' location, in most cases -- e.g. restaurants and other businesses, private homes.]

VY: Okay, so one last question about your dad. Did he ever get a chance to return to Japan before he passed away?

YY: Who?

VY: Your father.

YY: My father? Actually, in 1950... (no, it was early 1954, he and my mom traveled to Japan for 3 months to reunite with families. It was his first trip since 1920, when he married my mother. He complained of not feeling well upon return, and within 5 months, he was gone. Diagnosis: CA, he was just 67 years old.)

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.