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SF: Were these labor bosses and the workers connected because of a ken connection, a kenjinkai type of connection?

FM: There was very often a connection of ken relationship. But, and if there was, then there were advantages because ken relationships would mean something to these people, but obviously labor bosses were interested in getting whomever they could who would prove to be effective, efficient workers and so ken probably didn't play as big a part in that kind of a situation as in others. I might mention that ken relationships did play a part in certain kinds of situations. For example, the hotel business became one of the dominant hotel trades among the Japanese in early Seattle. And the hotel business became heavily populated by the Hiroshima people. And one of the reasons I found was that the Hiroshima-ken people got into the trade very early. One of the first hotel owners was a man named Fujii. And, and he then brings other Hiroshima people into his kind of work, it's easy for anybody... well for in the first place they come with the idea they have, they have this Hiroshima-ken connection and then Mr. Fujii for example would say, well I can help you with some work. So he trained them in his own hotel and they would then go out and run, develop their own hotels. More notable were let's say the restaurant workers who in many instances came from Ehime-ken which is on one of the islands -- I can't think of it. Anyway, the Ehime-ken people got into the restaurant business because Mr. Tsukuno who was originally from Ehime, was one of the early ones and he would help train other Ehime-ken people and they would get into the restaurant business. So yeah, ken relationships played a very significant role in developing many of these businesses. It was true for my father. He got to know his own ken people. There were not very many Miyazaki people here in the United States because the population itself was relatively small and the migrants from Miyazaki were a very small number. But the few that came to the Seattle area often connected up with each other and so my father gets to know the few that are around at one of the sawmills. And when he sets up his own business in furniture and hardware on Jackson Street sometime around 1910, one of the first things he did was to bring in Miyazaki-ken people as his helpers when he needed to get workers. So his business, which he developed within a matter of a few years, fairly rapidly and grows into let's say a business of maybe five people in addition to himself, was mainly a concentration of Miyazaki ken people because of this kind of ken relationship factor that functioned in the community at that time.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.