<Begin Segment 9>

SF: When businesses sort of shifted clientele because of the economic situation and had to service whites or blacks or whatever, what was the attitude of people with regard to having other Japanese as clients or having these other groups as clients? Did they, was there a difference? Was it easier or harder to deal with outsiders in a sense?

FM: You mean for the person who was running the business?

SF: Right, right.

FM: Uh, well, the interesting, as I say. Let's say in the hotel business, grocery business and so on, there was steady movement outwards from the Japanese community of these kinds of businesses. And my observation of that time -- although I never quite studied that issue so much -- my observation was that they made the adjustment relatively easily, mainly for the reason that what the Japanese proprietor had to offer was something that was of interest and attraction to the larger community. In the case of groceries for example, they moved often from, into a, let's say white communities. Well what the disadvantage often was that the person didn't speak English quite so well, but the husband, the father, at least would learn to manage. Now all these businesses -- this is kind of a side issue -- all these businesses thrived because families would help, particularly the wife. And my observation was that wives often didn't learn the English language as easily or readily as did the men who forced, were forced to get out and deal with the larger population. But, they would help in the groceries and presently, even the wives would manage somehow to deal with white customers and then children would come along and presently they are helping in the groceries, so. Well, the language problem is dealt with, what was the primary advantage of the Japanese grocery people was that in the first place, their vegetables and fruits were often superior to that found in other small groceries. Incidentally, this is a time when there were no supermarkets, so the small corner grocery is an issue. And in these small corner groceries, in fact it is said that the Japanese were the ones who introduced the style of vegetable and fruit display that is typical in the supermarkets now. They started doing things in such a neat and clean fashion that it was much a considerable advance over the kind of piled-up vegetables and fruits that were typical of the non-Japanese shops of that time. And so, in a sense, the, the Japanese grocers or people are able to get in to the non-Japanese community because of what they had to sell, which was saleable, which was of interest to the clientele that came to them. This was true of the dye work and cleaner business which spread very rapidly. The Japanese were thought to be very neat in handling of clothes and so they are considered desirable for that type of work.

SF: Did these customer/owner contacts with, with say whites, did they blossom into friendships frequently or very infrequently? What was the kind of...?

FM: Yes, I think they did blossom into friendships, but it was a friendship of a, of a fairly distant kind. This, in this sense that the friendship would exist in the shop, and in the store, and there would be a lot of hearty fellow feeling between customer and proprietor, but I don't think it very frequently developed into, you know, invitations to dinner and so on. Of course this is true of all the shops today, it would seem to me among, between shop keepers and customers. There is a lot of friendly feeling perhaps, but not necessarily socializing beyond that. So I think that was generally true. However, coming back to my father's case, he did business with white sales people, for example, for a large wholesale hardware company in the Seattle area. And I recall that on a couple of occasion, occasions, we visited in the home of this salesman who was, who was very friendly with my father, and the home as I remember was in the Woodland Park area. That, that is one of my recollection, recollections. And it was in, at a distance from the Japanese community, it was the kind of relationship that was very uncommon at that time, that you would go invited to a Caucasian family's home for sociability purposes, and we visited in that man's home and unfortunately I can't remember his name even. But it was a white family and they were very hospitable and here we were kids that, sitting around chat, trying to carry on a conversation with these adults and whatnot. So there were circumstances in which this type of relationship might develop.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.