<Begin Segment 4>

BY: So what was your father like? Tell me a little bit about his personality.

MK: He was very dominant, of course. But he wasn't a scholar at all. Yeah, I think he just went to the eighth grade, and I never saw him reading books or anything. But he was full of energy, very energetic person. And gosh, he actually couldn't just even stay still, I mean, to a degree. He started the furniture store, but then he didn't stay there. He left it to a shirttail relative who was an accountant and left it up to him. And he went out and he went to the rich people's homes in Windermere and Laurelhurst to buy all their furnishings because they were downsizing and moving to apartments downtown. And so I used to be... he used to take me along on weekends. And so I would sit in the car and wait at these rich people's homes just waiting and waiting for him to come back.

BY: Did you ever get to go inside to any of those homes?

MK: Oh, no. It was strictly business. And he took me for the ride, and after he came out, the next thing was going to the drive-in and eating. He loved to eat American food.

BY: So like a hamburger or something like that?

MK: Yeah. There weren't that many of them, but he would take me there. And then we would go to the car wash.

BY: They had car washes then?

MK: Yeah, they had car washes, you know, where they did a lot of the work, I remember.

BY: So what was his, so it sounds like he was a very busy person, always doing something hardworking. Tell me about his personality. Was he a quiet person, a loud person, a person who shared a lot of information about himself or kept things to himself?

MK: No.

BY: What was he like?

MK: Not to me. He had a lot of family meetings and Joy's father, my brother, four years older, he had to watch me, so he was always cut out of the family meetings he would have, because he said I would just get in the way. So my brother would play with me while they had their meetings because I'm the youngest of seven.

BY: So by family meetings you mean your father and mother and your older siblings would have these meetings?

MK: Yeah, he would lecture them on getting married and, you know, all those things. So I didn't know what went on, but poor Joy's father was always left out because he had to play with me.

BY: And so it sounds like your father was in many ways a traditional Japanese man, that he was the authority figure, the head of the family, and took care of...

MK: Very much so. And then he was active at the church, at the Nichiren church. But he never liked to be the head of it, like an officer or anything. But he liked to participate financially. And what I remember my mother always saying, she was real frugal, of course, with that money, and she would complain that he always wanted to not lose out to the next person. Like donations, he always wanted to know what the majority was giving, and be a part of that. But other than that, I don't remember him ever being the officer and that he loved that.

BY: So he was a supporter.

MK: So he always, I think that he felt that he didn't have the education. But he did have a good business.

BY: Sounds like absolutely he did.

MK: Yeah. Because like he...

BY: Started all these businesses.

MK: Yes. And then he would have somebody manage.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.