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BF: Well, and that seems to be a, a recurrent theme that comes up about your parents. Their, their sort of generosity and their sense of community and both giving help and receiving help, taking help from people.

TM: Yeah. I think looking now that we're talking about it, our family, at the store and our house was kind of a gathering place for a lot of people. Probably mostly related to where my father comes from. Ehime-ken and Shikoku-type people. But there was always people in and out, either my parents' friends, business friends or our friends. It was always an open house.

BF: Now you were telling me earlier about how he came across the property in Seattle for the, for that, when he restarted the business.

TM: Oh.

BF: Why don't you describe that fortuitous thing.

TM: Well, when he came, when he came out of camp, I can't remember, but he either was working for Main Fish, which was the prominent Japanese business in the Seattle area, because he had connections, or he had friendship there, and, so I think it was Main Fish. But, I think he worked there maybe half a year. And then I remember on weekends or Sundays we would go around -- well a few times we went down, up and down Japanese Town, Main Street, Jackson, looking for business. And I remember I happened to be with him, I'm sure he did this on his own, but I happened to be with him when he walked into this 422 Main Street, which was a storefront grocery store being owned and run by a Filipino gentleman. And I don't remember the exact sequence, but I remember this much, that the gentleman, when he found out that my father was interested in the business, he practically threw the key at him and says, "Take over any time." The store was really run down and very little inventory, but it was a store. And later on as I remember talking to this Filipino gentleman, or somebody, or overheard, he says, after the sale was consummated, he says something like, after a big world war there's always gonna be a depression. So he couldn't get out of there fast enough. So here again, my dad was lucky because he was able to move in there with practically nothing down. And I remember my mother and my brothers, we were in there a couple of weekends cleaning the place out. It was pretty dirty, but at least he had a store front. He was able to practically open the door the next day and be in business. Two things I could think of in that respect, first of all, since he was a business person, it was second nature for him just to open the door, where if you didn't have business experience, you would have to worry about those things, but he was able to open the door next day. Although he started his business, was in Tacoma, some of the basic suppliers like Wonder Bread were the same company. So he was able to establish credit right away with Wonder Bread, I mean as an example, maybe the milk company because, although they were in Tacoma, it was the same kind of a parent company. So he knew somebody that knew somebody. So I remembered us, right off the bat selling Wonder Bread and whatever milk it was, Kristopherson or something, I can't remember. But those were -- looking back it was because he had that experience and those contacts in Tacoma. And also, looking back, well, he musta had a good relation otherwise they wouldn't have stepped up after the war too. So he had very little -- he says four hundred dollars -- I don't know how much he really had but to open a business even in 1946 with four hundred dollars was quite an accomplishment I would say.

BF: And especially with the discrimination.

TM: Yeah.

BF: The atmosphere of the time. And, did he speak very good English? It just occurred to me, doing business with non-Nikkei...

TM: He got along. He seemed to know the right words. But you know, also he picked that site because right above us there was a hotels. And as you know most hotels in that area were, before the war, were run by Japanese. And that was one of the first businesses the Japanese came back into because here again most of the people running those hotels, Caucasians, or Chinese or Filipinos felt that, well they made good money during the war because they didn't have enough rooms for the defense workers coming into the naval yards and Boeing. But as the war ended those hotels started to empty out and naturally the Nikkei community, that was one of their better known experiences. So they moved in. And also, they had so many vacant room, that the Japanese either put their family in, or friends into these -- the point is, in that neighborhood there was a lot of Nikkei family that were our potential customers.

BF: Were you, was your family then living in Nihonmachi or on the outskirts?

TM: Just right by, on Twelfth Avenue, like I say, my father's friend, they bought a couple houses. So it was about three-quarter mile, maybe a little less than a mile away.

BF: So what, how soon did Nihonmachi, what is now the International District, sort of start coming back to life?

TM: Well, Main Street was and continued right after the war to become Nihonmachi. I think by 1946 when my father came in, there was already three or four stores, and, and like I say, most of the hotels above the storefronts were either being operated by Japanese, or the Japanese moved in to live there as a temporary site.

BF: Do you remember what those first businesses were? Was Higo?

TM: I don't know about Higo, but there was well, there was West Coast Printing, and there was Maneki, and there was Tenkatsu and three, four restaurants anyway. And there was a couple of other grocery stores, about the same time or even a little before us maybe that came about.

BF: So what sort of things did your father stock? You, you mentioned Wonder Bread, so it wasn't just Japanese goods.

TM: Well, that's how he got started, and then slowly -- I think he went down to California and started to buy Japanese products from the wholesalers in Los An -- San Francisco. And, and then other things, produce and fish and we started to sell produce, fish and lots of weenies and bolognas. We used to buy the whole bologna and the customer would come in and say I want one pound of it, and we'd cut it.

BF: Were you working in the store?

TM: Oh yeah. We all, the whole family. As soon as you could walk you worked.

BF: Did they have non-family people that they could employ? Or --

TM: Yeah. After a couple of years we hired actually, my father, mother's cousin came to work for us and there were a lot of people just coming out of camp, younger ones that were looking for jobs. So finding good people was, I would say, well it, it was okay to find people to help. Family people especially, and old friends. In fact one gentleman used to work for my mother's, my grandfather, my mother's father. He, he came work for us, and so he would say that he worked for our family sixty years or something like that, 'til he retired. When he came, he was about -- to work for my grandfather when he was, let's say twenty, he retired when he was about seventy, so fifty years or something like that. He's living in Nikkei Manors now. I just saw him yesterday, but you know, those people came and you knew them, they trusted you and they knew your business. So that's why my father was able to go to California, or Japan too, I think.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.