<Begin Segment 11>

DG: And so how did your father hear about Dr. Kincaid?

RM: Well, through his distant cousin, Sentaro. I think I got that written in there.

DG: And Dr. Kincaid works for the University of Washington or worked for the University of Washington Fisheries or marine life or someplace?

RM: I think he was the professor of fisheries. Yeah.

DG: Okay. And so he was doing some research in the oysters, was he? Is that what his connection was? Because somehow his name is connected to your father importing the seeds that we're gonna get to.

RM: Uh-huh.

DG: Do you remember what he did?

RM: I can't quite remember what the connection was there, but it could have been some research work, yeah.

DG: Because when the seeds were actually imported here, that was about 1928.

RM: Yeah, '28 I think. First big volume.

DG: So there was probably a lot of preliminary work before that.

RM: Oh, yeah.

DG: Had your father made any trips Japan?

RM: No, no. The person that was representing Japan named Tsukimoto. He came over to this country, yeah.

DG: And he was living here?

RM: No, he was living in Japan, but he'd make frequent trips, business trips.

DG: Oh, for the purpose of...

RM: Yeah.

DG: Selling the seeds?

RM: Selling the seeds, yeah.

DG: Okay, so he somehow was connected with Dr. Kincaid.

RM: I think so, yeah. I don't know just what capacity, but he was, yeah.

DG: And then your father then became the representative here.

RM: Uh-huh. Yeah, he became the sales agent, or whatever you want to call him.

DG: Okay, and so now why was this so important that the Japanese seeds came in, and you started to develop that? What was good about them? Why would you want to get them all the way from Japan?

RM: Well, I mean this seed came from Japan.

DG: But why didn't you just continue with the eastern oysters that you had already?

RM: Well, the Japanese oyster's more hardy and grew faster.

DG: Okay.

RM: And more profitable, I guess you call it.

DG: So then it must have been Dr. Kincaid who studied that and found that out? He did the research on that maybe because how did you know it was going to grow here?

RM: I think that Dr. Kincaid did a lot of research work, sure.

DG: Okay, now your brother-in-law's son, so it'd be your nephew, John Fujii, says that there was something about over fishing. Now what does that have to do with...

RM: Over fishing?

DG: Yeah, like a lot of oysters maybe were disappearing and things so the natural ones around here were kind of depleted? I'm not sure when he meant.

RM: Well, I think he was talking about eastern oysters. They finally got less and less, you know.

DG: They didn't propagate?

RM: Yeah, so that's when the Japanese oysters...

DG: Because your father is written up many places about being the first to bring in these seeds.

RM: Yeah, he was.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.