<Begin Segment 21>

DG: Tell me a little bit about your husband. You said that he was really good with talking to people in the community and --

FN: Well he, he was a... and then he belonged. Well in later, when he joined the Rotary Club in Rainier, so he always got along well with the Caucasian people, you know. So...

DG: And he thought. Did, did he, did he think that was important in business to -- ?

FN: Well, in business, you, you really, 'cause see years ago they didn't have these big wholesale houses so a lot of your products you had to go out by truck and stop at different, various florist shops and markets where they had, where they sold flowers. So you had to go individually around to those places. So he made a lot of friends that way too. It's a different business than it is today.

DG: You said that he had a lot of employees. Do you know about how many?

FN: No I don't, I don't recall. I know he had quite a, quite a bit and there's a lot of, he -- in those days there were a lot of Japanese young people that, maybe there, now they're doctors and quite a few of them that came and part-time jobs after school. In those days, high school kids used to come in and ask for them. But now days, high school kids don't even come close to the greenhouse. Nobody wants to work nowadays. They want the easy work. [Laughs]

DG: Did, did you have a lot of Japanese employees?

FN: Well there was quite a few, you know we, in the. I don't know, re, remember in those. We did because actually the Otanis after the war, the one that had the green, greenhouse. What do you call that? Greenwood Greenhouse, you know. They worked for us. They got their start in the greenhouse business. Kunio and Shig and the other brother. So. Yeah, in that way there was quite a few Japanese working for us.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.