<Begin Segment 47>

RW: Wanted to ask you about when you decided to purchase your homes, right here next to the site.

KO: Well, that was a tough, kind of a tough problem in that this one home that we wanted to purchase for Shig on the corner of the property here, we thought they were asking a terrible price for it. But as it turns out, it was a bargain. Then I was looking for a place, and like I mentioned, things keep happening, and this fellow happened to want to move out and go into another house. So the real estate man came over here and said, "Would you like to take over this house?" So that's how we ended up with the two houses on the property.

RW: Were you looking for something very close to the property?

KO: Well definitely. We feel that you can't run this business from a distance. You have, somebody has to be here. And being partners, it made it a lot easier with both of us here.

RW: What is your work schedule like? How many days a week? What are your hours?

KO: Normally -- I've cut down on my work now -- but normally, get out here about 7:30, and seeing... opening up and seeing that everything's going in the right directions; get your orders lined up for the day. And the people start coming in, and they pick the orders, and we determine how they're gonna' go out. My brother manages the crew, so he's out there telling them what to do. And I'm in here answering the telephone, and sending out faxes, letters, and filling out all the forms. And the day seems to go sailing by but we put in, I imagine, seventy or eighty hours a week even now, because we work on the weekends.

It's something you have to love to do, I think, to put in those kind of hours. And I think it's hurt us, in some ways, socially. We probably could have been enjoying life a little more, but we're hoping that time will come.

RW: Having your mother close by too, since the two of you do live together, must have been helpful to be so close to the site. Where your residence was, and the business.

KO: That's definitely the case. And, as I might have mentioned before, I'm... feel a little sad that my father wasn't around long enough to see some of what happened. It's, that's always in the back of my mind, that I wish he'd been able to see how things turned out. Which wasn't totally bad, I guess.

<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.