<Begin Segment 4>

DG: Now your father was doing what at that time?

NS: My father originally came before he went back to the war, he was on a boat going to Alaska. It was the gold rush time. I know he was on a boat going up and down the coast because years later, about twenty-five years later or when he went back to Japan, he looked up his old friend who was a deck hand at that time -- but he was captain in a dollar steamship the second time. So he booked passage with his friend and went to Japan and went just as long as the boat was in -- the boat went from Japan to China and thereabouts and then came back from Japan. So my father went and came back on the same boat and that was in about 1925 or so. About that time, there was a partner in the fish business that went back to Japan and started oyster farming in the northern part of Japan. My father got interested in that and brought oysters to Seattle.

DG: But now when this man went back to Japan, he sold your father his interest in the Jackson Fish Company?

NS: Yes, uh-huh. And this man then subsequently went into the oyster business in Japan. And so when my father went back to Japan he saw...

DG: This is in Sendai?

NS: Yes, this is in 1925 or thereabouts when he went back to Japan. And at that time he looked up his friend -- and he was in the oyster business -- so he bought seed, oyster seed, and had 'em shipped back to Seattle. And I remember that because he put (the barrel) in the bathtub and my mother didn't like that. [Laughs] So he had to take it back outside and then find a place for them. And they started...

DG: What did the seed look like?

NS: Well, I don't know.

DG: Are they, they're not in the shell yet, right?

NS: No, they're loose.

DG: Right.

NS: And they're little tiny oysters, I guess.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.