<Begin Segment 10>

FK: So who looked after your family property while you were gone?

GN: Well, the Loveridge family took care of the personal stuff. And the farm, I don't know. I was too young to know what was going on. But 'til this day, I'm glad they held on to the property.

FK: What about the store, Eagle Harbor Market?

GN: The store was sold right after Ben left it, thinking, thinking we wouldn't come back. This is what I heard. There could have been other things, too, maybe there was a chance to make some money on the property. But, of course, that's all water under the bridge. But my brother, oldest, he was never bitter. He was never bitter about what happened to him. He built a business, nice business on the island, and then we came back, and his heart was still in the grocery business. And Moe and Ed Loveridge started Bainbridge Gardens, and then I joined John in Seattle in 19', about 1948. And then four years later, John says, "I got a chance to get my old business back at the Eagle Harbor Market, but not the property." So he jumped right at it. And he went to, he went to the Washington Mutual on Capitol Hill, and Elmer Anderson, who I played basketball with, he was a couple grades older than I am, he was the manager at the bank. And John borrowed a thousand dollars, and John says, "You paid a thousand bucks back," he says, "You can have the grocery store at Capitol Hill." [Laughs] It took me a year to pay it back. And then John got his old business back, so he was, he was grateful for that, and a lot of the old customers welcomed him back. But that's Bainbridge. Bainbridge is special.

FK: And then how did things evolve into the Town and Country Market?

GN: Oh, in 19', I was, I was in Seattle, so in 1957, the Bainbridge Investors, they asked my brother, who had the Eagle Harbor Market, they asked Moe and Ed had the Bainbridge Gardens if they would like to incorporate and run the, run the Town and Country Market. So I guess they jumped right at it in 1957, so that's been forty-eight years, forty-nine years now, and that building is still there. The big problem now is parking.

FK: So, how did you evolve into, how did the Nakata family evolve into all these other grocery stores in the area, then?

GN: That's Don.

FK: Who's John's son.

GN: John's son, John's son. He would be a Sansei like yourself. And if it weren't for Don, you would never see six stores. But that's how... he's so positive and optimistic, the things he did. And it shows what he did five years, six years ago. He passed away five years ago, but it shows what he's done. Like he has 80 acres there where McDonald's is, he owns that, and Ace Hardware. Of course, the Town and Country owns that, and then the Town and Country bought the old farm from, from the, John's kids, Don, Wayne, Bob and Vernon. And Vernon kept 5 acres of that property, and so now the Town and Country owns that. I think eventually what will happen, they'll put a, they'll put a corporate office there. And Don's plans were to put a retirement home for the Japanese. And I think Don would have done that because what he said, he would do.

FK: Now, when you came back and started your own grocery store business in town, didn't you end up back on the island also?

GN: Yeah, that was 1959. 1958, I sold the old market, well, I dissolved it, I got rid of everything and worked for the, I worked for a market right behind the old Paramount Grocery, it was a big market then, it was called Foodland. 'Cause I worked for them for about a year, and then went to work for Magnolia Thriftway, Magnolia. No, excuse me, before that I went to work for Albertson's for about ten months, and then I went to work at Magnolia Thriftway. Then in 1959, '60, my brother Moe, who was partners with Town and Country, says, "We got a chance to get the Lynwood Market, where the Lynwood Theatre is." So I jumped on it and I ran that market for about eight years for the Town & Country. Didn't make any money, but made a lot of friends.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.