<Begin Segment 24>

SY: But eventually, did you... you told me the story about the JACL, and were you involved in JACL that whole time that you were working in insurance? You had joined the JACL? Or how did you become involved?

AM: I was helping people with JACL medical change over to the other new plan that they had, so in that process I thought I could prospect for life insurance policies. But nobody wanted life insurance policies. [Laughs]

SY: But how did you get involved in the JACL in the first place?

AM: I had a friend in West L.A., George Kanegai, who was, between his wife and him, they were president, the leaders for a number of years, and he asked, he knew that I had just entered the insurance business, so he asked me if I will help. And I did.

SY: Help, help exactly doing what again?

AM: To change the insurance policies, to help them sign up for the new JACL policy.

SY: So did you actually recruit the insurance company, or did you recruit people in JACL to sign up? What was your job?

AM: I helped sign up people who had the prior medical policy, and they were, most of them were JACL members. But no compensation.

SY: You did it for nothing?

AM: Just stamps and telephone calls.

SY: And it became quite big, right?

AM: Yeah.

SY: And you just did it because you thought you could get life insurance customers.

AM: No. We grew big because I gave them super service.

SY: That's nice.

AM: I became, not to brag, but kind of a reputation that "he will help you."

SY: So everyone who called, who was in JACL, wanted medical insurance, would go to you.

AM: Not everybody, but...

SY: A good portion.

AM: We became, yeah. And then the agents who were out for money, they would sell them the money policy and then they would tell them to call me for medical. [Laughs]

SY: Wow. And when did that start? When did you start doing that?

AM: It was, must have been about '70, in the early '70s.

SY: So fairly early on in your insurance career.

AM: [Nods] Because, unknowingly that it was gonna turn out that way, I said, "Hot diggity dog, here's prospective clients out there." But I find out differently, very different.

SY: That's, why was it, do you think, that they wouldn't, they didn't, weren't interested in life insurance? [Laughs]

AM: I don't know.

SY: Because there's a big, it was a pretty big customer base, right?

AM: Yeah.

SY: Wow. So all those years you helped them you didn't, you didn't make money off it.

AM: Maybe I had about five, five cases.

SY: Which is not --

AM: But I helped it to a very large base of medical clients.

SY: That's great.

AM: But when, I forgot when this happened, but Blue Shield wanted agents who have so many clients of their own, so I said, well, how about all these hundreds of people that I signed up for the JACL? They wouldn't say "hoot." I got no credit for that. So I dumped Blue Shield from my potential companies. [Laughs]

SY: That'll show 'em. [Laughs]

<End Segment 24> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.