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MA: And did you start at Berkeley in the fall?

CY: Yes, the fall of '36.

MA: What sort of classes did you take at Berkeley?

CY: I, I took a liberal arts course, I remember I took zoology, and we had to take English 1-A and 1-B, and then I took history. I took a science course, I took an English course, a science course... oh, and I took a Japanese course. There was a Japanese -- no, American woman who started teaching at U.C. Berkeley just around that time. She was from Japan, I think she was a daughter of a missionary, and so we had a whole group of Japanese students.

MA: So there were, there was a group of Niseis that were at Berkeley?

CY: At Berkeley, uh-huh.

MA: How many other women -- I'm just curious -- were at Berkeley at that time?

CY: Well, there must have been about thirty of us, if I remember correctly. Do you know, did you have a chance to interview Tomoye Takahashi? You know of her name, you've heard of her?

MA: Tell me about her a little bit. Was she at Berkeley with you?

CY: No, she was a San Francisco girl. She was very active in, she came from a very wealthy Japanese family, and she was at U.C. Berkeley. And for some reason, she took me under her wings, and we went to a chancellor's tea together and things like that, I know she was at International House because when I started working there, I saw her name.

MA: So she was kind of a mentor and important person.

CY: Yes, she was kind of a mentor. She was, I would say she was about three years older than I am.

MA: And you were telling me that you didn't finish at Berkeley.

CY: No, I didn't.

MA: And can you talk about what happened or why you were unable to finish...

CY: Oh, I, my father, as I said before, wasn't very well, so he wasn't able to work anymore. And I had other brothers and younger sisters, and so I went to work. A friend of ours, Mr. and Mrs., Mr. Nozaka was the manager of the North American Mercantile Company in San Francisco, and so they offered me a job. It was all through my mother, that she came to my mother and said, "My husband's company could use you," so, so that's why I went to work.

MA: So you, so your father became sick and couldn't work, so you had to help support the family.

CY: Yes, uh-huh.

MA: And I'm sorry, what work did you do at the North American Mercantile?

CY: I was a bookkeeper. I was, we had a Japanese man, Mr. Miho, who was the actual financial officer, I guess, of the company, and this North American Mercantile Company was set up with the, from Mr. Domoto. Have you heard of the Domoto family?

MA: No, can you say a little bit about them?

CY: He's a very famous Japanese businessman around this area. Not very many Japanese immigrants had a chance to set up an export-import company, and it was doing very well until the war. They imported Japanese merchandise and crabmeat was their, NAMCO crab. NAMCO stands for North American Mercantile Company, and they used to call it NAMCO. And we used to get thousands of cases of crab that's unlabeled, from Japan, and then they would label it for Safeway brand or NAMCO brand, depending on what the buyer wanted.

MA: And was this company located in San Francisco?

CY: In San Francisco.

MA: In the Japantown?

CY: No, right there in the financial district where there were several, there was Pacific Trading Company was a Japanese company, and then the North American Mercantile Company, the Mutual Trading Company. The Mutual Trading Company was with the Togasaki family. Now, the Togasaki family is another famous Japanese family, you've heard of her, Dr. Togasaki. And then there was, I had a friend who worked for the Yokohama Specie Bank, so we used to meet on the train to come to work to San Francisco and we walked part of the way, and she'd go to Yokohama Specie Bank and I would work to, go to North American Mercantile. I'm still very good friends with her, too.

MA: And what was her name?

CY: Her name was, at that time, Alice Hirao, but then she lost her husband at a very young age, he died of a heart attack and so she remarried a man named Mr. Arita, A-R-I-T-A. She lives in Oakland.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.