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JK: All right, so moving on to your grandparents', your grandparents' occupation, what were they employed as, or what was their occupation when they first arrived?

PD: Oh, my grandparents seemed like they did a lot of different things. They had a restaurant called Tachibana, and my, I think it was right next to the place where they have the Yasu Restaurant now, and we had, we had a kind of a goldfish kind of a shop in the, around the house, and I remember they used to be like ponds, or like wooden, wooden tanks with a tin light, and I think they raised some goldfish, and sold goldfish at one time. And I think they also made some stone lanterns at one time in their life, because I remember some of the... in fact, we have some of the, three remaining lanterns at home, distributed amongst my brothers and sisters, and they're quite, quite big and unique.

JK: Stone lanterns, are they something that's traditionally Japanese, or is that something that they created?

PD: I think you see 'em at the church, and one of 'em's about, at least five-foot high, and they're quite huge. They're big blocks like this, with a base about, about two-and-a-half, three feet.

JK: And did they make these, or did they purchase them from a supplier?

PD: No, they had, they made 'em out of concrete molds. Wooden mold and poured concrete with metal wires in, so to keep the shape.

JK: So there was Tachibana, there was this, another shop that was selling these, these lamps, and a goldfish shop. So how many shops were there? Were they all here in San Jose?

PD: I think they just tried things at different times, but the restaurant was on Jackson Street, and the home was on Sixth Street.

JK: Okay, so your grandparents in Japan, they were farmers, but when they came to the States, is that when they became merchants and started selling different items and going into different, different pieces to sell?

PD: Yeah, I think, I think they just started things that, just as they went along.

JK: And the goldfish shop, were goldfish, were they popular? These aren't, are these koi fish, or are they...

PD: I think just regular goldfish, not, not really big things.

JK: And they, they sell any other items that you can, you can recall?

PD: As my grandparents, I don't remember that much more than that.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.