<Begin Segment 5>

JK: And have your parents ever, did your grandparents ever tell you how they, they ran the business? I mean, as far as who they hired -- [coughs] -- excuse me, who they hired to help? Who they served?

PD: My time with my grandparents was not that long, and then after that, my uncle came to, to Japan with my grandmother, and he was brought here when he was thirteen, and I guess he, somewhere along the line, I guess they started the store with my grandmother. And they had a store called Kinokuniya, which was the first name of the Dobashi Market. And I think it was quite soon they changed the name to Dobashi, because Kinokuniya was too difficult to remember and too hard to say for a lot of folks in the community that weren't Japanese. Kinokuniya is a, is a famous, from Wakayama Prefecture, 'cause that's where, the area where the Dobashi came, is from the Ki River, which is a Wakayama name river, and that's how, I guess, the name derives from Kinokuniya to, and then the Tachibana refers to our, the mon of the Dobashi family, which is a mikan flower and a leaf.

JK: And you mentioned Kinokuniya, that name was changed to Dobashi because it was difficult for folks from the outside of the Japanese American community to identify with or pronounce, perhaps.

PD: Not really Japanese Americans, but just, just people in general, I think. Because Kinokuniya is a popular bookstore right now for the Japanese community.

JK: So there were folks from the outside that patronized the store, or were customers of the store?

PD: Yeah. It was, along the way, it was part of the community of regular people. I mean, just people of San Jose.

JK: And were any of these shops outside of San Jose?

PD: The Japan, Japanese market, or are you talking about the family store?

JK: All the family's, the stores, the restaurant, and the goldfish shop, they were, they were all in Japantown, in San Jose?

PD: Yeah, they were all in San Jose. San Jose had a, quite a big Japanese community at the time, I think, with the church and the, they had bathhouse and pool hall, and cleaners and drugstores and whatever.

JK: And how large was the business?

PD: The Dobashi Market in general?

JK: Yeah, in terms of size and the amount of goods they pushed through.

PD: Well, the store was, I guess the main store was, right now, where Tsugaru building is right now, and it was a fair size, and it had a big basement. I remember we used to, as kids, we used to slide down the basement, they used to slide things down to the basement rather than use the elevator. It was faster just to send things down on a chute. So you just throw it on the chute and the rice bags would just go down the chute and they sent boxes down. One guy on the top by the sidewalk, and they just slide it down the chute, and then one guy would receive on the bottom.

JK: And where do they get their supplies from for these shops and the restaurant?

PD: My uncle used to drive his truck to San Francisco, and they used to get Japanese grocery goods from San Francisco, Japanese wholesalers, and I remember at the time, they also used to receive rice from railcars from Arkansas. Rice used to be grown in Arkansas for the Japanese, and the famous name was Sakura Rice, and it was called Arkansas Blue Rose rice, and it was supposed to be the most popular rice of the time.

JK: And was that a Japanese American company?

PD: Well, the distributor was a Japanese company, but I don't know who the farmers were that grew the rice.

JK: And what about the competition? Was there a lot of competition to your stores?

PD: Well, they had, they had a number of little shops, they had a Chinese, little meat markets and different kinds of shop in the area, and then Santo Market came along, I don't know, it was in, probably after the war sometime. And I think he's been in the business for maybe forty-some-odd years. Probably more than that, maybe, I don't know.

JK: Have your grandparents or parents told you anything about how they tried to position themselves against the competition?

PD: No, they didn't say anything about that, but we also had a truck delivering groceries out to the farming community, and they used to go as far as San Juan Bautista, and I don't know how far north. They probably covered the Fremont area, or the, they used to call, I guess, Irvington, where Fremont is, and then they opened up a store in Gilroy at some time just before the war.

JK: And what did that store in Gilroy sell?

PD: Basically, they sell the same things as the San Jose store did. My father, my father was in Gilroy, and they said I was the, about two or three years old when I was in Gilroy before we got recalled to camp.

JK: And these trucks that took goods around down as far as San Juan Bautista, did they, they drop goods off to stores, or did they, they sell goods right off the truck?

PD: Well, it was kind of a grocery store in the truck where you could, you could walk in the middle aisle and the outside would fold out to, like, counters, so you can see quite a bit of -- I guess it was a pretty big one-ton truck. I remember it was a pretty big truck, and later it was converted in the flatbed to run up to San Francisco to pick up groceries. They just took off the, the, I guess that was after the war, they took the, that big... like a van, I guess, that folded out and was like a...

JK: And was that pretty typical of the time? Were there other trucks...

PD: [Laughs] There was also a grocery store in Gilroy, too, but --

JK: Oh, I mean the, the trucks, were the trucks pretty typical in selling goods off of the truck like that?

PD: I don't know. That's what they told me, but I don't really remember.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.