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AH: Right now the name Wally Yonamine means a lot in terms of what you did in the past as an athlete, but it means a lot, too, in terms of your name being attached to thing called Yonamine Pearls, which is really run pretty much by your wife and your daughters. How did that get started and what has it led to?

WY: Well, we started, see, there was a man by the name of Hung Wo Ching, he was a chairman of Aloha Airlines. And I got to meet him, and so he used to come to Japan, do PR work for Aloha Airlines. And so one day he told me, he said, why don't I work for Aloha Airlines part-time? So I said okay. So I worked for Aloha Airlines for seventeen years, part-time, I was a ball player or as a coach. And when I have time, I used to go to the travel agents and try to sell Aloha Airlines. And so we became good friends. So after that, in the meantime, my wife, I told my wife that, "As long as the kids are okay, if you want to start a business, you can. But when the kids are still young, I don't want you going to business. I want you to stay home and watch the kids." So when the kids started to go to college or to high school, then I told her, "If you want to start, okay." So this Dr. Ching, who was the chairman of Aloha Airlines, told us that why don't we -- well, told my wife, actually, why don't she start a pearl business in Tokyo? She can, he would kind of back us up. So we started the business through Dr. Ching, Hung Wo Ching. And so, but as we started the business, so we started get the pearl dealers coming to our shop. But we were so lucky that all the pearl dealers knew who I was. So they would leave their pearls with us on consignment. Maybe they would leave 20,000, 50,000 worth of pearls all on consignment. If we sell, we pay them and return the rest. If we don't sell, we just return it. And this is going on right through. So now after forty years, my wife is established, so the pearl dealers just want to leave their things with my wife because we're one of the shops in -- there are about 2,000 shops in Tokyo -- we're one of the few shops that are doing real well in Tokyo. And lot of these pearl dealers, they can't sell these things because Japan, now, economy is so bad that they're willing to leave their things with us so we have a lot of American customers come to our shops.

AH: When did you, you started in Tokyo, then.

WY: Yeah.

AH: When did you expand to have a shop in Honolulu and also one in Southern California?

WY: Well, right after that, I would say about ten, fifteen years, then we started here in Hawaii. See, I made, I made her to, tell her to quit over here because, see, she would come back from Japan, and we had a condominium right across the street called the Wailana coffee shop here, and we were on the sixth floor. And she'd be working from 7 in the morning to 11 o'clock at night. People would call and she would go downstairs. We had a shop right there. So I told her, "This is no good." I said, "You come home, you got to relax." So we sold that business. And then my two daughters wanted to open a business. They started at, well, nowadays Redondo Beach, but they started at Rodeo Drive. They had a shop at Rodeo Drive for five years. But after five years, they leased that place for five years. But see, Rodeo Drive is so expensive, rents are expensive. And the time that they have to put in like that not worth it. And when you go in the morning, you get the rush hour, going back and all that. So after the lease came up, they quit there and came to Redondo Beach, which they were lucky to do that. So, today, now that they're at Redondo Beach, things are much cheaper. Rent is cheaper and all that. They're doing real well now the customers come in, in Torrance area.

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 2003 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.