Densho Digital Archive - Ko Nishimura Interview (denshovh-nko-01-0016)

<Begin Segment 16>

KL: So we've talked about Dr. Emerson. We've kind of danced around a little bit and talked some off camera, but I wonder, for the camera, what you can tell us about Akira or Frank Kageyama.

KN: Frank, as I recollect, he was a young man then, twenty years old, maybe. I remember Frank because I knew who he married, because his wife-to-be was a Kawahara, and they were very close family friends, they're from Pasadena, too. And so outside of, I think Frank... he really did a good job, but I think he learned a lot on the guayule project, how to grow things, being on that project. And he turned out to be a very good orchid grower, too, so he's a world-class person, so he became really knowledgeable in the yard, so you've got to give him a lot of credit. I think that's where you've got to start. That's my impression, I may be incorrect.

KL: He says the same in his oral history interview, that he learned and that was kind of his start of his profession. He always loved growing as a kid even, he loved planting seeds.

KN: That's where he got his training, you might say? Formal training. And I know he was an intensely intelligent man, so he didn't learn in school what he learned through doing, and really working hard at it, kept going for the next, I guess, seventy years or eighty years, well, I can understand. Yeah. And he was a family friend. The other thing I like about Frank was he was sort of a classy guy. I told that to one of his... said, "God, I always admired that Buick coupe you used to drive around." He had a Buick coupe after the war. Most Japanese buy Buick coupes, right? It's a nice looking car, so I said, "I used to look at your dad's car," it was really nice to come by the house, talk to him.

KL: He had some style.

KN: Yeah, he was a classy guy. So that's Frank.

KL: What about his wife? What do you remember about her?

KN: She's a Pasadena girl, and she had two brothers, and she married Frank and, as usual, good parents, they thought Frank wasn't good enough for her, so they said no, so Frank came to my grandmother and my grandmother convinced Keiko's mother.

KL: That he was a good guy.

KN: Yeah. As it turned out, he was a damn good guy. Not because my grandmother said so, because Frank was a good guy. But that marriage might not have happened.

KL: She's Kay, right? Keiko or Kay?

KN: Yeah, I guess so. I don't know what they call her, but her name was Keiko. They call her Kay, I only know her from before the war, my grandmother, I only know them because of that. I've talked to her at one of the Manzanar reunions. Probably the last one Frank went to.

KL: Do you know anything about Frank's relationship with Hugh Anderson?

KN: I'm not sure. He was an interesting guy.

KL: Dr. Anderson?

KN: Yeah. I don't know if he was a PhD or not, maybe he was. That's how much I know about him. I know he was a Stanford graduate. But he was a business guy who always wanted to write up a business case for guayule, he was always pushing my uncle to go do something about this. And he used to come over to the house to bug my uncle. Of course, my uncle was pretty stubborn, so he started campaigning with my grandmother. He used to come over and sweet talk her. So he was a really frequent visitor, Hugh Anderson. And of course, Hugh kept in touch with the guayule crew, of course, Frank, and I know he kept in touch with Frank, but he also kept in touch with Tomoichi Hata. Because Mr. Hata used to talk about it quite frequently after the war.

KL: Did Hugh Anderson want your grandmother to write a business plan?

KN: No, he was trying to get my uncle to come work with him.

KL: That's funny.

KN: I bet you my grandmother said, "Go work with them," Uncle Shimpei would have done it. He used to really take care of Grandma. That's his mom.

KL: Shimpei always took good care of her?

KN: Oh, yeah. He quit his job in Illinois when she got cancer, and waited on her hand and foot until she died about two years later.

KL: Well, let's talk next about Tomoichi Hata. You mentioned he was a World War I veteran and gained his U.S. citizenship that way. He was your friend's father, what else do you remember about him?

KN: He was my grandfather's friend before the war.

[Interruption]

KL: Well, you were starting to tell us about Tomoichi Hata.

KN: Tomoichi Hata and his wife worked for Fuji Nursery, who was owned by my grandfather Nishimura before the war. And that's where he learned his practices, I'm sure he learned it, in the nursery there. So that's why he was so well groomed in that kind of endeavor. He knew how to grow things.

KL: What did he do after Manzanar?

KN: He started a nursery. He first started a nursery in 37th Place and Harvard in Los Angeles, near Western Avenue. And I used to go over there and play with Gary. And I still remember because both my dad and my grandfather were gardening. Every time my dad used to cut ivy, because it was huge estates, Mr. Hata used to come on his little truck and take all of it, and, of course, make cuttings out of 'em. And his wife knew how to do it, and she taught his neighbors how to do it, so all these Japanese ladies used to come over for Mr. Hata. Then they moved to Rosecrans near central, that's close to Compton, but it's city property. But the interesting part of it, remember they had the big L.A. riot? He was so well-liked by his neighbors, his neighbors came and sat in the front so nothing happened.

KL: You're talking about after the Rodney King beating?

KN: Yeah, Rodney King, there was one before that.

KL: What decade was it?

KN: It was on both. There was another riot in Los Angeles before the Rodney King one. He was down there already, and he had to call the cops, the sheriff had to go, twenty minutes away. But Mr. Hata went to bed every night, he said, because his neighbors were out there. These kids would come and try to destroy the place, the parents were sitting out in the front. So he was a very well-loved man. He was a very nice man. And so I've known Mr. Hata until he died. His wife probably babysat me from when I was born sometime, she had a chance.

KL: And you said earlier, before we turned this on, I think, that she had real skill in growing things, too.

KN: Yeah, I mean, she learned like cutting and stuff like that. She did this as a production for the nursery, right? So then they were very skilled people.

KL: What can you tell us about Frank Hirosawa?

KN: I don't know much about Frank. All I knew is he was this mustache man, very serious. I don't think he ever smiled, because he was sort of scary, actually, when I was young. But he was very... he was always the man that I thought he might have been deep in thought all the time. And I did know, because when I talked to my uncle Shimpei, from what I could gather, he was an analytical chemist, and he was a very good one. And so I got picked for that project, I'm deducing that, because I'm a technologist also. What they needed was a very good analytical chemist, and he must have been pretty good. Because I think he was handpicked.

KL: Do you know what he did after Manzanar?

KN: No. I do know I have a picture at home, I don't know where it is, but it's a picture of my dad, Uncle Shimpei, my grandfather, and Frank Hirosawa was in it. It was at Sanko Low, it was a Chinese restaurant on East First Street in Japanese town in Los Angeles. So he was reasonably closely associated with the Nishimura family in some way. Not me, but I think he was affiliated with my uncle Shimpei.

KL: Do you know the name Masuo Kodani?

KN: I think... isn't he a chemist?

KL: I'm not sure. He was part of the guayule project, pretty significant player, but I'm not sure...

KN: There was another guy, that article I gave you mentions a guy, wasn't that Kodani?

KL: I'm not sure, I'll have to look.

KN: I don't know Kodani.

KL: Homer Kimura?

KN: No, I don't know him.

KL: Kenji Nozaki?

KN: Kenji... no. Because I don't want to mistake him for the priest of the Zen Buddhism temple in Los Angeles, he was a Nozaki.

KL: Was your family -- that reminds me, I wanted to ask if your family had a religious tradition in Manzanar or before or after.

KN: I think they were Zen Shuji, so they were Zen Buddhist.

KL: Was it something that affected their lives a lot or shaped them very much, or was it pretty casual?

KN: No, I think probably because of the region they came from. Don't forget, the Nishimuras came from Sendai, which was pretty northern Japan compared to most of the immigrants to the U.S. from Japan, south and east of Tokyo, from Hiroshima, Okayama, those kind of... so they're different.

KL: Sometimes in a lot of people's minds there's a conflict between religion and science. Do you think that affected Shimpei at all, or was he religious?

KN: I think Shimpei was sort of raised in the Buddhist tradition, so his values are Buddhist. But Shimpei is a scientist, he's pretty deductive logic kind of a guy. He'd just break down problems, you can't get emotional. He's pretty well read, pretty well... one of the most knowledgeable guys I knew.