Densho Digital Archive - Henry Nishi Interview I (denshovh-nhenry

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RP: Now you, when you, a little later on, I guess in your teenage years, you, you worked at the, at your mother's florist shop.

HN: Yeah.

RP: Tell us what you did.

HN: As a, as a teenager we had to, we helped out by helping on deliveries. Not driving, I mean, not, not driving the truck but just to, to hop off and take the flowers or the plant for delivery.

RP: You said you, you called yourself a jumper?

HN: A jumper, yeah. [Laughs] Yeah. And then the floral department, a big part of the business was funeral, funeral flowers. There was a lot of that, funeral arrangements being delivered to cemeteries and to the mortuaries, which was, I guess, 50 percent of the business was, was funerals. A big, big part was weddings and of course for parties and corsages for, for proms and things like that. And, of course, house decorations.

RP: Can you explain to us a little about where you got the flowers and some of the protocol that was involved with the flower mart?

HN: Yeah. The flower market was, in those days, every morning you had to go to the flower market to, to get fresh flowers. And that, that opened, that was before you opened the store. The flower market opened at, I think it was five o'clock. But you had to get down there early if you wanted to get the best flowers. And so, and it was an every morning, every day affair, from Monday to Friday. So, that was my dad's job, is to go to the flower market, get the flowers, then, then after that he had to, he had to tend to the nursery.

RP: He had a long day.

HN: Yeah.

RP: You told us also that you needed to have some type of certification or, actually that you would, you had to wear a badge to identify yourself as a legitimate florist?

HN: Yeah, the wholesale flower market was, was very strict in selling to legitimate florists. It wouldn't allow any non-florists to come in and buy flowers, I guess primarily to protect their flower business. So, in order to get into the flower shop you had to be, you had to be registered and when you were registered they, they issued a button so that you could enter the, enter the flower market.