Densho Digital Archive - Hiro Takeuchi Interview (denshovh-thiro-01-0007)

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LD: When did you open your store, and did you own it from the beginning?

HT: Yes, uh-huh. Let's see, I came back, like I said, that winter and then I went back, and I loaded up the truck and everything, came back. And then I came back to the home place, the homestead, and they had a little shack that locals called dry barn, so we moved in there. And then I went and looked for a store, you know. So my cousin had already had a store then. So he says, "Well, if you're going to look for a store, why don't you and your wife, Mary, come and help me, and then I'll help you locate a store." Well, that sounds reasonable, so I went to help him and then look at the store. Of course, I was more or less looking for stores. Of course Mary was we're getting into the grocery business because she's never done that you see, so she went to work and help, you know. And that's, Tom says, "Your wife will never make a grocery man." That really upset her, you know. So she was determined to prove that she would help me and do well, you know. So we finally found a place where I was at the time. It was called Halsey Foods Center. I said, well, it was a different name, but it was 102nd and Halsey. So after all these, in fact, I think about five weeks, five months, I think I opened up in May. We started the store in May there and then went to work. So then, so we didn't have any place to stay, so you know, we moved from there, moved back of the store, back of the store and just set up hot plate, kitchen and then a bed there, and we lived there for some time. That's how we got started on the grocery, you see. And I think it was not long after that, must have been a year or so that there was a lot on this corner there, you see. It had a house and a parking, had a house on it, so we were able to purchase that house. And so I purchased that house, and we lived there for a short time. And then, probably a year or so, and then we moved that house to make a parking lot, so we moved that house.

LD: To clarify, back where you were talking about when you were first came to Portland, I don't know if I misunderstood, did you say you moved into the dry barn?

HT: Well, we used to call it dry barn, but it's a little building on my, on the homestead place. We used to have a house and then a barn and then another, we used to call it dry barn. It's just a little cabin you might say, that's where we moved in.

LD: When did you start raising a family?

HT: Jerry was born in Weiser. He was born in Weiser, and that winter we came in. He was only about six months so we asked the doc, "Can we go?" "Yeah, it's okay, you can go to Portland." So he was born there. That was 1948, see, that he was born, and then I came back here in '49. And then my second son was born 1950, yeah, while at the store, so I have the two boys.

LD: Did they help at the store?

HT: Well, as they got older, as they got older, but yeah, they were a lot of help. They say they'll never be a grocery man. It's too demanding and too tiring and long hours, so neither one was a grocery man.

LD: Building your own grocery business after the war, were there any particular difficulties or people that you were, were helpful or a problem?

HT: No. It was, no. They didn't, I mean I didn't have any this so-called discrimination. They were really nice. In fact, my business I would say, ninety to ninety-five percent of Caucasians, not the Japanese people because they were, but then after all, there is not enough of those people. So it was, and they were all good. There's no, I can't think of any experience that I had that in relation to discrimination or anything. They were all real good.