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MR: And so he worked in the store. What was the division of labor between the Yasui brothers with the business?

HY: Oh, well, they, my father and my Uncle Renichi had what I think is a very nice, to me a very highly unique relationship. In my entire life, I've never heard them express any anger at each other or disappointment or anything. I mean, they got along so well. You know, it's almost awesome because they didn't communicate all that much, you know. I don't know how they did it, but they never exchanged a cross words. And somehow, they worked out the division of labor so that my uncle controlled the store. He ran the store. My father did the entrepreneurial thing which is speculating in farms and translating and writing letters and putting in the orders for my uncle, you know. But my uncle would ask my father to write an order to order two hundred sacks of rice or twenty kegs of fish and things like that, and my father would do all that. But my father never, never interfered with the operation of the store, and it worked the other way around. My uncle never interfered with buying farm property. He used my uncle's money, but he never questioned. [Laughs] As far as I know, he never challenged him because they were full partners in everything. What my father owned, my uncle owned half of too. I've never seen a relationship quite like that. It's just remarkable how they got along. But then my uncle called all the shots on the farm, I mean on the store and my father on the farm.

MR: Can you describe the atmosphere of the store, how it looked, and how it smelled and felt?

HY: Well, I have to tell you from memory of a seventeen year old kid which is my freshest memory because that's when we left. But to me, the smell of the store was an Oriental smell because of the mixture of spices and sawdust on the floor because that's the way they swept the floor. They put oiled sawdust on the floor because wooden floor, and things like rakkyo. You know what rakkyo is? It's pickled scallions, and it has an odor, and it's, you've been in Chinese grocery stores? Okay. It has a different smell. It's not unpleasant or anything. It's just different because they have different products, dried fish and so on. Well, our store was not quite like that. It wasn't a fishy smell, but they had things like rakkyo and sometimes takuan which is pickled, type of pickles, and it had other things like nori, and so there'd be a different smell. And the store itself we thought was kind of funky because my uncle would be the only operator most of the time, and he had just all kinds of showcases. It was just filled with showcases, and there was hardly any room for the customers to move around. And in those days, and this is true of almost all stores, the customers did not help themselves. They'd just come up to the front counter, and they, give the order to the proprietor or the clerk, and the proprietor fills out, you take your can off of here and the box is something there, and assemble all the things and put it in a box on the counter, and that's the way it worked in those days. And so my uncle did all that himself including carrying up a hundred pound sacks of rice on his shoulder. He was a strong man. He was about two hundred pounds. This is from the basement. Those things are heavy. So he'd do all of that, and he'd take care of it all himself. And of course, his English was left a little bit to be desired. So as a child, as a young person, I was sometimes embarrassed to hear him talk, particularly, well not particularly, to the Caucasian customers because his English was not all that good. My father's was not perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than my uncle's. So yeah, the relationship with my uncle... Uncle Dotso was a greatest guy, he really was.

MR: Was the store like a social center for the community, the Japanese American community?

HY: Oh, yeah, very definitely it was. It was open every day except Sundays. So of course, it was a very easy place for the Japanese. In time that we're speaking of when I was growing up before the war, there were approximately, close to five hundred Japanese in the valley itself, and the valley is small, you know. It's only ten, eight to ten miles wide and twenty-one miles long maybe. So in that narrow area, there were a lot of people. So they would come to the store particularly on the weekend, and a lot of the men would have other things to do, you know. They have to get farm machinery, fertilizer, go to the Apple Growers' Association, and other business. So they would make the purchases, then they would have time to kill, so sometimes they would sit down. My uncle used to have rows of chairs in the store itself, and sometimes the men would sit down, and they'd read the paper and they'd gossip. In the old, old days, they even had a little kind of an anteroom in the back with a potbellied stove and men can read the newspaper. This is almost before I can remember, but I've seen pictures. My brothers just told me about that. So yes, it was, and in the old, old days, it was even more than that. It was also a mail drop where the Isseis got their mail, and they even provided a type of a banking service because in 1919, my father and my uncle and a few of the Isseis did set up a Japanese savings association, and the headquarters was in the Yasui Brothers store. So it was the, oh, I would say it was a nerve center for the Japanese community until the church opened which was not until 1927.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.