Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

<Begin Segment 36>

MH: When you completed your degree, where did you find work?

GN: Well, I was very lucky, can detail a few things out later, but it was just a matter of days that I joined Mitsui and Company, one of the foremost [inaudible] of Japan at that time known was Daichi Trading Company. So I don't joined Mitsui and Company, learned all the basics of international trade, what a irrevocable letter of credit is, what an ocean bill of lading is, what export financing is and later moved into trading, entire cargos of grain, entire cargos of peas and lentils and beans, wheat flour, and trading to Korea, Japan, Taiwan, some to the Philippines, some to Malaysia, and so really am grateful and thankful for the real in the trenches work that I believe is necessary to truly understand international trade. I don't mean to say that it's extremely complex, but there are some nuances, different cultures you're dealing with, business practices differ. Decisions by consensus in Japan is different than here. The titles in Japan, making my first trip in 1965 and making ninety-five trips there ever since, going to many businesses and learning, going first to Mitsui which was then Daichi in Tokyo and seeing people that I was sending teletypes to. We didn't have e-mail; we didn't have faxes then but teletypes on tape, and meeting some of the managers there and people addressing each other by title, never Mr. Sato, Mr. Hayashi, Mr. Yamamoto. It was always Bucho-san, Kacho-san, Sacho-san. It was always department head, manager, and to learn that from the ground up and going on the ship to learn what the lower hold on hatch number five is all about and how many knots they travel and what it costs and how they pour grain and what happens to it in Japan. And I remember the first cargo of Austrian winter peas from Idaho that I shipped to Japan way back when Japan had an azuki bean failure on the island of Hokkaido and all the anko that that country makes and eats in manju and you name it, they had to mix with twenty percent Austrian winter peas from Idaho. So I went over to Japan and went to some bean paste manufacturers to see the end use of some of the products that we shipped from Lewiston, Idaho, or from Nez Perce or from Rosalia and seeing it mixed with better grade azuki beans and making anko with it and then shipping some baby lima beans over there to make the white anko. I was so lucky to be on the ground floor of some of that to learn that kind of trade, to learn import and export from Mitsui which is really one of the foremost trading companies in Japan.