<Begin Segment 2>

JK: Thinking of your father, how would you describe him and his personality?

AO: Well, strictly a businessman. He ran the Japanese newspaper, as I said, it was a regular printer with Japanese type, and had about, I guess around twenty or twenty-five employees at the time.

JK: What else do you remember about the newspaper? Did you get to go down and help at the shop?

AO: I used to deliver papers. And I'd deliver to all the north end Japanese people, businesses, and I remember being paid eight dollars a month for that job.

JK: And did you do it by bike or bus?

AO: I walked. In the north area, most of the businesses were close together in what's now known as Japantown, so I just walked that route. The south was a little farther spread out, but I did not deliver in the south, there was another route, that place.

JK: What was the name of the newspaper that your dad started, and where was it located?

AO: It was called the Oshu Shimpo, and Japanese type only, no English, and it was a daily, Monday through Friday.

JK: And where was this newspaper office located?

AO: The office is at the site now where the Nikkei Endowment office is, at Second and Davis.

JK: So if you could think back, walking into your dad's newspaper, what would a person see? I mean, what did the business look like with the twenty, thirty people working?

AO: Well, the thing that impressed me the most was his desk. And the reason his desk impressed me, it was always covered with papers and everything. But around three edges of the table, there were cigarette burns on all three edges, because my dad was a very heavy smoker. [Laughs]

JK: How did they do the print in Japanese?

AO: It was all type, it was sent over from Japan. So there was no hand typing or anything like that, it was all individual characters that were on lead type, and the ladies used to pick out the type from a large collection on the board. They would put it onto the press and have a printer, a mechanical printer that printed the paper.

JK: We'll get back to the newspaper as we go through our interview, different phases. What was your mom like? What was her personality?

AO: Well, that's not too easy for me to say. I didn't have too much to share with her. I was, I think I had one sister, Minnie, and I think the two of us pretty much grew up by ourselves, because my dad was never at home, he was always on business downtown or talking at various groups and things. So we never saw too much of him as we were growing up. But my mother was always at home.

JK: And what did you observe about the relationship between your mom and dad? How did they deal with difficult situations, or how did they show affection?

AO: My dad never used to take me fishing or hunting or anything, but we did always go to the community picnics that were held. And both my father and mother were members of the Nichiren Buddhist Church, so my sister and I of course went with him to the church.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.