The North American Post
Takami Page 8
[Editor’s Note]: All names are rendered in the English First, Middle, Last name order.
Bittersweet Coffee
Takemitsu Kubota, president of The North American Post (Hokubei Hōchi), was a self-made hotelman who started out making beds. That’s why he was fairly strict about his finances.
I broached the subject of Mr. Hibiya’s raise. “Mr. Kubota, $300 a month is too little for the editor-in-chief. Isn’t the going rate more like $500?” In pre-war San Francisco, Hachirō Shishimoto, editor-in-chief of the Nichi Bei Newspaper (Nichi Bei Shimbun), was earning $400 a month. That was when an ordinary reporter’s salary was $60 or $70. Mr. Hibiya’s $300 salary was still too low for someone in his position in the late 1960s.
“I understand that a raise of over $100 all at once may also affect the other employees’ salaries, so for now what would you say to $50, and then a bit more in the near future?”
I thought my proposition was logical. However, the worldly Mr. Kubota countered with, “I’ll raise it by $25, half of your proposed $50.” If the owner wasn’t going to shell out any more, as a third-party to the negotiations I wasn’t tenacious enough to say, “you can do better than that.” I apologized to Mr. Hibiya that it would only be a $25 raise.
Considering his character I don’t think Mr. Hibiya was the type of person able to negotiate a raise for himself. I had not the least intention of intervening in the Japanese-language newspaper reporter’s tale of poverty, but opening my mouth only achieved a mere $25 raise. This explains why Mr. Hibiya was in such a sorry situation. Even after The North American Post (Hokubei Hōchi) company moved from 5th Street to Main, the editor-in-chief’s life of poverty continued.
The tempura restaurant “Ten Yoshi” that had been across the street from the company was gone, and the newly opened “Ten Katsu” had moved in. Rikizō Takei (from Kanagawa prefecture), who was a cook at the tempura restaurant “Ten Katsu” in the Buchanan Street mall, formerly in San Francisco’s Japantown, had opened another tempura restaurant with the same name. The editor-in-chief brought a boxed lunch from home, quietly munching on a flavorless potato salad sandwich while sipping instant coffee at his editing desk covered in press clippings and red pencils.
When I showed up to the editing department saying, “I’m back,” he replied, “How about a coffee?” and made me an instant. It was lukewarm and I couldn’t even force myself to say it was good out of flattery, but good or bad, coming here and sipping quietly from the coffee mug, I was naturally convinced of our comradery. Under the dim electric light I couldn’t forget the sight of Toshitsugu Kanatani (Nisei) and Shigeru Hidaka (Issei), diligently writing out copy on gridded newsprint. These two editorial staff members were as honorably poor as any of the others— they have already passed away.
Mr. Hibiya and Mr. Kanatani took the bus to work around 9 a.m. The North American Post was an evening newspaper, so they worked all day and finished in the evening. Finally, Mr. Hibiya, the editor-in-chief, took a long time looking over the proofs while smoking his pipe. He had to keep his eyes peeled, because sometimes the light from the nearby Kobe Garden lanterns made it difficult to catch errors. In the winter, after looking things over he would don his hunting cap and raincoat and head home. I once borrowed his raincoat—there was a large cigarette burn hole in it. It was an unremarkable raincoat. I found that somewhat amusing and remember laughing to myself.
♢
the Japanese newspaper—
a refuge for Japanese Americans
–Gomoku Shimada
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