Title:

Kay Kageyama (standing), formerly of Culver City, Calif., and the Manzanar Relocation Center, and Masayoshi Shibata, an Issei New Yorker, are assembling plastic novelties in the shop of Mr. Kageyama's new business, the New York Plastic Company. Mr. Kageyama opened this shop at 355 Third Avenue, New York City, four months ago and now employs three men there. According to Mr. Kageyama, he is now grossing $1,000 weekly. He ships his products through a jobber to shops in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood and also exports to South America. Export-import men should start their own businesses in New York City now, if they want to get back into foreign trade after the war, Mr. Kageyama said. He knows foreign trade well, having been engaged in the import-export trade and later a manager of chain stores on the West Coast before the war. Mr. Kageyama was born in Los Angeles in 1908. He attended public schools there and in Culver City, and received his college education at Stanford and Meiji Universities. At Manzanar he was employed in the statistics and record office. He came to New York City from that center during the summer of 1944 with Mrs. Kageyama, the former Carole Mori of Santa Maria, whom he married in Los Angeles in 1939. Following their arrival in New York, Mrs. Kageyama took a stenographic position and Mr. Kageyama worked in a lapidary shop and made plastic novelties at night until they had saved enough money to set up his present business. He plans soon to open a subsidiary artificial flower business and also to employ several evacuee artists to paint porcelain and other household ware. -- New York, New York. 3/3/45

Contributing Institution:

The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.