Sure, there’s so much I learned from my father. But if I had to boil it down to 3 things, I think I would say number one, to be a man of your word is really important to my dad. And he impressed me over the years why it’s so important for not just myself, for my brother and sister to be the man and woman of our words. Even though this day you paper a lot of stuff, nothing is perfectly papered or documented and oftentimes you have to rely on someone’s ethics and that’s something he impressed upon us as being very important and it’s benefited me in my career – my being a man of my word.
Number two is he always was a big proponent of being a risk-taker. It’s one thing to be able to predict a market trend or a real estate trend. It’s an entirely different thing to act upon it. And my dad always impressed upon me to be a rather big risk-taker.
Number three that my dad learned a little bit later in life, but I think it’s a great dad is to really spend time with the family. So that’s something that I’ve made a conscious effort at trying to do over my young career is to spend as much time with my family as I can while still keeping my business at its best. So those are the 3 things that I think…I think about most when I think about my dad and his advice to me.
Date: June 1, 2006
Location: Hawai'i, US
Interviewer: Akemi Kikumura Yano
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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