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WAY DOWN KODIAK Just before the end of the salmon season in the Yukon River area, Touto Marine Products ordered me to go to a different place. Via Anchorage, I flew south, and reached an island called Kodiak. Kodiak, different from Bethel or Yukon, had a large bay open to the sea, and around it were many major fishery plants that represented America. Kodiak was in the main street of the Alaskan fish business. I had company at the airport of Kodiak. The person had glasses on and was rather short in height. He said he was a Mr. Minami who worked for Hanwa Co., Ltd., a general Japanese trading corporation. He seemed to be five or six years older than me. Anyway, he was quite young to be in a responsible position. Mr. Minami and I got in a rent-a-car Ford sedan. We drove beside the bay, which was the main street of Kodiak and ran north to the suburban areas. People grew fewer as we drove. We made a stop at a small bay where a 2 thousand ton factoryship called the Bering Star was anchored. Mr. Minami took me on the ship. He said hello to all the people he met on the ship, but I am not sure if he knew them or not. Going deep inside the dark rooms of the ship, we found a belt conveyored salmon processing line. After making the check of the ship, Mr. Minami and I got on the dusty road again. The pavement had already ended. The tail of the Ford slipped easily in the dirt. After a 20 mile drive, we finally reached an old freezing and processing plant. "So, here we are," said Mr. Minami in his baritone that sounded a little bit childish and had an Osaka dialect. Hanwa was often nicknamed "rebel" or "guerilla" in the Japanese fish business world. In contrast to the Western ways of business, Japanese companies try not to be too superior than others even among competitors. There is a Japanese saying, "The nail taller than the others is likely to be hit." It exactly describes the kind of situation. Hanwa was hated for that very Japanese reason. They were greedy for profit. What kind of company in the Western world is not greedy for profit? Anyway, Hanwa didn't care about breaking the uniform level among companies in the same business. A typical "mischief" that Hanwa did was, when other Japanese companies were talking with each other on how to negotiate with foreign countries about fish -- especially in terms of price or quota -- Hanwa came out of the crowd, made independant contracts with one of the fish plants the Japanese were negotiating with, and made causes for increasing the entire fish prices as a result. "What's the name of this plant?" I asked Mr. Minami. "Around her it is called Middle Bay and this is the only plant around here," said Mr. Minami, but he wasn't answering my question. A man in a brown duffle coat came walking towards Mr. Minami and I, with his hands in his pockets. The man wore glasses, had some white in his hair and looked like a high school geography teacher or something. Mr. Minami got out of the car and introduced this man to me. "You can call me Fred," said the man to me. "Nice to meet you. My name is Naoto Nakamura. Huh..., you can call me Nick." I told Fred the name the Eskimos called me. "Fred's the manager of this plant," said Mr. Minami to me in Japanese. Fred, Mr. Minami and I decided to take a look at the salmon processing line and the dock in the plant. The plant had two places to process salmon. One was a salmon processing line built in a pretty wide area in a newly built plant. The other was a salmon roe processing place which was a small shack about the size of a garage for one car. No electric wires had reached Middle Bay, so the electricity there was all self generated. "This is the egg room. Please set this place up for sujiko processing. The guys here will make anything. Tables, racks: you ask them to make it," said Mr. Minami to me. He seemed to think that I was an expert on sujiko processing, but actually, it was only my second year. The dock was an old wooden one. The approach to it had no pavement and was a dirt road. Mr. Minami said later that if they had made minor repairs like paving the dirt road, Middle Bay would become a key station of the Hanwa's fish business in Alaska. In fact, Hanwa bought that plant a few years later. Before buying it, they lost a lot of money in two years. I heard that a certain company had rent Hanwa the plant and received an advance. The advance was to be used to buy fish -- raw material, of course -- from fishermen, but it was actually used endlessly for major repairs of the plant concealed at the point of contract. Hanwa didn't expect one more thing. It was the poor quality of workers available at Middle Bay. |