Oral History Interview with Stephen E. Van Nostrand, April 20, 1987 Page: 22
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22
people, and Mr. Inamani, the president of ROCO, established
his organization. We began putting them into the business
of distribution. They bought tank trucks. In order to
spread out the training program beyond ROCO, each of our
fifty service stations was an independent Okinawan business-
man. We would find somebody in the area who had enough
business knowledge and award him a franchise if the traffic
count for a service station was appropriate. Now all of
these men had their own association, and then ROCO had its
separate organization.
ROCO began spreading out into activity that was not
directly connected with Caltex, like, they went into the LPG
business and built a yard where they could import bulk LPG
and decant it into containers that could be used on the island.
They grew to be quite an efficient and, of course, a very
profitable organization because their costs were fixed, and
they had to sell at the U.S. government-mandated price, so
a margin was built into their sales. It was an instant
success, you might say. It worked out very well for quite
a few years.
But then, of course, all that changed when the United
States Civil Administration, instead of saying, "Okay,
Ryukyans, you've got the oil business now,'t they said to
Gulf and to Exxon and to NPRC (Nippon Petroleum Refining
Company), "Okay, you've wanted refineries. Now go to it."
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Marcello, Ronald E. & Van Nostrand, Stephen E. Oral History Interview with Stephen E. Van Nostrand, April 20, 1987, book, April 20, 1987; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc306889/m1/24/?q=%22~1%22~1: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Oral History Program.