History writes itself sometimes── a young, motivated Shige followed his gut into Dean Moon’s shop in Santa Fe Springs and became an inquisitive regular visitor. Shige learned Moon was a legend in SoCal drag racing culture and had designed a twin carb fuel block system of increased fuel delivery and horsepower. Moon’s marketing flair combined innovative ideas with a sense of the showman to sell his products. His funky barefoot shaped MOON gas pedal and small 3.5-gallon MOON dragster gas tank (A front mounted system using natural rear-forced gravity to literally push the fuel into the twin carbs), MOON Disc wheel covers (to reduce wind drag and shave off time) quickly became must-have hot rod accessories and sold in the thousands. Shige also learned the double eye MQQN logo started at a local drag race during the late 1950s: Dean’s car was numbered 00 but as a joke, somebody painted in eyes and the MOON EYES logo had been born.

During the Korean War, Moon was in the Air Force photography unit and he was skilled with a camera. The walls of Dean’s Santa Fe Springs MOON Equipment shop were covered with his framed black and white photos of cars at local drag strips but also on the dry alkali lake bed at El Mirage and on the salt at Bonneville. El Mirage was only one-hundred miles from LA in the western Mojave and a favorite destination for illegal street racers who congregated there instead of being arrested on LA streets. Speed trial culture at Bonneville had long been legendary since the 1930s. These photos became a pictorial history lesson for Shige about how Dean’s ingenuity, speed products and personal sense of flair influenced the early days of California hot rod culture with mythological status. Dean took the enthusiastic Shige under his wing and guided him through the horsepower learning curve. Soon after, Shige became a fixture at the shop and good friends with both Dean and his wife Shirley.