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AI: You know, excuse me...

TI: Yeah.

AI: ...I wanted to ask you about while you were working on your thesis.

TI: Yeah.

AI: Now, could you tell me a little bit about that...

TI: Yeah.

AI: ...and your work there with, I think you had, were working with a group of young people?

TI: Yeah. The resurrected, reorganized Japanese Methodist Church, which is now Blaine Memorial Methodist Church. The minister had just come, a year earlier than me, I believe, and was reorganizing the church. And so I loved that work, organizing it. I ended up being the advisor to a college-age group. And they were called the Duzzers, Duz, does everything, soap commercial. And we had lived up to that name. We did many, many activities. We were up to fifty Niseis going to the University of Washington and having a great time in church. And the minister had to kick us out of the church at night so we'd go home. And we only had one car in the whole group. We were that poor. So we managed okay, taking the bus, walking. And based on that experience, Duzzer group, I worked my thesis on how it generated, and how to organize and the result of that involvement of people, which turned out to be successful. I had critics who said all we're doing is having fun. It's not Christian. [Laughs] The minister was supporting the kind of wonderful experiences we were having, so I could handle the criticism. And it ended up many of the current leaders are past members. So that positive experience really helped a great deal. So working, only place I could find work was being a mail carrier for a few months -- oh, I forgot to mention that after I graduated, I was ready to marry Sumi, who was a member of our college-age group. I was dead broke. So only other way was to go working in the salmon cannery. I took that option. And it was a very poor salmon season so we didn't make the big bucks that I was hoping for. But we made some money. And I was the only Japanese American in that group. Mostly all of them were Filipino Americans. We were treated well.

AI: That was the summer of 1951...

TI: Yeah.

AI: ...right after you got your MSW? What was that work like up at the cannery? That was in Alaska?

TI: Yeah, in a small cannery. When we worked, worked real hard, and I loved it. And they allowed us salt salmon to take back. And somehow or other the owner, manager thought we had taken some of his prize big fish, king salmon, and he got so angry he destroyed all the forty or fifty barrels of salted salmon. That was sad. Many of the people liked to gamble but I didn't. But I had brought with me about thirty Reader's Digest, so I started my own library -- [laughs] -- reading those books, magazines. But that was it. It was just work, work, work. We were just sitting around, waiting for the fish to come in. And that was enough to, when we got back, to get married and pay for the -- one cost item I remember was our reception, our, members of the Duzzer group made sandwiches and cookies. So total cost was $25. We stole ferns from Mercer Island and lined the pews -- [laughs] -- with flowers from Hawaii, where, my wife's sister sent us. Our minister let us use his car for our honeymoon.

I went to work temporarily for the post office, till I got a job at Neighborhood House to be a group worker, social worker. And I was there for two years working long hours. And I was the only male worker, and they had a lot of dances, and they had to have me as the (bouncer). The director didn't get involved in that at all, so I was it. I really worked late, many hours, and I was exhausted. And then when the personnel chair of Atlantic Street Center, who had also been a board member of Neighborhood House, told me there was an opening as director of Atlantic Street Center, would I be interested? "Sure." I started out at Neighborhood House with a salary of $3,200, which was pretty good money, I thought. [Laughs] And I knew I wasn't going into social work to get money, but then Atlantic Street Center was offering $3,600 a year salary, a major increase, in my estimation. So I said, "Boy, I want to get that job." The personnel committee asked me, "You know, there were hardly any Japanese Americans in this community, so how do you think you would handle, majority are Italian descent, and then a small portion are African Americans." All I could say (was), "I've done a lot of organizing, and I just feel I could do it." So they accepted that. So it wasn't a major barrier in getting that job.

AI: The Atlantic Street Center is, continues to be a very important nonprofit organization in Seattle today.

TI: Yeah.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.