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AI: Now, also during the '60s, there was a development of this, at the time it was called Black Pride and Black Power.

TI: State that again?

AI: Black Pride and Black Power.

TI: Oh, yes. Yeah.

AI: Please tell a little bit about this concept and this feeling and why this was so significant.

TI: Yeah. Well, at that time, Seattle (Model City Program) was getting in a way involved in the community groups.

AI: The (Model City Program)?

TI: Yes. And then I was in a committee working with delinquents' issues. And one of the outstanding residents of the community just -- she had a certain agenda, and she wouldn't, she would talk out loud to control the whole meeting so that no business could be conducted and approved. That went on for several weeks. [Laughs] So even in that environment, you probably get to develop some programs. And I felt like during the model cities they had, they call new careers or paraprofessionals, paraprofessionals, social worker or educator or nurse or everything is paraprofessional. But I felt the word "para," parallel lines never meet. And we who got our degrees made sure they didn't cross the line to take over our jobs. So kind of a defensive reaction. But I felt that was wrong. And so in a particular project, group home project, we hired young college students, African Americans, to be the counselors to younger kids. I felt that these young people who were going to the university, were motivated. They saw a clear direction they were pursuing. And I felt they would be a great role model for these younger blacks who were disheartened, so that they could communicate naturally, saying, "As part of my work life as a young African American."

But at same time, I felt, you know, this term "Black is Beautiful," I thought naturally right away saying, "Yellow is Beautiful." But in our society, yellow is usually a sign of cowardice, so I couldn't use that label. I didn't feel comfortable with it. And I was searching for anything that would make me feel good about myself as a Japanese American rather than as a "Jap." And I couldn't find it. So they had Peter's Principle, so times later, I thought, why not Ike's Principles? You see, what are those values that I was taught at Japanese school or from other relationship with the Japanese community that really helped sustain me? So I began to search these values and what would help me.

So just to give one example, ikebana was one of my principles. And ikebana, from a American standpoint culture, it's, tends to be bouquet. You need a lot of flower resources to result in a bouquet. And we have a bouquet mentality for everything, so that we're never satisfied with what we have. We want more. And whereas so-called Japanese mentality was that in developing ikebana flower arrangement, you only need a few resources. So once you accept that kind of an attitude, that with a few resources you could do something significant like having a great ikebana display. It really changed my attitude about myself and about the little agency I was the director of, and begin to move, a simple concept opened more doors, and it meant focusing my energy more on the agency. It came to a point where I felt I needed to change the whole agency. It started in 1910, and by 1955 or '56, 1956 point, I really questioned what we were doing. We had all kinds of wonderful programs -- preschool, senior citizen, troubled youth, programs in housing project, urban renewal. But all I was doing was, it's like that example of a dish. You twirl on a stick and you keep twirling, but after a certain point, all the dishes start to fall because you can't get back to it, keep it twirling. I began to wonder what value, why did I go through the School of Social Work to have a lot of these so-called happy time experiences? On the surface, it looked great. I believed we needed to concentrate our limited resources in one area. And as example, instead of a plate of water, you pour that content, resource into a test tube. You've got depth to it. Same amount of limited resource.

And that began to drive me toward development of a much more sophisticated research-oriented, developing knowledge, testing knowledge out, and helping to regain the skills of how do you plan. We did it by way of a state-planning contract we received. Only state in the nation where private little agency were doing the planning for a city. And I was able to get a structural engineer as my design team from Boeing. Later I recommended Bernie Salazar to quit Boeing and become the planning director for model cities. But in the meantime I hired him during the evenings. And then I hired economist from Boeing who was one of the top thinker in reducing the work force by 50 percent in 1970 at Boeing, and still save the guts of Boeing.

So I had all kinds of unusual, talented people to help design this state plan. And the end result was that our state plan compared to other plans across the United States, was one of the most systematic planning models in the United States. And that's the direction I wanted to go toward, qualitative effort, focused in order to do it. And then completing a seven-year study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. It was a premiere funding source to do qualitative research.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.