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TI: Okay, so Ron, we just took a break and we're back. Let's get into kind of another phase of your career, and that was while you were at Tacoma Community College, you started writing books.

RM: Yes. That began in connection with the Washington Commission for the Humanities. They were, they were very interested in doing histories of local peoples and communities, and unions. And they'd given a grant to the longshoremen of Tacoma, who'd had a hundred-year history. It's the longest continuous union in the, in the state, that I know of, goes back to 1886. And they, a longshore leader named Phil Lily had the idea of writing this book, so he applied for a grant, and they gave it to him. It was really sort of unheralded. He wasn't a humanist, had no connection -- he didn't even know how to define humanities, or care. But he had this idea that, "Hey, we can tell the story of Tacoma through this union, with all its aspects." And so they started in, they hired a lady who they didn't like her writing, and so they fired her and the Humanities Commission man asked me to go and help, because I'd done a lot of humanities projects. And so I went over and they, they talked to me and a good friend of mine at the Pacific Lutheran University, the two of us wrote the book called The Working Waterfront.

TI: Well, what was the reception of the longshoremen when you came to that first meeting?

RM: Oh, they were, they were very antsy, very... one of 'em said, "Are you an intellectual?" I said, "No, I don't consider myself a philosopher." I said, "I'm a historian, I like to deal with facts and people and events." I said I'd, I'd try to help them with writing their history.

TI: At that point, did you know much about the, the union? The longshore...

RM: I didn't know anything about the union. Didn't know a thing about longshoring, other than that I'd seen them work the docks and been aboard ships and that kind of thing, but knew nothing about the longshore history, or, nothing about it. They were, they were interesting people from the very moment that I started, though. They ran the gamut from radical, from the radical left to the arch-conservative right. They were not a solid phalanx of rebels, they were people who believed in the work ethic, and they wanted the people of Tacoma to know this, that they weren't drunken bums who beat up their wives. I think that one of 'em expressed that. That's all they ever put in the newspaper about them. And so I started, I started working --

TI: So how do you get started with a group that is, is somewhat sort of suspicious, or not really comfortable with you? You said "antsy," how do you gain their trust?

RM: There was always, there were, in every case that I've written a book, there's always been a couple of people who've come forward who, who had hopes, and their hopes outweighed their suspicions. And with the longshoremen, there were a couple of people who, who said -- well, one of them said, "What is your union background?" I said, "My mother was in the hotel and restaurant employees for fifty years." I said, "I'm familiar with the unions in general, and I know their history." And he said, "But you don't know anything about longshoring?" I said, "No, but I'm willing to learn." I said, "I'd like to try my hand."

And so I interviewed a ninety-six-year-old man, his name was John Now, and John had been shot in the 1916 strike, in the stomach. And he'd survived that, despite what everybody said, that he was going to die. And he was strong, self-reliant. He loved, he had a stump ranch, he liked to go out and ride horses. And so I went out to his cabin one day and we were going to ride, and he decided, no, he'd rather talk. So we went in the trailer and we talked all day. And he was very interesting, he'd been a Wobbly, he'd been everything, and finally wound up sort of as a capitalist owning property, and he said, "Such is life." But he'd been born in Tacoma, knew the early, earliest longshoremen, and we had this talking relationship. And from John, John introduced, had another longshoreman come to his house, and I talked to him there. And the president of the Longshore union joined us at about that time, and he was quite a character. He loved history and he loved to talk about longshoring. And so it was sort of, it began with one person.

When I did Furusato, the Japanese book, the same thing. I knew that the Japanese people were quiet and didn't want to particularly talk about internment. I knew that from previous, with students in my class. That I'd ask about the internment, and they wouldn't have wanted to talk about it. Anyway, I took the idea of, that I learned with the longshoring, and there were two wonderful women. There was a, her name was Sakamoto, and she married --

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.