<Begin Segment 23>

TI: We just have a few minutes, and so I want to see if there's anything else you want to talk about. We haven't talked about how you established the college...

ET: You know, I should bring you this current issue of Spokane Magazine. They took my picture, and this is not about the past or anything, it just kind of tells you what I feel about Spokane and what I, and who has helped me. It's got everything on it, I think it's probably add to your thing, Neil Fosseen's name on it. Keith's name is not on it, because he was a healthy guy when this publication came out.

TI: But we got quite a bit about Keith in this interview.

ET: Yeah, I think nowadays he's gone, of course, I'd like to give him a lot more credit. No one knew about him, yeah, so... well, his wife knew, but then she wouldn't say anything. But if I add more to it, to me, Spokane community is very generous, as far as I was concerned. I could forget about any bad feeling I got from people, I will discount that because there were so many good people in town. And I became much more understanding of what is a community, and community is made up of different, of course, ethnic minorities to quite a major people. But we should get along, and in order to do that, we should learn more about other people's things. I think I created the garden with that in mind, and sister city program or bringing in Mukogawa, any of these things is adding Spokane, a dimension that we didn't have before. And that gives you that much more depth and so-called multicultural society. And not only you should know your own sort of heritage and do your... the thorough, of course, the study of your heritage, you also should know about somebody else's. And instead of treating this as a competition, there is no competition among these things here. We share everything, and that is something that I told the community over and over and over. Now, we have a group called Ohana, which includes all these ethnic groups, and it's a very good organization, and they look to me as kind of like a senior advisor of the city. It's a real gratifying thing, but I don't really try and change their mind. They could do that themselves.

TI: Good. Well, I think Spokane is incredibly lucky that they've had you for all these years.

ET: But I think I, I think I don't know that for sure, but I'm getting a lot of recognitions and things like that. But I always kind of repeating the same thing: it's really, I don't understand. I've done everything I enjoy, why am I getting all these accolades? And it was really amazing that I guess this is, really teaches you, this is what I talk about in this magazine more than anything. And bringing Mukogawa, I want Mukogawa to really know Spokane, it's very important. But it's not doing that well, so they're just completely changing all the people from Japan. I don't know why they're doing it, I know the guy is seventy-two and he's, he's retired. Well, heck, I'm eighty-five, so I should have been retired long ago. But I've retired, but they call me back, and said, "Would you stay a few more months to help us out?" and that was five years ago. [Laughs] So, amazing.

TI: Well, I'm sure that's a testament to you, your work, your connections.

ET: Well, I think it's Spokane, really. This is why I want them to know the Spokane. But I really look toward Seattle, Olympia, different places. Some of the other people like Korean came, so I suggested, "I could find you eventually, but it may take some time." But he ran into this particular thing near Olympia, and our place is about a... seventy-two plus fourteen, it's about 86 acres and about forty buildings. And theirs was 125 acres, just land only, but it's beautiful. It's got good scenery and everything else. And I told him, "If I were you, I'll buy this one right here." So that's where they established.

TI: So you can create like another, kind of, Mukogawa, or what would you do?

ET: Yeah, that's exactly the same as Mukogawa. It's a Korean ESL school, English as a Second...

TI: So your vision is to have different communities create similar...

ET: Yeah. Right now, I'm in kind of an advisory group for economic development here, and also I created the International Trade Alliance. It's a big group now, and a very active group, and tried to go overseas to open little more market. We don't have anything to sell here. Anything we have will be still very highly competitive thing. Two things we have, and I'm going to be talking about that next week, but one is a medical technique. Now, Spokane is amazing place, now, we do have cancer research from the University of Washington, we do have an excellent transplant program, heart, any organ transplant here in town. And the head doctor, his name is Timothy Isonaga, he's well-known, they built the Heart Institute for his type of work. And we established kind of a sister city program with the physicians of Spokane and physicians of Nishinomiya, Japan, because my old Hosam Sato was the chairman of sister city, and he was the chairman of the medical association in Nishinomiya.

TI: So you said two, so medical is one, what's the...

ET: Medical is one, other one is this education of foreign students. Now, we have, we used to have about two hundred foreign students. We have probably about fifteen hundred students after we started our school here. So it's very successful people, go from ESL, which is English as a Second Language preparatory school, to main line college education.

TI: So that's interesting. So those, those two areas, you think, are areas that you can track, essentially, business and commerce, too, in Spokane.

ET: Well, only other one that I know of around here -- well, there are two or three possible facilities within Washington. One is Bellevue, one is north of Seattle area, and Olympia, yeah, and then Walla Walla area. There are some of the other ones, but Spokane was ready-made, I think. It was a Catholic women's university there, Fort Wright campus, it used to be Holy Names. So Holy Names Sisters had that place, and I used to help them as a volunteer. And when the student come, you know, and we brought from our, kind of a trial group, it was a university, Mukogawa Women's University. They send the students one summer, and that's what really impressed a few people. There were some Japanese, that they thought that this should be out, so they just took the thing over to, I think northern Oregon somewhere, and they ran it one year, it was disappointing. So they called me up --

TI: So that's interesting. So it's a combination, not only the contacts to get them here, but how you did it made a difference.

ET: Uh-huh. Yeah, I think you probably have to do a lot more than just know the institution. I got to know probably the school way back, and going back in history, I think my uncle lived, that's where I lived, just, gosh, about two hundred meters from the Mukogawa Women's University, which wasn't established when I left Japan.

TI: So it's amazing how something -- this is when you were five -- so eighty years ago almost, that these connections all are made.

ET: Yeah, I think so. I think particularly when I left, it was 1936. 1939, school was established, 1939. That's, what?

TI: That's sixty-seven years?

ET: So they invited us to sixtieth, sixty-fifth, you know, anniversary. So I belong to, right, the Mukogawa community of education.

TI: Well, I think that's a good way to end the interview, because I know you have to go.

ET: Yeah, okay.

TI: So Ed, thank you so much for taking the time.

ET: Thank you, thank you.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.