<Begin Segment 46>

AH: Now, we talked a lot the last couple of days when the camera was being set up and everything else about things, so I kind of know some of this stuff. But I think one of the things that would be interesting to talk about a little bit is in the course of your long career, and when was it you retired from the city as a city engineer?

JA: Let me see, I was sixty-two or sixty-three, whenever, I retired because I had put forty years in by that time.

AH: Okay, so then it was probably about '88 if you put forty years in from '48 on to '88 or so?

JA: No, it wasn't that long. Well anyway, let's go on.

AH: But the point is that you got involved in an active way, in not just your work, but also in other things related to your work -- social justice causes and through your work. So could you kind of explain what you did in the city in order to bring about change?

JA: Okay, number one, one of the first things I was asked to, was to join the professional engineer and architect, and I was very happy. I joined right away. But the other Niseis that I got in, and Asians, they wouldn't join. I kept on them. But then, of course, we used to have stewards meetings representing City Light -- fire department, police, water, engineering. We used to have meetings at YMCA and the professional engineering/architect business people used to hold meeting in the YMCA dining room. And we invited, or they invited all the stewards for free, have lunch and do whatever we were supposed to do. But as I watched, I could see all these guys came was for free lunch, and they all walk off. And when the time for business, there's nobody there. So I thought okay, I'll straighten this out. So I talked to the business manager and told him, "Let me handle this." So instead of being a steward I was a chief steward. And when, at the next meeting, when these guys will come and go through their lunch and start walking out, "John, you'd better get back here. You're here as a steward." Everyone that came back, then I gave it to 'em right into the main stem. "You guys are no longer stewards, you're all out. Your free lunch is no more. You didn't work for it, you didn't care for the betterment of the engineering professional union so that's it." So I went out to select new, young stewards and told them exactly, "This is what we're going to do. We're going to organize." So anyway, in due time, I had the city engineers, water, light, police, firemen, organized almost 100 percent.

AH: One big union.

JA: Yes, and this time we had janitors within our professionals, engineers, carpenters -- just, we had everybody in. So my end thing was, we're gonna get a lot of voting power. So by time we got this thing all organized... now, when we were asking for betterment of our position as employee of the city, able to maintain or keep sick leave. If you didn't use, that was it, the end. We asked to accumulate, and there's many benefits that we asked for, we pulled through and got it because the candidates for mayor, council, state governor, even the congress people, they'd come and ask for our endorsement and back-up with a number of votes. So there, we'd get 'em over to our meeting and there'd be five, six of us, and say, "Okay, Mr. Congressman candidate, what are you gonna do for us? You tell us and we'll ask you questions we want you to do." So in that way, we got our way. So we got raise, we got benefits, we got all the things.

AH: This vision that you had and actually the embodiment of the vision, the organization -- it's not just a vision, it's giving a concrete form and stuff like that. Is there a correspondence between the actions that you took working as a city engineer to do this organizing of the workforce and what you had gone through during the war years and in the after war years? Is there a relationship?

JA: Yes, because we didn't have no control over the WRA. After I came back and working as an engineer, we had no control of whoever that was in the mayor's or council's spot. Yes, there was a connection. So there was this connection because we were abused. I didn't want to be abused and the reason why I didn't do this with the Japanese Americans, Japanese Americans didn't want to join any union, they didn't want to say anything, they just want to just keep quiet and do whatever they're told to do. Well, I'm not put together like that, so if I found that I could -- so instead of being with the Japanese American I felt that I'll waste my time and effort, so I went and, there again, I go back to the Caucasian. And I got their support and we got everything we wanted. So it starts back in camp and I tried to work through Japanese Americans, no, couldn't do anything, they wouldn't even join the union and I had to really twist their arm. But later on they had to join because for certain reasons. Anyway, we went out to this Forward Thrust and all of a sudden we had ten million by the government saying, "Okay, ou've got to clean up all your waterway because it's getting polluted." So we hired a lot of engineers and since our wages were so cheap -- you get only $200 or so for being an engineer -- Boeing was paying $500-600 so they all went to Boeing. And the city sent out engineers, senior engineers, to different graduating schools to see if they can get somebody to City of Seattle. We only got one person out of two or three years of constant recruiting and he came from Louisiana and he came to work for us and he stayed just enough time so he could find a job at Boeing. And so there I said, "Hey, we gotta do something about this," and that's why I thought we'd better re-organize our professional engineers and architects and become stronger and get involved into the politics, and get us affiliated or associated with a strong union and that's why I picked the Teamsters. So when we ask for raise, when we ask for benefits, all we had to do was hit the brick, one post, and that was it.

AH: Jim, you were working very hard as an engineer, but you were also working hard in connection with the profession. I mean, getting the salaries up, getting people's rights and things like that, but I know that...

JA: Not only did I stop at ourselves but we recruited, or the city recruited many engineers from Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Korea, and they came to work. And many of them had at least a masters degree and as far as the city was concerned, "We'll replace these Asians anytime you guys ask for anything. Why don't you leave?" And that's what they were doing, replacing with overseas Asians. So being an organizer, I wanted them to come into our union and they won't do it. And I said, "Why?" He said, "We're organized, Chinese or any, they're organized." So, he said, this one guy, he had a doctorate, and I didn't trust him from the first time I saw him, I mean, shifty and so... the people were saying, "Why are you hiring all these foreigners? Don't have any citizens, they don't have anything. They haven't even applied for green card." So that's where I thought if we want a strong union and get a lot of these masters, doctorates in, we'll help them. So I talked with the business manager. We'll say that these guys are applying for, that they will get their green card. So that kind of... and at that same time, Boeing was laying off a lot of people and they were coming to the city and saying, "How come these foreigners get the job, we don't?" So there was this squabble going on between the Americans here and the foreigners, new foreigners that came in. So I made it so that we will take care of them, "provided you join the union," so finally, grudgingly, they did. The terrible thing is no sooner they got their green card, you know what happened? They quit the union.

AH: Oh no. [Laughs]

JA: Yeah. But by that time, they were the minority in the engineering department. So they took me. But we'll organize the total. So we organized the total employees of city under professional engineers and architects, whether they were janitors, carpenters, didn't matter, brought 'em all together. So in the end we had the voting power and that does the work, and that was over there in camp as well as here.

<End Segment 46> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.