Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Art Abe Interview
Narrator: Art Abe
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: January 24, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-aart-01-0026

<Begin Segment 26>

TI: And so how long did you stay with, in this area?

AA: Oh, when they decided to consolidate... when Eisenhower was president, Nixon was the vice president, and they decided to consolidate the various regional offices, and they moved the Seattle office down to Los Angeles. And I had no desires to go down there, that job that I had was given, was consolidated with the Los Angeles office, so they gave that management position to the guy down there. And so I figured, oh, that's another put-down for me. I says, "I've had enough of this," and so I resigned, and I went down to work for Boeing.

TI: So this is like the late-'50s, kind of?

AA: When was it? '49, '50s.

TI: Well, Eisenhower, I'm thinking Eisenhower was in the '50s.

AA: '50s? Okay, the early '50s. Boeing was just building up, and they were, they were hiring.

TI: And what work did you do at Boeing?

AA: I was working in an electronic shop.

TI: And did you ever, when you were at Boeing, get to use your business administration background?

AA: No, never did.

TI: So it was more --

AA: But I was, I became a lead engineer, or a lead technician down there. I had about twenty-five guys working for me, but then I decided that what I was doing wasn't all that satisfactory. I was working long hours, and I was married at the time, and I figured there's better ways, and I decided to go back to school. And so I was going to school daytime and working swing shift, I did that for a couple of years. Then that got kind of old, so I finally took a leave of absence and went to school full-time, and I got a degree in electrical engineering.

TI: So you had a business degree and an electrical engineering degree, lots of work experience. Do you feel that given your background, your experience, that Boeing was fair to you and other Japanese Americans who worked?

AA: It depends on the supervisor. I was really appreciated when I had a supervisor by the name of Carl Martinez, who was a Mexican, and he told me about his struggles. He had a PhD, and so I got hired in as, not as a junior engineer, but an associate engineer, which is a couple of steps up. Then a short time later, I became a lead engineer. And then my supervisor, boss, got ill and I was acting supervisor for a while. But they never, they never promoted me to supervision.

TI: And why do you think that was so?

AA: Well, I had some problems with one of my other supervisors, that I figured he was a, kind of a bigot. I got stuck on the bottom of the totem, totem five, whereas previously I was acting supervisor. And so I decided I had enough of that, and so I looked around for another job at Boeing, and I got on with another organization. And the unit chief said, "It's unfortunate you got in a situation like that." He says, "A person just doesn't drop from the top down to the bottom one rating period." He said, "I've looked over your resume, you've had an excellent resume up until now." So he says, "I'll do what I can do to get you back up." And then pretty soon the whole organization moved down to Huntsville, Alabama. I had no desires to go there, 'cause I had been going down there to Alabama on company business for the missile flights down on the cape.

TI: And so you transferred to another group, then?

AA: No, let's see... that's when I went back to Boeing as an engineer at the time.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.