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TI: And so from the engineering, manufacturing, business standpoint, Honda was doing all these good things. Meanwhile, in the American press, they were getting very negative press, in some cases, or some people believe, leading to, like the death of Vincent Chin, for instance, in terms of just that anti-Japanese, anti-Asian feeling. And so you mentioned going around and just explaining this, talking to groups.

CS: Yeah, I went to, I think for a whole year, each speech was different. I'll take one subject at a time, and then bring in old ones, too, and explain it. I remember at the University of Chicago when I made that talk, a student came to me later and said, "Gosh, I wish my father was here. He belongs to the union, and he's always talking (bad about the Japanese). And you explained everything that my father got wrong." And says, "I wish he was here."

TI: And how much of your job was doing this?

CS: Well, see, I was about to, I announced my retirement, the next year I was going to retire. So I thought I would take life easy. Well, until then, we'd been getting requests for making speeches, we turned them all down. So now, the higher ups said, "Now you're going to retire, spend the next year accepting these speeches."

TI: And so was this as a Honda employee, or as a retiree?

CS: No, I was still working for Honda.

TI: So they said, "Okay, don't do your old job anymore..."

CS: (My staff continued and I just managed.) After I retired, I still had requests. So I told them, "I'm no longer on the front line, I don't know what's going on." All I know is what I read in the paper," so I turned down all the other requests when I retired.

TI: But for a whole year, you went around and talked.

CS: Yeah.

TI: And what did that teach you about America? Because you went to lots of different places...

CS: Oh, yeah, they're fair. You tell 'em, you know, the truth, and they realize it, that the bashing was wrong. Because I've got a manila binder full of letters that came in, and I brought two samples here. One was from Ambassador Mansfield, and the other is from another trade negotiator. And I got one, the most one I'm proud of is a letter I got from a president of the dealers, Automotive Dealers Association. And in Congress, there was a very anti-Japanese automobile bill pending. So I'd been sending him the speeches, so he wrote me a letter saying that, "Thanks to your (speeches, we are) going fully armed to meet the people of Congress." That bill never passed. So I was proud of that one.

TI: And so where did the... when you, again, go back to the media, where did the anti-Japanese sort of marketing come from when it came to, like, anti-cars?

CS: It's all from the union. The unions were instigating all this and feeding the press the information, one-sided information.

TI: But yet, when you look at what was happening, Honda was creating jobs in America. But I guess, were they non-union jobs? Was that the reason why there was a union...

CS: No, I don't think that so much as... all the Japanese companies were coming there, TV, all kind of companies coming here. And the unions were losing their jobs, so they would try to stir up the public by giving false information to the media.

TI: Were you ever given a bad time or hard time when you went to speak?

CS: Well, the most interesting was when I had, I spoke in Fresno. And then I remember that time they were bashing rice, on the rice matter, you know. So when I started off my speech, I says, I didn't know how many were from the rice growers there, so I says, I told them, I said, "My getaway car is over here, and after I finish now, I hope somebody will be, escort me to my car." [Laughs] So I bashed the American rice growers. Fortunately... in fact, I got one letter, says something about, "Did you make your getaway car in time?" [Laughs]

TI: So, again, you were very willing to be outspoken about difficult issues.

CS: Yeah. Yeah, 'cause I was confident, if they came back with an argument, I'll argue right back. So at question and answer, they would ask questions, you know, and typical Japan-bashing, then I'd tell 'em the story and they said, "Oh, I understand now."

TI: But were there some cases were even though you had the information, someone would just disagree with you and just give you a bad time.

CS: No, 'cause most of the people I spoke to were universities and trade associations. They were all intelligent people. So like at the University of Chicago, the student came, but the father didn't come. He didn't want to listen to the anti-Japan bashing speech.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.