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MN: I'm gonna step back a little bit and, yes, it started out with the veterans and they had an exhibit, and I think your side was more the structure, the building. You were able to focus more on the building part of it. And you mentioned that Joseph's Menswear was next to your office, or was at one point, and you got to know Joseph Ito and his brother-in-law was Minoru Yamasaki, so how did this relationship with Minoru Yamasaki go?

BK: Yeah, it's very interesting. When we were promoting the museum and Merit was the first one that was wanting to form a development which would include a museum, and we bought the property at First and Alameda. It was the former California Hardware, large brick institution. It had about, I don't know, about an acre and three quarters, went to Second Street, and we thought that would be ideal location for development to include a museum, and so I went and talked to the owner over there and says, "You know, I don't know if you people are looking for new locations, but we would be interested in trying to work out something with you to buy this old building and tear it down and work out something for you to move to another location in a modern building." And they took it up. So we finally made a deal with Merit and California Hardware where we bought a piece of property in the City of Commerce and agreed to build a building for them in exchange for their old property here, so we worked on an exchange agreement and they built the building and then we exchanged properties. Then we tore this building down. We found guano in there. You know what guano is?

MN: Bird poop.

BK: Poop. Bats' poop.

MN: Oh, bat poop.

BK: And very potent, and you can't use it. Normally it would kill the flowers or whatever, but it's used by specialists. You try to find someone who could use bats' poop. Couldn't find anybody and we just got rid of it. And the, some of the biggest rats in town. A real rat came out of that building across the floor. I don't know where it disappeared to. It was a big rat. [Laughs] We tore the building down and discovered not only bats but rats, and leveled it off and then paid for a study to be made to see what we could build and if the timing was right, so we had a study made to give us an idea if the timing was right. So the end result was that we were in a very, very slow period of our economics here in Los Angeles, and they said, "This is not the time to try to start to build." And so then the board decided, well, the timing wasn't right, we'd sell it. So we sold it to a local developer, what's his name? He got some money from his friends and advisors from overseas and, gee, I can't even think of his name. He and his dad bought, bought the property from us, and they've had that all along as a parking lot. And what was his name? He developed also the property at Second and San Pedro where Narumi was. Anyway, I'll think of it. He was from Okinawa. You know?

MN: I don't think I know.

BK: I'll think of his name. (Al Taira).

MN: Now, when did you go over to Visual Communication and meet Nancy Araki? Do you remember that? Nancy remembers you coming over to Visual Communication and you wanted her to --

BK: Yeah, well, she was the one that put the visual picture together with the cooperation of Northern California when they had the presentation at the museum, and I think she did contract work negotiating with Northern California to make the exhibits that they showed at the facilities at the museum over here. What is it, the...

MN: Natural History Museum?

BK: Yeah, I think so. So she was into collections about the Japanese American, and she knew the people from Northern Cal because she came from there, and so I had heard about her and we were in contact with Nancy, and when we were talking about starting the museum, since she was a contact originally for those pictures that were set up at the park I contacted her and she was the first person that we hired for the museum, and we hired her as a coordinator because we were looking for someone to head the whole thing up and we were looking for someone with more supervisory potential. And so we used to meet at Merit Savings in the board room on Saturdays with a committee of, to form the museum. And so we were interviewing people that were hired, we hired a firm to do a search nationwide and they tried, but there were no prospects. There were some that came over that had some experience, but nothing in terms of a large museum, so the Saturdays when we were interviewing people, we would meet at this board room of Merit Savings and then after the interview and the members of the committee at that time would decide whether or not to continue with them. And we didn't run across anybody. It turns out that, someone said there was a person who was managing a women's facility, medical facility in West Los Angeles, that she had started from scratch and that she might be the kind of person that could put a museum together. She had the ability to convince the county to finance her. So we sent out a couple of people to talk to her. She refused and we kept interviewing others. Finally they said, well, we better go back, see if we can get Irene again, and she finally agreed, so she came on board and we rented offices at 941 East Third Street, and that's where the museum started its office and also the JACL had its paper up there with Harry Honda at 91 East Third, East Third Street.

MN: Now, when you say Irene, that's Irene Hirano?

BK: Irene Hirano, right.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.