Densho Digital Archive - Bruce T. Kaji Interview II

<Begin Segment 1>

MN: Okay, today is September 1, 2010. We're at the Centenary United Methodist Church. We have here Bruce Teruo Kaji and Dana Hoshide is on the video camera, and I will be interviewing and my name is Martha Nakagawa. And Bruce, this is our second session with you. I think the last time we ended was you and Kiyo Maruyama opened a Little Tokyo office and during, that was during the day, and then you started to teach night classes at East L.A. College, and then in between you were sneaking visits with Frances Tashiro. Now, can you tell us, you, you were coming and visiting her at her parents' house, how was their reception of you?

BK: Well, when I was there her father was busy or ill. He was down with a problem of, what is it, not pneumonia, but tuberculosis, and he was confined to a rest home, so he was not at his home at the time I was teaching. And I don't know how soon after that he passed away, but as we were meeting with Frances and getting to know her better, then we waited a year after he passed away before we got married. So he was in pretty bad shape. He was not at home. He was in a sanitarium. But that was the story of my visiting. Her mother was very cordial and I didn't stay too long; I just dropped in and paid my respects on the way to teach, and I would not drop in after teaching. I would go straight home, so it was just, during the days I would teach I would drop in. Not every day.

MN: So when did you folks get married?

BK: We got married April 30, 1954, I think. My dates are bad. My dates lately, I can't remember a lot of dates, but I think that was '54 we got married.

MN: '54, and where did, where did you get married?

BK: Got married in Gardena, at the Methodist church, and the, there was a Reverend Wolfe. He couldn't pronounce our names. [Laughs] He, he married us. And we had a little reception at the church and we had our friends come in and after the ceremony they had a reception in the reception area, and it was not a big wedding. It's, after you get out of service there's not too many people around, and I wasn't in business very long with Kiyo, so we didn't have many contacts.

MN: Who took pictures at your wedding?

BK: Who...

MN: Took pictures.

BK: Who took the pictures? Miyatake. Yeah, Archie, when he was in better shape.

MN: Archie told me when they were growing up they didn't call you Bruce. They called you Teru.

BK: Teru. Teruo. And my neighbor, growing up, was another Teruo, Tsujimoto, and so people started to identify us as Teru T. and Teru K. And that's how we got along in our neighborhood.

MN: Now, when you got married did you live with Frances's mother or did you go, did you move into Gardena?

BK: Well Frances's mother owned a four-plex right next to her residence at 433 South Boyle, I think, and one of the units opened up, so Frances and I moved into one of the apartments there for a while. We stayed there and it was obvious that we were gonna have a family, so we decided we'd better move into a home and found a place in Gardena to buy, so we moved out of the place next to her mother and, on 5th Street, and went over to 14708 South -- no, it was on Compton Boulevard, at that time, in Gardena. It was a three bedroom house on Compton Boulevard, yeah.

MN: Which has been renamed Marine --

BK: Is now Marine, yeah.

MN: Now, before you moved into Gardena and you were living in the complex that Mrs. Tashiro owned, you were also active with the International Institute, which was very close to that house. Can you tell us what the International Institute was and what they did? Oh, and then you also became their first Japanese American board member, if I remember correctly. Can you tell us a little bit about the International Institute?

BK: Well, the International Institute was a red feather agency, community chest agency, and dealt with the foreign people who were trying to get adjusted to the life in the United States, and so they were helping all kinds of different ethnic groups, the, the French group, there were, I'm pretty sure German, Japanese and Chinese and Filipino. And Miss Esther Bartlett was the director, and she also encouraged young people, so the Japanese Americans returning back to Los Angeles area, she helped them by opening up the Institute for them to have meetings and dances. And so the Niseis took advantage of that because we had nothing, and when the girl clubs used to sponsor dance the boys would come over and they would go over to the Institute and have the privilege of using the facilities. That was very, very gracious, gracious of her. She was a real friend.

<Begin Segment 2>

MN: Now, during the 1950s there was a uranium rush, and that's very similar to the gold rush, and you folks also got into this. Can you share with us your experience trying to find uranium?

BK: Well, Kiyo Maruyama and I were partners in accounting and we were approached by some of the Manzanar Friends who said there was a group of miners or prospectors who were looking for getting some backing. They were going to go to Arizona to look for uranium, and being poor and thought maybe if it would be a lucky strike, that would be very fortuitous, so Kiyo and I called some friends together to see if they, they would back this group from Pasadena, couple of miners. And they didn't need much money, so we formed a partnership and backed them up for their operation. They had a truck, they had the maps, they had the know how, where to go, and Arizona is one of the richest areas as far as minerals are concerned. There was a federal depot where they stored strategic ores at Wenden, Arizona, and people there would mine different kinds of strategic ores, could then take them over to Wenden and report 'em and get 'em weighed, assayed, and later on the federal government, if it was assayable and worthwhile they would be paid from the San Francisco office. So we were looking for the right kind of things, but the only thing that they were able to find that was mineable was manganese, and manganese came in, it'd be known as seams, and the seams would be, from the top you could find the seam and it would go down, so we had to find miners who would work at it, physical pick and shovel, and there weren't many people out there looking for jobs, but there were ex-miners and people who were out of jobs looking for something. And so they were able to find people to go and work and mine and dig out the manganese, and then they would take the rich manganese that was part of the seam, the black seam, and put it aside and later on mix it so that you would have the weight and not give away all the good stuff, balance it out and then deliver it to the depot. And then the depot would take the product that you would deliver and they would then assay it and then report to San Francisco what the property that you turned in was worth and they would send you a check. With the check, that would give us more money to pay salary, still looking for the big gold mine. [Laughs]

It was a experience that I thought was a little... well, I think being young, you're willing to try it, but they said what if someone, you're delivering cash because the miners don't have checking accounts over there. All they do is receive cash. You can't give 'em a check because they don't have a bank account. The only thing they know is, "Give me cash and I can use that." So we would have to, well I forget, once a month drive over to the site where they were mining and deliver cash to them. We would have the figure for the amount we would pay them, and so Kiyo and I would figure what it would come to in cash and make an envelope for the cash, and for the number of employees, usually it's no more than four or five, make envelopes and put the money in, and I would usually drive it out to the site. You'd get off the regular road and then you take the path up to the campsite. There's nobody around. Somebody says, "Well, what if someone knew you were comin' up with the cash?" I says, "Yeah, that's pretty bad." Nothing happened. We drove up there once a month and we gave 'em the envelope and they opened it up, and before they do that they would have to sign, and a lot of 'em would sign, would only sign an X because they didn't know how to sign their names. They were not educated, or they didn't have the know-how how to... It, it was an experience to know how some people lived, and they promptly found a place to spend it. It was hard to find them over the weekend. They're out there boozin' it up. [Laughs] But that's life out there in the Arizona mines. So that was an experience, I think, that taught me a little bit about how other people live and how other people are educated or non-educated, and how people are looking for the big one. Everybody's looking for the gold mine or whatever. Taught us a lesson, Kiyo and I, that nothing is easy. So we stuck to accounting.

MN: Did you at least get a return on investment?

BK: We were still looking for investments. I think as accountants, we did set up a group that met once a month, of investment-oriented accountants, and they used to meet in Gardena, at my office, and we had about ten members, and each of us brought a check. Our meetings, we went out to eat Chinese food, and after that we would go to the office and have a little meeting, and each one would bring in a check for, I think it was a hundred dollars. And so we would try to build up our cash reserves, and we decided that our best bet would be to go into real estate, and so we kept doing that for a while and it turned out that one of our investments was to purchase land in Colorado. Taul Watanabe, my brother-in-law, was starting savings and loans, like merit savings and then guild savings up in Sacramento, and he went to Denver and started another savings and loan there, and while he was there he met some attorneys and he himself was a graduate of, of the university in Colorado in law, and he heard of some land that's available for investment going south towards the air force academy. And so some of the attorneys that he was involved with knew of landowners along the road, along the highway, so we started quarrying land in Colorado. And we wound up with, I think all told we wound up with about three thousand acres, and with different ownerships. Ours was a little piece, but as time went on and we kept making payments on it, and it came to a time when development started coming in, population started increasing, and speculators were coming in to buy land ahead of development, so we were offered a pretty good price for our land that we had specked on and so our accountants group decided to sell. And so after we sold it and got cash, then the question was, what are we gonna do? Are we going to reinvest it or spend it? So the fellows decided they're working too hard, we got to use it.

So we decided to divide the money and some of us decided to take a trip that we would never ever think of doing, and so we contracted for most of the investors to go on this trip overseas and to go on this Mediterranean trip and we'd go visit the Greek Islands. And so we did, and it was a fascinating trip that our wives and our associates would never forget. We would never even think of doing anything like that, but it was a one-time opportunity, and so we all enjoyed this ship in the Mediterranean, going from island to island, finding out about the old populations and eventually winding up in such places as the, all the Greek Islands that we know of, and I went to the, Egypt and also to Israel and visited the place where Christ was born, and, and it was an eye-opener. And my wife got on a camel outside of the Cheops, the pyramid, and she wouldn't answer the, the camel trainer. He says, "Madam, I am having a difficult time," and he's trying to get some baksheesh, a little tip, but knowing my wife, she wasn't about to give any baksheesh, so she wouldn't say a word. But he wasn't gonna give up either, so we came to a time where everybody was to get off and so he's still talking to her, "Madam, I would like to have a little donation, baksheesh." But she wouldn't answer, so he took her around again and she still wouldn't talk. He finally let her off, but he was so disappointed. She's, I think, the only customer that never tipped him. [Laughs] I didn't know she had such a stubborn streak, but that's, you find out in life as life goes on. But they were all looking for tips because when we went to visit the pyramids, people are walking up to the pyramid and going into the pyramid, and the opening is much smaller because back when they built it, they weren't very tall, so everything that was built was built to their size and so you had to hunch down to get into the, the, I guess it's a hallway to go all the way to the main room where they buried the famous people. And so everyone nowadays is much taller, bigger, but the Egyptians were waiting there and trying to get people together to lead 'em into the pyramid, into the inner room, chambers and then out and then collect some money, but a lot of the people, they wouldn't, they wouldn't listen. They would just go out on their own and they were fairly frustrated because, like me, I just went ahead and he's chasing me, then he thought about all the people waiting in the back so he went back. By the time he went back and got them going I had visited the chamber and then went out by another exit. But that was an experience because you find that everywhere you go, especially in Egypt, and if you had to go to the restroom, there's a lady sitting there at the door and you have to pay to get in. If you want other services you have to pay, so that's the way it was.

MN: Now, for these investors that, this group that went, was this, would you say this was the first real vacation that you folks had?

BK: I would say so, the first real foreign vacation. We wouldn't have ever even thought of going overseas if it weren't for that fortuitous sale of real estate that all of a sudden came in, and some of the people kept the money. They didn't want to go on a trip. That's alright. But for us, having done that, I never regretted it and my wife never regretted it, and a lot of people says, we go to church and people say, "Well, one of these days I'm gonna go and visit Israel, find out where Christ was born." "Oh, we've been there." [Laughs] Yeah, when they talk about the different places, yeah, we did visit, and it became more real in terms of the, the street where Christ carried the cross, you go, walk right by it and they say this is that particular street, and find the place where he was born. It makes the story much more vivid and more realistic.

MN: Just so we have a time frame, this group bought the property in Colorado probably in the 1950s and then you went on this trip in 1977?

BK: Yeah, it was quite a while before it really blossomed out to the point where it was saleable. You don't sell land until the investors are ready to develop the land. When we bought it it was just bare land. I don't know if they grew wheat on it or what, but it was farm land, acres and acres.

<Begin Segment 3>

MN: So I'm gonna step back a few years again, while you and Kiyo are still in business, and then in 1956 Taul Watanabe called you up and said he wanted some help, and he had just built the Kyoto Plaza. And so what did you do?

BK: Which plaza?

MN: Kyoto Plaza. I guess it became Town & Country.

BK: Town & Country, yeah. Well, it was a piece of land that was being used by Harvey Chapman, who was a golf pro, and he was using that as a place where people could hit golf balls, a driving range. And it was located on Western Avenue near Compton Boulevard, and so he didn't own the land, but we saw it as an opportunity to buy it and develop a shopping center. I didn't have the foresight for that. Taul Watanabe did. He was a, he had a lot of, I would say, ideas of how to make money, and one of 'em was building the shopping for the Japanese American community, and so he bought the land and got... the local people in Gardena had several service clubs, and the service clubs that were the most popular were the Lions Club International and the Kiwanis Club, and there was also some others, but those were the two main, main ones. And so the Lions Club was the largest, and so with the Lions Club he had a lot of connections and he thought that maybe we could interest some of the people in town to invest, but they weren't interested in development. We then organized a home state investment company, a corporation to raise money, to buy the land and to develop it, so it took a little while, but we were able successfully to get local people to invest money. We built a shopping center and it had a market, it had an Oriental gift shop, a restaurant, Kyoto Sukiyaki upstairs, a cleaners, a baker, appliance store, a liquor store and a supermarket and some other stores in between. But the fellows that operated the supermarkets, Taul was able to talk to people in Sacramento that were operating a market and asked them, "Are you interested in opening a market in Gardena?" And so they had several brothers, Kunibe brothers, and so they came down and looked at the site and they thought, since there was a good community of Japanese Americans, that this would be a good site, so they opened a Town & Country market. What was the name? I forget the name of the market they opened up, but they staffed it, brought the Kunibe brothers down. Henry came down and Tom came down and George (Orite) also, a partner, came down, and they brought a butcher down and opened a meat department, and a older brother who was a pharmacist opened up the drugstore. So between the Kunibes and Taul Watanabe and his connections, we opened up a shopping center that had all the, all the stores were filled up when we opened up. People were interested in getting into business. We were successful in managing the Town & Country, which I wound up managing the shopping center and the corporation kept it and operated it and declared dividends every year until we decided to sell it, which we did to some investors from Los Angeles.

MN: Now, when you went to this, to help Taul with this, what happened with you and Kiyo, that office?

BK: Kiyo and I decided on which clients I would take to Gardena because I was moving physically. I wouldn't be in Little Tokyo anymore. And we divided the clientele, so he, he took all the clients in town and I took all the clients down south, so it was no problem. We weren't that rich. [Laughs] There was no arguments.

MN: And then earlier you had mentioned about this investment group that bought property, and this was the group that was meeting at the Town & Country Center? You folks were meeting there?

BK: Yeah. Right, we would meet at the Town & Country. Everything was revolving around my office, forming the group, I formed the group, meeting, they would come to our office, and the new partners that would come into the accounting partnership, they were looking for opportunities and they would refer 'em over to me and I would say, "Okay, you have that desk. You bring your adding machine and you're part of it." That's how, how it went.

MN: Was your office on top of the Kyoto Sukiyaki restaurant?

BK: Well, the second floor was operated, occupied by the Kyoto Sukiyaki, the back half. The front half was the corporate offices and the accountings office, so it was large enough to do both.

MN: And the market that you're talking about, was that the Spot Market?

BK: Spot Market, right.

<Begin Segment 4>

MN: And then around that time you got a call from attorney Kenji Ito. He wanted you to help with a client from Japan. Can you share with us who this client turned out to be?

BK: Yeah, while we were in Little Tokyo, Kiyo and I in our offices, we were part of the Optimists' Club, we were part of the organization that was promoting Little Tokyo and Nisei Week and all that, and Ed Hiroto was a real organizer and we were involved in trying to better our businesses. And the opportunity to meet new clients was not through our contacts so much as attorneys. Kenji Ito was the one who called us in and he was a partner to Taul Watanabe at one time. This is another, I digress, but Kenji Ito and Taul Watanabe were partners in a lawsuit that involved the shoyu. There was a case where people were using shoyu and it was damaging to them. They lost their hair, they had physical problem, and so Taul heard about it and he and Taul Watanabe partnered to find others that were damaged or injured by the use of this shoyu, and they filed a lawsuit against the company. And so I don't know too much about it, but they were eventually successful in a product liability suit and the company had to compensate them, and so Mr. Kenji Ito was the main attorney and Taul was the one who went around looking for people who were damaged or injured, and when they settled Mr. Ito built his house in Alhambra and they called it the "Shoyu House." And I think Mr. Ito's daughter heard about it long after, afterwards. She asked me, "Is it true that my dad's house was the 'Shoyu House'?" I says, yeah. [Laughs] That's how it turned out, so it was unusual situation, but Taul had a long relationship with Mr. Ito. Mr. Ito was formerly from Seattle and came down. There's a real estate man, Asajiro Nishimoto, that also came down from Seattle and he was in real estate in this area, Little Tokyo, and he was a wheeler and dealer for the Isseis to find places for hotel operations and real estate. His English was adequate, but he was a Issei and he was a fine gentleman. So Asajiro Nishimoto and Taul Watanabe got along very well because they were looking for opportunities for people coming back to Los Angeles. So a lot of the hotel operations, apartments around Little Tokyo were deals that were put together by Mr. Nishimoto. He did very well.

MN: So let, let's go back with Kenji Ito and his phone call to you, and you went to his office.

BK: Oh yeah, well, Kenji Ito was very involved in the Japanese American community and he was the president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce for many, many years, and one thing about Kenji was that, very qualified person in terms of the Japanese language. He could read, write and spoke, and he was one of those erudite, educated people that would speak Nihongo in the most polite form and the most educated terms, and when Japanese corporations came overseas they came to know Mr. Ito because he was able to not only converse with them but also convert the Japanese into English, proposals, and corporations, and he was well thought of. And being the president of the Chamber also gave him access to the consul general and other corporations, so he was in good shape.

MN: Who was this client that he introduced you to?

BK: Who, who was the what?

MN: The client.

BK: Account?

MN: Your, this new client that he, he said they needed to do some audits.

BK: Oh yeah, one day he called me up and he said he had some Japanese clients that were looking for some accountants and would I be interested in talking to them? I said absolutely. We were starving, Kiyo and I, so we arranged for a time and went to his office and met and found out that the Toyota company from Japan was opening its offices in Los Angeles and that Kenji was gonna form three corporations, one, Hollywood Toyota, the retail, then Toyota Motor, I think the importer, and then Toyota Motor USA, the main corporation doing business in the United States. And what they needed was the year-end financial statement certification for the bank, and since they didn't have much in assets it was really no problem for us to certify what they owned, because they had the property they were leasing in Hollywood for the retail and the rest were leases for the main office, and that was about it. Then after they were formed, then they started importing some of their products. The two products they imported were the, the automobile, the Toyopet, and then the four wheel drive, I forget what, I always have a problem remembering (the land cruiser), it was a jeep. And it turns out that the Toyopet was built like an English taxi, square, upright and no guts, so if you took it on the freeway -- because my wife was driving one because I bought the first one -- and it just didn't have the poop. It just didn't have the power. It's dangerous, so I told the management that. I says this is not the kind of car for this society here. It's too dangerous. You can't take it on the freeway because you can't speed it up. And so they finally canceled the Toyopet and they later came in with the Corolla, which sold like wildfire. And their jeep, (the Land Cruiser), but it's still being sold, the four wheel drive, and that's kept them going while they were coming up with the new car. It was being sold up in the northern states. The people that were hunters, the people that had the large farms, the people that needed four wheel drives, sportsmen, fishermen, they liked the four wheel drive, so they kept selling all during the time they were coming up with the new car. So they kept busy just servicing that, and when the new car came and it hit, then they started branching out because then they got dealerships. And when that hit, then they were thinking about dealerships all over the United States, and when that happened our accounting firm could not keep up with the year-end confirmations because we would have to go to visit every site and we didn't have the staff, so a large accounting firm took it over. Didn't like that. They wouldn't hire Japanese Americans either, at that time. Anyway, that's history.

<Begin Segment 5>

MN: So you're getting really busy with new accounts and with the Town & Country, so you had to quit your night job, teaching job at East L.A. College, then in 1960 you decided to run for Gardena city treasurer. How did you come about to this decision to run, and what did Frances think about that?

BK: Well, I was involved in quite a few things in Gardena and trying to get involved with the community. I joined the Gardena Valley Lions Club, I joined the chamber of commerce, I became a member of the Dana Weller lodge, Masonic lodge, and I got involved in a lot of activities in Gardena so that people then became familiar because I would get to know them in one organization or another. It turned out that when I joined the Gardena Valley Lions Club, that was one of the largest organizations in Gardena and almost any businessman that was anyone in Gardena was a member. And the Card Club, there were about seven different Card Clubs, their representatives were there. The auto dealers, the Chevy dealer, the Ford dealer, the Bank of America members and other businesses within the Gardena area, they were all members of either the Kiwanis or the Lions Club. I chose the Lions Club. Taul was, opened the doors there for me, and when I joined them they says, "Oh, you're an accountant?" He says, "We need someone to take care of the Lions Club books. We have a hundred and twenty members and they come here monthly and they pay dues and we need a full time person taking care of it." I says, "Well, I'll take care of it. What do you, what's involved?" He says, "We'll pay you a fee of a hundred dollars a month," and for me a hundred dollars was a lot of money (for) that, (...) plus free membership, so I wouldn't have to pay for being a member of the Lions Club, but they paid me a hundred dollars to keep track of the dues. I would take that to the office and give it to the girl and I says, "You take care of this." I'll get the checks and then you credit all these people and keep a running account of what people owe, and so I had access to most of the businessmen who were involved in Gardena, so as they got my notices and got to talk to them, they got to know me, I got to know them, and so my contact with them was very, very personal, and then they got to talk to me and found out that, yeah, I'm Japanese American, but I'll keep track of your records. You pay on time." [Laughs]

We had a good relationship, and so because of that when the opening came up or one of the fellows that was the city treasurer, he was also, had a, Bob Firstman was the (owner and) had a shoe store in town. I don't know if was, what kind of shoes he sold, but he was, anyway, it was one of the name brand shoes he sold. He was city treasurer. He decided to run for (city) council, so when he gave that up, then the office for city treasurer opened up, and since I was in accounting I says what's involved in being city treasurer and talk (to) Firstman (and) he says, "Oh, you don't have to worry. The city staff takes care of most of the investing the money and you have to sign the various things that city requires the city treasurer to sign and you get a salary." I said that sounds good, so I decided to run. Turns out that (running for city treasurer) office I called, most of the people that had any money among the JAs were Issei, Yonemura-san, Fuji-san, they were all nursery men, and I called 'em up to my office and I says, "I want to run for city treasurer, and so when I do..." They said, "Oh, sou desu ka." "Well, in order to run I have to have a campaign and I have to send literature out and it costs a little money. So Mr. Kamiya and Yonemura-san, onegai shimasu." That's the first time they were approached on any kind of money for votes. As it turned out, at that time, I had a budget of about eighteen hundred dollars for my campaign and I didn't really have to spend that much because there was a group in a new section in Gardena, Holly Park, and new couples were moving in there from Los Angeles, and this one lady came and she was a reporter from the Holly Park area. She came to interview me because I was running for city treasurer, and I got to meet her. We went out for coffee and she got excited about my running, and she said, "Well, you have the proper background." She says, "I can see the fellow that now, coming in to run against you is not a CPA. He's only a public accountant." So Sid Lemberger is a public accountant that wanted to run for city treasurer, but he had been in town a long time, so people knew Sid. They knew very little bit about me, but it turns out that she was a reporter for the new tract area, Holly Park. Unbeknownst to me, some of the people that moved into Holly Park were Roosevelt (High School) people from East L.A., the Jewish kids that I knew. They knew about me from Roosevelt, so it turns out that was a hidden asset, and when I asked people to support me... I had a budget of eighteen hundred dollars, and my whole budget was spent on sending penny postcards out. At that time a postcard was only one cent, and so you'd type the addresses and, where you vote, and so the penny postcard was my contact to the public, sent it out to the Japanese Americans, and it was no contest. I won. It turns out between the Holly Park people and the Japanese Americans and the power of those, the one-cent postcard, yeah, we were, we were elected as city treasurer. [Laughs] I didn't stay in as city treasurer for long, though.

MN: Now, why not?

BK: Because then the opportunity to start Merit Savings showed up and they asked me to come down (to Los Angeles, Little Tokyo).

MN: And you became their first president at Merit Savings and Loan.

BK: Right.

MN: Which Taul Watanabe also started.

BK: Yeah.

<Begin Segment 6>

MN: So I have here that on November 21, 1962 is when Merit Savings held a grand opening. Do you remember that groundbreaking, the grand opening?

BK: (Yes), we didn't have a building. We leased a storefront on First Street next to Joseph Menswear on First Street. There were some stores there we leased from the Kusayanagi Investment Company, and so we started our first office of Merit Savings on the ground floor there, and as time went on we were then able to buy the property where Toyo Miyatake was. John Maeno owned that and we negotiated with John and he finally sold it to us, and we tore it down and we got Tosh Terasawa the architect to design the building and we built the four-story building there.

MN: Now, what's the significance of Merit Savings? I mean, it's groundbreaking, but for you, what is the significance of Merit Savings opening?

BK: Well, it was the first financial organization for Japanese Americans, I think in all of the United States, and so it was significant in that Japanese Americans had never been in the financial field before. It was only the Japanese banks, like Yokohama Specie Bank and Fuji Bank and those, that did any banking at all amongst the Japanese Americans, so this was the first financial organization among the Japanese Americans to be formed and so that was the importance of it.

MN: And I'm gonna read the names of, that I have as charter members, and tell me if I skip, if I've missed anybody. I have George Aratani, Joseph Ito, Dr. George Kambara, Joe Lepresti, George Maruya, Kiyo Maruyama, Dr. Wallace Nagata, and yourself. Did I miss anybody?

BK: Did you have George Maruya?

MN: Yes. I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people.

BK: I think you got everybody there. You got Kambara, Joe Lepresti... I think you have everybody.

MN: Now, early on the Japanese government had a complaint about the Merit Savings logo. Can you share with us that story?

BK: Where'd you hear that? [Laughs] Did I tell you that? Okay, well, the chrysanthemum is the official flower for the emperor of Japan. When they looked at our logo, which we adopted, it looked exactly like the Japanese emperor's chrysanthemum and I really didn't know too much about the background, except when we talked about it. I think the official chrysanthemum for the government is sixteen? One or the other, but we argued that we did not try to copy the government because ours was twenty-four and there's a difference between twenty-four and sixteen, and so there is no reason for you to think that we're trying to act like the government because numbers are very important, and so they finally accepted that.

MN: And so when you say sixteen and twenty-four, you're talking about those petals on the --

BK: Petals, the petals.

MN: And so you won that argument?

BK: Oh (yes), they couldn't do anything else because it's obvious that when they have their mon and you counted it, it was, I think, sixteen and ours was twenty-four, or the opposite. I don't remember exactly. But George Aratani was on our board, he says, "Oh no, it's not the same. If you go to any family and they have a family crest, even one thing that's different makes it different." So the leaves made it different.

<Begin Segment 7>

MN: Now, as president of Merit Savings, can you share with us some of your more popular innovations that you did there?

BK: I think the fact that we were the first Japanese American savings and loan, I think competition with the other financial institutions was a, kind of a first, in terms of competition with the Japanese banks. Now, the banks didn't know what a savings and loan was because they didn't have any animal like that in Japan. They only had commercial banks, so they, however, had the clout from the standpoint of capital. We were just coming back into society, trying to get buoyant, trying to make some money and trying to get established, so the banks really didn't have to fear us, but they, they were adjusting to the new things that were comin' up. We were primarily into real estate, and the commercial banks did everything. They made personal loans, they made commercial loans, they made real estate loans. They also did financing and accounts receivable, a lot of different things. We were just real estate specialists, primarily on homes and apartments and that was it.

MN: I was reading one of your Merit Savings newsletters and I also remember one of, something that was really popular with your customers was you had Merit Savings open on Saturdays.

BK: What?

MN: Saturdays, you opened on Saturdays.

BK: Oh yes, half day Saturday.

MN: Which was very unusual at that time in the '50s.

BK: That, we tried to promote business and trying to get people to come and open up accounts. We found out that other commercial banks didn't open on Saturday, but some of the savings and loans that we were with did, and so we followed their lead and opened half day Saturdays, which led to getting new business because a lot of people who worked during the week didn't have time to go to the bank, so it was very successful.

<Begin Segment 8>

MN: Now, with Merit Savings you're back working in Little Tokyo, and in the meantime (L.A.) City Hall is trying to take parts of Little Tokyo away, and so I have on one of the records that on May 20, 1963 you attended a meeting at the Daruma Cafe organized by the Reverend Howard Toriumi. Can you share with us what this historic meeting started?

BK: Yes, Reverend Howard Toriumi was in charge of the church on return from camp and he was doing a good job, and he was full. He went up to the city hall and asking them how he could enlarge his property so he could accommodate more of the people that were coming to church on Sundays and in between, and they told him that that particular building was maxed out and he couldn't add anything to it, and while he was there he happened to be talking to one of the main city planners and his name was (Reuben Lovret). And he advised the reverend, he says, "Why don't you organize the people in Little Tokyo and come up with a plan so you could develop the area?" And Reverend Toriumi thought that was a good idea, so he went over to the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and said that, that the city planner would be very happy to come and talk to Little Tokyo people about a plan to redevelop the area. And so Mr. Mukaeda, (President), and Frank Hirata, the secretary, thought that that would be an interesting meeting, and so we went to the Daruma (Cafe) and set up a date and let the membership and then put up a notice in the paper, those interested in listening to the city planner, what was his name now?

MN: Reuben Lovret?

BK: Yeah, Reuben, and (his) assistant was Jim (Yoshinaga), would come down and explain what he had in mind. As the meeting opened up and people were being informed by Reuben, he says that Little Tokyo has an opportunity to develop a master plan if they want to redevelop the area. It would be better for them to have a master plan, to get it approved by the city so then they could go ahead and do what they planned to do in an organized manner. And everybody thought that would be a good idea. And I says, "The first time anybody's approached us from the city hall, and up to now they took parts of Little Tokyo away from us and they really haven't helped us. They chased us out of the, here, not the city but the government and we're trying to come back and reestablish it." So there was a consensus that we ought to go ahead, so then we formed the Little Tokyo Redevelopment Association and we got Tets Nakamura, the attorney, to form it and he formed a nonprofit corporation and the membership made up of property owners and businessmen to contribute funds so we could then develop a master plan for Little Tokyo. And so I was elected as a chairman for that effort and we got started, and we were fortunate enough to have people who were interested. We had Mr. Uyeda, of Ueda Five and Dime (store). We had the chamber of commerce people that were interested because that would bring more business and their association would prosper. There were others that felt that it was time for us to do something so the city would not take more property away from us, and so we formed a nonprofit corporation (...) by Tets Nakamura, the attorney, and got it formed and got the membership of property owners and businesses to join and assembled enough money to put together a master plan to submit to the city planning commission. Mr. Lovret and Jim Yoshinaga were very instrumental in helping us and Tom Kamei, the structural engineer, he helped us investigate all the buildings for structural strength, and Tosh Terusawa and everyone in the community was really very positive about preserving Little Tokyo. And so we got the plan put together, submitted to the city planning. The city planning approved it, then it went to the city council. The city council with Councilman "Gil Lindsay Baby" (introducing the effort of Little Tokyo). [Laughs]

MN: Tell us the story of how you met Gil Lindsay and how you were able to win him over.

BK: Well, I don't know about how I got him to, to really help us, but he was a very outgoing person and one day I heard that he and his, his wife were headed for Hawaii, and I had some contacts in Gardena with Frank Yamamoto, who was selling lots on the Big Island, lots in the aftermath of the lava. He was selling lava rock, but he was selling and people were buying. It was very cheap. It was cheap because no one else was buying. But he was selling that in Gardena and I got to know Frank, and he moved back to Hawaii after he sold all the lots, and so I got to know him and since he was going to Hawaii, I didn't know anybody else except Frank. So I called Frank, I says, "Frank, you won't believe this, but I need your help. I'm not gonna ask for money. If you spend money for me I will reimburse you, but I have this councilman coming over with his wife for their first time in Hawaii." I says, "Could you take care of him?" He says, "Oh yeah, I'll take care of him." And when councilman landed there I says you can't mistake who he is. He's gonna be the only black person with his wife who's a, is rotund. [Laughs] Teresa. And he took care of them and they had such a fabulous time. Frank took them around and they couldn't believe Hawaii was the way it was, and it was mixed 'cause the Hawaiians were dark also and there was no discrimination, and they came back just bubbling. And he called me on the phone, he says, "Hey, Bruce." He says, "I had a good time. Teresa had a great time." Says, "I don't how to thank you." I says, "You don't have to thank me, I'm just glad you had a good time." And so he naturally was supporting everything we did. Eventually he paid back Frank, because I think the following year Los Angeles was hosting the Olympics and he called Frank and he says, "Frank, come over here." He says, "Bring your wife." He says, "I got tickets for you for the Olympics," through his connection. And he didn't bring his wife but he brought a friend and they had tickets to everything of the Olympics, and I couldn't see Frank because he was too busy. But that was a payback because Gil was so appreciative. But through that connection, everything that I asked him to do, he was very cooperative, and also he knew that Little Tokyo needed help and since it was in his district he was more than willing to go out and do the things for us. So we had a very good, just relationship. It didn't involve money to speak of. It's just good PR. Yeah.

MN: Now, you make it really sound easy about this redevelopment, but you were the president for six years after Little Tokyo Redevelopment Association was in existence, and when I read those minutes, you guys were having meetings two or three every week.

BK: Yeah.

MN: And how did you juggle the, and this is all volunteer.

BK: It's all volunteer.

MN: And you were president of Merit Savings.

BK: Right.

MN: And you had a family. I mean, how were you juggling all of this?

BK: We met with the, Reuben Lovret and Jim Yoshinaga during their lunch hour because they were employees of the city and they could not work during their official time for the city. They had to do it during their lunch hour, so they gave up their lunch hour. We'd meet at the chamber office and go through all the things that we had to do to get the application for this master plan done. So there was no conflict on their part. They were doing it as a interested citizen in their off hours, and so we were fortunate to find people like that, otherwise Little Tokyo would not have been formed.

MN: Well, Mr. Lovret, before he passed away, he was really impressed that the LTRA was able to come up with a general land use plan within, within a year, and he gave a lot of that credit to your leadership.

BK: He was, he was a nice guy. Well, I think it's, I think Little Tokyo was in a situation where they needed to revive the area, and this redevelopment master plan that was created was a way to do it. And it was fortuitous that we ran into Reuben Lovret because he gave us a key, and the consultation was free and the method by which we went through various steps was the logical step to get the city to agree to what we wanted to do. And once we had the master plan approved by the city council, it was their plan, not ours anymore. It was their plan that they approved, so everything that we would then apply to do in Little Tokyo they had to listen to because it, it was actually approved by them for the whole plan. So I credit Mr. Lovret in giving us the right formula so that we could go ahead and develop. Now you look at it and there's no piece of property to develop. Everything's spoken for. But the method by which you could apply, because we had a master plan, it was already set up. There was no difficulty in applying for a high rise or whatever. If it met the requirements for zoning they would have to approve it. It didn't have to go through extra steps.

<Begin Segment 9>

MN: After five years as president of LTRA, you approached the CRA, the Community Redevelopment Agency. Why did you do that?

BK: Well, we ran into a situation of self help. We tried to get people to buy property and develop it. Kajima came in and they built a building, but they came in with their own capital and they also built the hotel, and that was a great addition, but others that wanted to come in would have to come up with a lot of money. And we didn't have the wealth in our community. Our, our community, because of what happened during World War II, we were put into camps, we were broke. There was no one around that had any wealth to do the projects that ordinarily there would be someone with money to get into a development. All the big money that came in was either from Japan or from outside our community, and we tried to encourage development, but when the whole population of stateside is put into camps for three years, you can't expect them to come back to where they live and start off from scratch and start development. They're all broke. I had friends that were living in hostels for two years. They didn't know where to go. You had others that lived in trailers. They had no homes. Lot of 'em had, didn't have jobs. I attended some of the meetings with my fellow GIs, and you heard about how they raised money, didn't you? No? They would, well, our community, coming back, a lot of 'em were in the 100th/442nd, they came back and found themselves to be broke. They got the mustering out pay and that was not (much). They didn't have jobs. Male folks couldn't find jobs because the community didn't hire them. The girls, fortunately, they were good secretaries and all the law firms were looking for good secretaries, and a lot of 'em were very, very fortunate to be hired by the best law firms. But the guys, they were not sought after, even if they were qualified, like going to school and being the top accounting student. The accounting firms wouldn't hire 'em because they had... well, they didn't have anything written, but unpublished rules of not hiring Japanese Americans. But it was difficult for the GIs that came back, and what they used to do is to try to raise capital.

And I would be attending some of the meetings, maybe you heard of tanomoshi. So a group of maybe ten guys said, "Okay, we'll meet once a month," and tanomoshi, he'd bring a hundred dollars to the meeting. And so they'd come to one of the member's homes and the member would serve the food -- the wife would make sushi or whatever -- and they would have the meeting, and the meeting would be out of ten guys, who's gonna bid the highest to get the hundred dollars? And with a hundred dollars from ten guys, it's a thousand. A thousand dollars, you could go out and put a down payment on a car or buy a mower or buy things that you need that you couldn't do because the bank don't give you credit and you don't have cash, so the person that bids the highest, "For the hundred dollars, I'll pay you six dollars. You keep. You pay me ninety-four dollars." Or "You keep ten dollars, give me the ninety dollars." And that's how the tanomoshi worked. So each month you had a tanomoshi, and so that gave whoever bid the highest the cash to do whatever he wanted to do. If you didn't have to use it you wouldn't bid. So that was a banking system developed by the (veterans and the) gardeners. The tanomoshi was even before the banks. So to me, I went to one of the meetings, I said, "Hey, that's a pretty good deal." I mean, you're not being charged any more by the bank, but you're getting less, but you use whatever you want to get what you want, to get started and you wouldn't have to worry about borrowing from a relative. This is a, strictly a business deal. And the tanomoshi served its purposes for the GIs. It's kind of original and unusual, but it was very practical. I give them credit. I don't know who came up with this tanomoshi.

MN: And now, the Nikkei Credit Union is sort of the outgrowth of the tanomoshi, is that correct?

BK: I have no idea, 'cause I didn't follow through on the credit union. I think credit unions are, may be offspring from the tanomoshi, but the credit unions are, are more legalistic way of doing business. Credit unions, you have to be a member, you have to have bylaws, and you have to have legal sanction, where tanomoshi, you don't have to have any legal sanction.

MN: Now, while you are still at Merit Savings, in the fall of 1964, your brother in law, Taul Watanabe, calls you again and he needed some help at Gardena Savings. So what did you do?

BK: Gardena Savings was the first savings and loan that he had formed and Gardena Savings had run into a lot of problems, and so he asked me to come over and see if I could, I could take over and try to straighten it out. I didn't know how bad it was until I got there, but it turned out that it was at a point where it had to be sold and in order to do so we had to form a new corporation. So we were able to find some investors to come in and take it over, and in order to do so they formed a public corporation and sold stock and bought the old Gardena Savings. They says, "We'll, we'll take it over, providing you stay and take care of the problems." In order to get the thing resolved I stayed there until we got the savings and loan resolved with the regulators as well as found investors for the property, and the investors who came in then formed a public corporation and went public with the assets. They got rid of the problem assets and raised more capital. And one of the fellows that was with a new corporation from Century City I had just met, but his partner had developed a real estate corporation that developed apartments all over the state of California. And they were unique, really scientifically put together. They were apartment projects which were for married couples, and at the front of the development he had facilities to take care of children, babies and young people, not schooled, but you know. So people who were wanting to work and had young children could leave 'em -- they would have to pay, naturally, for the services, but at least they were then able to go out and find a job and work and bring some money in. They developed these homes or apartments with that kind of service and were successful in catering to the general public. They also developed other apartments up and down the coast. And they said, "Well, if I take over, the troubled savings and loans assets that Gardena Savings had," says I could also manage the properties they had, so I had found some real estate developers to take care of the problem savings and loans that Merit, Gardena had made loans on apartments, most were in Orange County, fourplexes. Developers came in and built the fourplexes and they ran into problems. They couldn't rent 'em out, and so they had people who came in and rented, they couldn't collect, they chased 'em out, they damaged the property, all kinds of problems. Anyway, we got a crew together to go one by one and straighten these out, so we at last found some corporations that would take over the whole thing at a reduced price and got rid of 'em. Then I came back to Merit.

MN: And that's 1972, so between 1964 and 1972 you were working on that issue with the Gardena Savings, the real estate.

BK: Yeah, that took a little while.

<Begin Segment 10>

MN: Now, when you returned to Merit Savings and Loan, and you were still involved with the Little Tokyo Redevelopment, I guess now the committee, the, the mayor's committee was called the Little Tokyo Community Development Advisory Committee that you were on, and then you started to pursue your museum dream a little more. Can you share with us this, how you started?

BK: Well, I think all along the GIs had started the idea of the museum, the 100th/442nd and MIS, and they put a photographic exhibit up at one of the county museums, which they had a big opening and had the county officials come and it was very popular during the opening, but after the opening no one would go over there to look at the exhibit. There's no follow up. It was there, but no publicity, very few people would go see it, so as a result of it after the term of months that were allowed for the exhibit to be on the county property they had to remove it. And so they took it off, out and put it over at the veterans' hall, but there was no one that would come, the public, so it's kind of languished. I really don't know what happened to all the pictures they had. It could be that we received 'em at the museum because no one else could use 'em. With the veterans the big problem was not only trying to satisfy their particular wishes and the 100th/442nd group led by Colonel Kim always wanted their own establishment. They wanted, he didn't want to be associated, from my understanding, with any other establishment. He just wanted the 100th/442nd. We got together with the MIS and the 100th/442nd and formed a corporation of both of 'em, but as far as Colonel Kim was concerned, that was his whole life, is the 100th/442nd. I don't blame him either. He did a great job. But the problem was finding a location and finding the money to do it, and so instead of staying with the Japanese American National Museum, which Merit Savings was the one that was pushing that all, all the way, he decided to go out on his own, and in doing so, although he got started with the Nishi Hongwanji project together, he didn't join in. And to this day they're still looking for him. That's unfortunate, but...

<Begin Segment 11>

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.

<Begin Segment 12>

MN: I'm gonna go back a little bit, before Irene and, and before Nancy was hired, and I want to ask you again about Minoru Yamasaki. You actually flew out to meet him, and this is even before there was a building. And what did you discuss?

BK: That's, that's when we bought the property from California Hardware. We had the property, so Joseph Ito was a board member. I didn't know that his nephew was Minoru Yamasaki. He's just, he says yeah, says, "Well, why don't you go talk to my nephew?" I said, "Who is he?" He says, "Minoru Yamasaki." I said yeah, I heard... so we made a date and I flew over to Detroit. He met me and picked me up at the airport. He's a very slight fellow. He's not even five foot one, short fellow, but what a brain. I mean, he's very creative. He picked me up at the airport and said, we're looking for my luggage, I couldn't find it, he said, "Well, I'll call back and we'll pick it up later." He says, "I'm gonna take you over to the house and, and you're gonna stay with me for two days and then I'll put you on the plane, go home. In the meantime, we'll go to the office." So he drove me to his home. He drove me into his garage and the doors open like this and he has cubicles up there, just like a store. He has whatever is up there one by one. It's like a store with a, it's like an exhibit. It's not messy. It's just perfect. It's sitting there, the whole garage is filled with the things up there, but I don't think it's a practical thing, but being an architect it's graphic and it's beautiful. Then he says, "Well, you're gonna stay with me for the two days and we'll go upstairs and meet my wife." So his house is two levels, upstairs is his living quarters and down below the garage and then two apartment like rooms and a swimming pool underground. And so I met his wife and we had coffee, and then he says, "Let's go to the office and meet part of the staff," so he drove me to his office and he had everybody come in and introduced me, and he says, "Now, would you tell 'em what, what you have in mind?" And so I explained the map I had of the property and what we thought we wanted to do for Merit Savings, and he said, "Okay, we'll leave this with the staff and tonight," he says "you're going with me to the golf course country club to eat dinner, and after that we'll come back and you're staying at my apartment below. And tomorrow we'll go to the office and we'll talk." And so we went back to his house and I says, "I still don't have my luggage." We called the airport and they can't locate my luggage, so we check in and I says, "Well, I don't have anything to change to." I says, "I just have what I have." He says, "There's a toothbrush and all that and you have a separate bathroom." He says, "I swim in the mornings," he says. There's a pool downstairs. He says, "Do you swim?" I say, "Yeah, I swim." But so he says, "Okay, I'll knock on your door in the morning." And so we went to the country club and I didn't have a jacket. My clothes didn't come in. He says, "But you have to wear a jacket to go to the country club." He says, "You can borrow one of mine," so I borrowed one of his. Like this. [Laughs] He's only five foot one and he's much smaller than I am, and so I go walking into the country club like this, and there's a lot of people there, but he, he just waves to them and we find a place to sit down and we're eating dinner and I'm goin'... [Laughs] Finally we finish and go back and it's kinda funny, but nobody bothered, nobody looks at you or anything. Everybody's busy. We go back, I gave him his jacket back. I says, oh, I don't, I just my have my sports shirt. He says, "I'll wake you up in the morning."

So went to sleep and I hear a knock in the morning and Minoru's there. He's got his bathrobe on; he's gonna go swimming. I says, "By the way," I says, "I don't have anything. Do you have extra swimming trunks?" He says, "No, don't worry." He starts walking towards the pool, takes off his bathrobe, he's naked. Doesn't have a stitch on. He's just, "I swim like this." I said, he says, "You could join me." So I says, "Well, I guess I will." So he jumps in and he goes swimming all across the pool. It's a big pool, indoor pool. So I jump in and I'm over here on this corner without a stitch on. [Laughs] So anyway, after the swimming lesson we went to his office. I'm still wearing my same clothes, and calling into the airport, they still haven't located my luggage. And we talked to the staff and after the staff meeting we're talking about the, what ideas might come about, and I don't think I spent more than all that day, I had an evening flight coming back, and so he was still checking with the airport and they finally located the, my luggage had gone to Hawaii and back, and so when we went to the airport, when we were checkin' out, I picked up my luggage and checked it back in. So I'm wearing the same stuff I came with. But I got to know Minoru Yamasaki pretty well and we were just laughing about it. He's, well, I said, "Minoru," I says, "I got to tell you, this has been very revealing experience. Not only have I come to your house to see what it looked like and met your wife, but swimming in the same pool with you has been a very unusual experience." He laughed. But I met him once. We had a, after that he developed the plan and Nancy has a copy of what he prepared. It was a simple plan with buildings on the fringe and a possible museum in the middle of the courtyard. That was his off the hand, off, more or less first crack at what he thought we could do. And then we had the feasibility study, which came up with a negative, that it couldn't happen in this environment. Money was not available. Banks weren't loaning money. It would be impossible to pull a deal together, so we just dropped it. So that was the end of the idea for Merit.

<Begin Segment 13>

MN: But you still continued on.

BK: Hmm?

MN: You still continued on with trying to build this museum.

BK: Yeah.

MN: And were you ever worried that you weren't gonna be able to get community support and, and this might be a competition for funds? And how did you resolve that issue?

BK: We were so busy trying to build Merit up. We were, started branching, and so the only way you could grow is by locating branches, and so the first branch we got I think was in maybe Torrance. That became a very successful branch, then we went to Monterey Park, Monterey Park, then we went to, what was it, went to Orange County. Anyway, we had about four branches, and that brought in more savings. It also gave us more overhead, but, but what we thought was important was to get a good base of savers and start promoting so we could maybe either merge with someone and come out with a big organization. Being a small ethnic savings and loan is just, you have the odds against you, but eventually we sold out with a firm out of Orange County because we found out we can't grow anymore, and they took it over. They started to develop properties and he ran into problems, but anyway, we sold the property at First and Alameda to Al Taira and he kept it as a parking lot for a long time. We took Merit Savings and sold it to this outfit in Orange County and then dissolved the corporation and passed the proceeds out to the stockholders. That ended Merit Savings. Nobody made any big profit.

MN: But going back to the museum concept, while you're dealing with the Merit Savings you had a fundraiser in 1984 in your building, the 941 Third Street building. Do you remember that? It was called a "One Night Nightclub."

BK: Yeah.

MN: And can you share who came to that, who of weight came to that -- oh, let me see, was that the fundraiser or is that the one...

BK: Well, that was a...

MN: That was just a fundraiser.

BK: That was, yeah, we were trying to get people who had money to come to it, and so we sent out invitations to any, everyone that we could think of. Nancy headed it up and she prepared the visual presentation, and we got the Boy Scouts of the Nishi Hongwanji and the, the veterans' group, and we got some, I guess we got people to donate paint and brushes and painted up the old warehouse. We got Jun Okimoto to bring in his Astroturf and fake palm trees and created a nightclub scene, and Nancy made a film and hopefully we could entice some people with money to come to the dinner. And we had a steak dinner and Irv, was it Irv? Who was it? Can't think of his name (Chester Yamauchi). He was the person that put the dinner together.

MN: Chet?

BK: Huh?

MN: Chet?

BK: Oh, Chet. Chester. Yeah, Chester did, and we had first class steak, and he says to get the best steak possible and when it turned out that not many people showed up, all the volunteers filled the tables and ate the steak. [Laughs] And the only one who came in was a senator and his wife, Yolanda.

MN: And when you say the senator, you're talking about California State Senator Art Torres?

BK: Yeah, he was the only one that showed up.

MN: Of, of any weight, you're...

BK: Yeah, other than his wife, and then nobody else showed up. No council people, no supervisors, none of the people we invited. He was the only one. And Nancy, during the intermission, then showed the film that she had put together and Art Torres had never seen anything like that. He got all excited. He got up and went to the front, took over the mike and he says, "I never heard of anything like this." He says, "This is impossible. This is terrible." He says, "I'm going to go up to Sacramento and introduce the bill for one million dollars for this project. This is a very worthwhile project." And that's when we got all excited. We'd never been to Sacramento, but as soon as he left and we're talking about how we're gonna do it, we all decided that we're going to go up there and visit every office that we can. So we set up a date and we did go up there and talked to as many state representatives as we could, and as it turned out they were very cooperative. And Art Torres says that towards the end of the term the funds available are diminishing because the other regulators had requested funds, so he says, "Now it's down there, I can get you seven hundred and fifty thousand, not the one million, but if you want to wait 'til next year I think I can get the one million." And all of us says no, get the seven hundred fifty thousand now, and so he did and with the seven hundred and fifty thousand, the cooks, he was with the, the city redevelopment and he was in the Merit Savings building now, and he says the CRA will match the one million dollars if you will take over the, the Japanese American National Museum. Location would be the church. And we says okay, that would be great. We didn't know, we didn't realize what commitment we made because we had that side of, the north side of First Street was declared a, what do you call it, an area that, it's a renewal area.

MN: A historic district? Is it a historic district, became a historic district?

BK: Yeah, historic district. Tosh Terasawa contacted the Historic Society and they came and looked at all of the old buildings and says, "Yes, we declare this a historic district." And being a historic district, that also brought a lot of new requirements that you couldn't destroy anything. You had to preserve everything, so when we went ahead to do the building we had to remove everything, bring it down, redo it and then put it back up. We couldn't destroy anything, so even the light fixtures had to be preserved. Everything had to be preserved, and so it was a job that we had to hire a historic architect to do the job and he was very helpful, but it was very expensive for us to do that. The most expensive part of it was the building was not seismically approved. It was not secure, so what we had to do was to drill holes in the wall to put iron down the wall across the, the ceiling, the roof to tighten up the building both ways. That was a very expensive process, but we had to do that and we had to preserve all the things that were in the building. We couldn't get rid of anything. It's still a preservation district for us, but it seemed to work out.

<Begin Segment 14>

MN: Now, while all this was being done at the, this empty old Nishi Hongwanji building, in October 1985 you hired Nancy Araki, and where did Nancy have to work in for a while because there was no office?

BK: She worked in my office. We removed the doors to a closet and shoved a table back into that and she had the room inside the closet where she was sitting in there and the desk was sitting out. We used her as a temporary office for her. Yeah, it was, she got along. But Merit Savings was really interested in doing something for the community.

MN: So Nancy was working out of the Merit Savings closet for a while and then she moved into your other building at 941 --

BK: 941 East Third.

MN: -- East Third Street, and, and that's where you also said the Pacific Citizen had a office there also, with Harry Honda. Now, at the same time the redress movement is going on and you testified at the Commission on Wartime Relocation Internment of Civilians. Do you remember what you testified before them?

BK: I really believe that the, the government would have to also provide some educational funds, not only to reimburse individuals but to educate the public as to what happened. And I asked Paul Bannai, who was in charge of the hearings, I says I want some time to talk about that and submitted a paper, and I don't know, somewhere, but my whole pitch was not only does the government owe us money, individually, but it also has the obligation to, to educate the general public as to what they did to us, and we need educational funds that they should provide us where we could tell the story, the general public. A lot of people said, at that hearing, all they wanted was money for themselves, and I could hear people objecting. I says, well, they can object. I says there's nothing wrong with objecting, I says, but we need to tell the government what we want. It's not only individual money; it's educational money as well. A lot of people didn't agree with me, but I says if we don't get it out now we'll never get it.

MN: And of course redress, when redress was won it did have an education component to it, and the bill was signed in '88 and that's the same year that the museum hired Irene Hirano. Now, what was the first thing the board did when Irene got hired on? Do you remember that?

BK: No. The timing was when?

MN: 1988. And when you hired Irene, do you remember what you did as a board en masse?

BK: Give me some more information.

MN: Nancy told me you folks resigned. Do you remember doing that?

BK: They could've. I was too busy doing too many things at the same time. Yeah, I was busy. You, you see, in doing all the things that I was doing, I still had a family and each one of the kids was going to college, and I had to provide tuition for John going to SC, Miki going to the Fashion Institute, and Troy going to Yale, and I had to provide money for their spending and for tuition. So I was doing I don't know how many things at the same time, trying to make ends meet.

MN: So you don't remember doing this and, and, well what, the way Nancy tells me is that you folks on the board resigned to allow Irene to get her own board people, and that actually, she said it came from you.

BK: Oh, not from me. No, I think there was a, I think there was a movement on her part to get her own board members. And I was on the board all the time, but then there was a separate board that made certain decisions regarding salary and all. I didn't want to get involved in that, but I was on the board all the way through. They had a special committee on the board that I didn't serve on, but it made the decisions of, per salary, supporting her daughters going to school, whatever. I didn't get involved in that.

MN: Now, the museum had, had the grand opening on, was set for Saturday, April 30, 1992, and then a day before the Rodney King verdict came out and L.A. was in riots. What sort of contingency plans did the staff do and the board do when L.A. was just rioting?

BK: Well, we had all the chairs outside for the population to come. What we had to do was pull the whole program inside the Nishi Hongwanji, and it was, the ex-prime minister of Japan came, and what was his name? Anyway, he came and we pulled the program inside and still had our program, and he spoke and we had taken all the chairs and put 'em inside, so yes, it was a very, very sad event. I mean, in terms of what it could have been and what it wound up being. It was bad timing.

MN: Did a lot of people cancel coming?

BK: Lot of, it was an emergency. The whole city was under police guard and a lot of, a lot of people stayed at home, yeah. Yeah, we were there because we promised to be there and the ex-prime minister was there and the officials of, I mean, our board members were there, but the general public didn't show, 'cause they were told not to get involved. I think everybody was home listening to the radio and listening to, looking at TV.

MN: Nobody got injured going to the museum did they?

BK: No. No, there was no mishap.

MN: So when, once the museum moved into the old Nishi Hongwanji building and it was too small, so the staff started the phase two with a forty-five million expansion across the street. Was that really hard to raise the funds?

BK: Was that a...

MN: Was it hard to raise funds for the next, phase two?

BK: Raising funds is never easy. It's never easy, and I just feel that somebody was with us, helping us all the way. And we were still not over it because we still have a mortgage, but the mortgage has been reduced quite a bit and our present board is resolved on eliminating it possibly within the five year period. That's our goal. Course, we've had some dramatic changes we've had to make. We've had to reduce staff, we've had to cut all kinds of expenses, but luckily we've been able to eliminate our bank loans. We're free of bank loans. We have a couple of estates that came through that we didn't know about but helped us. We had to cut staff down because our overhead was just eating us up. We're still at a very, very low number in terms of hired employees, and it's gonna stay that way because we have no upswing. But we're holding our own and I got to tell you that the board of directors have been just amazing, and they've come through some very difficult periods and they've come up with personal funds that I don't know of any other organization that has done it. So we just have a mortgage to get rid of, and a mortgage isn't so bad. Everybody has a mortgage. The museum has a mortgage. I still have a mortgage. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 15>

MN: Well, I know everybody's having a tough time economically right now, not just the Japanese American National Museum, but overall are you pleased with the direction the museum is going?

BK: Well, I don't look at the inside programs so much. I look at the health of the institution, whether it's staffed, whether people are coming and supporting us, and that we do have the ability to reach out and get more people to come in. We are in, I think at this particular time, in a very enviable position where the only thing we have is a mortgage debt. We don't have a bank loan. We have a mortgage, but the mortgage is something that can be reduced on an annual basis or accelerated with the help of the board, and the board is saying, "Let's get rid of the mortgage," so they're gonna work on that next. I think the kind of people that we've been able to get to, to do the necessary things has been amazing. You got people like our board members, they come from all over and we ask them to do something and they come, come through. I mean, it's hard to describe, hard to describe. We've got one family that's picked up five hundred thousand as a new project for them, and we sold the name for the forum for two million and that money's coming in on an annual basis, so that's gonna help us reduce the mortgage as well. And we have other commitments from new board members. I think in terms of a nonprofit we are, not only among the Japanese American, but as a nonprofit organization we're one of the very few, I think, that has a viable mission and a viable board to support it. And my tenure up to this point, twenty-five years, has been very satisfying to me, to see what (has been) accomplished... and I think it has yet to go. I'd like to see the mortgage gone, but it will be gone. I would like to see the 100th/442nd come, come up. They've had some very difficult times, but if it weren't for our museum and what we're saying in our community, it's brought our reputation as Japanese Americans back up where it should be, and Japan recognizes it as well and they know that we've been terribly mistreated and that we should be given a lot more credit for having done what we did for this country, as well as what we've done for them postwar. The Japanese Americans have really helped them get back on their feet. But anyway, overall I think life has been very busy (for us).

<Begin Segment 16>

MN: I want to ask you two more things. When the museum opened and you started to get a lot of students from Roosevelt High School come and go through the exhibits, and a lot of these were Latino students, and they decided to, to resurrect the Japanese garden at Roosevelt High School. Can you tell us that story, and how did you feel about these Latino students being interested in this prewar garden? And what happened to that prewar garden?

BK: Well, when the war broke out, World War II, and all this information about the war and Pearl Harbor and the bad news about evacuation, the students at Roosevelt destroyed the Japanese garden there. At that time most of the students were Jewish students and Latinos, so they were aroused because of the war. I can't blame 'em. Postwar, when we came back, there were no Japanese gardens in Roosevelt, Roosevelt. It was all gone. But the students that came back and were now attending Roosevelt were mostly Hispanic, and I was raised around Roosevelt High School. Our first home was directly opposite the Japanese garden, then we moved about three blocks further to 2617 East Third Street, which was one block away from the school, so I was around the school all my life it seems. So as far as the nature of the surrounding areas postwar, it became drastically changed because of the real estate laws change. As you recall, there was race restrictions on properties and the race restrictions were eliminated soon after the war ended, and so you couldn't have any more race restrictions on the properties and so the area which was first restricted to only the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, WASPs, was eliminated from the ownership of properties, and therefore all the Jewish people that, who were prevented from owning property moved, looked like they moved wholesale from Boyle Heights to other areas, to the Valley, to mid Los Angeles. They all moved out, to Beverly Hills, everywhere, and so Boyle Heights became strictly Latino. There's only a few holdovers of Jewish people and the churches were still there, so Roosevelt became totally Hispanic and the teachers then became totally immersed in trying to get the Latinos to learn English.

And as they came over and visited our museum they were quite impressed, and as they went through the old annuals of Roosevelt High School they saw that there was a Japanese garden and they says, "Oh, that, it's so sad that there is no Japanese garden now." And so there were those that said they would like to see a Japanese garden, and that's what interested us and some of the old Roosevelt High School people. And so we formed a committee and we started raising funds, and we got the Roosevelt High School people to dedicate a certain area that we then got some money together and got a committee to install a Japanese garden. The problem there -- the first garden that I headed up and got that done was good for a while -- the problem was their gardener or the person in charge there didn't know how to maintain the garden, so it, it just went downhill. And then later on, one of the people from Japan who had gone to Roosevelt and graduated, I forget his name, Mr.... can't think of it. He's, he became very successful and he wrote a book and his book is at the museum library and also in the bookstore. He became an industrialist, very successful, and he allocated a certain amount of money to reestablish another Japanese garden and he got his, I think, daughter-in-law, one of his relatives, she used to work for Bank of Tokyo, became retired, lives in Gardena, she became the kenjinkai president for the same ken that this industrialist was from, and she's in charge of maintaining the garden. So he had set aside so much money, but he just recently passed away, so I don't know what's gonna happen, but the kids from Roosevelt did witness a resurrection of the Japanese garden that they were inquiring about. And since they came to the museum there's been two Japanese gardens reestablished, and I think it's still there, not as beautiful as the original one because the original one had a big pond and had a Japanese bridge. I was, I took a picture standing on the bridge when I was maybe five years old. But Roosevelt has a very special place amongst the Japanese Americans.

<Begin Segment 17>

MN: Well, I was gonna ask you also, in 1994 Roosevelt High held a special Nisei graduation ceremony for those who couldn't receive a diploma because of the war, and you were one of the recipients and a speaker. When Roosevelt, they were one of the first to do this, how did that make you feel?

BK: Buddy Webber, who was our class president, he was very sympathetic about the Japanese American situation, so he was in charge of the reunion. And he felt that it was regrettable that the Japanese Americans had never been properly given their diplomas, so he made it a special effort to invite the JAs to the annual reunion for the class and I got an invitation and so did some of the others, and I think we're about maybe eight to ten of us, showed up at the hotel near the airport. And Buddy Webber was there and he was, he was in tears. He was so happy to see us. And they asked me to say a few words and I did, and I said, "You know," I says, "I don't know too much about how others might think about a reunion like this, but it's good to know that the people at Roosevelt hadn't forgotten about us. And it's not too much about money, it's not too much about where you come from. We all lived in and around Roosevelt High School and we all got along. It's only because of the government and their policy that we split, but it's nice to be back home again with all you folks." And we had a rousing welcome. We're still in touch. I'm still a member of the Jewish club, it's called the, trying to think of the name of the theater up on, not Brooklyn, but anyway, they, they have a name for the club and --

MN: The Wabash?

BK: The Wabash?

MN: Is that the one?

BK: Yeah, there's the Wabash Theater up there, but they have a group, I don't know if it's the Wabash group, but we meet twice a month at the restaurant on Sunset, and I'm the only one that shows up, Japanese American. And I know a lot of the guys, my Jewish friends, so I go there every time they have a meeting and I say, "Where's my old Jewish girlfriend, Charlotte?" I says, "I haven't seen her in a long time," but we're at that age where a lot of our friends already have passed away, but we get along. We still get along.

<Begin Segment 18>

MN: Now, since 1964 you've also been really active with the Manzanar High School reunion committee and, and one of the things that the reunion committee did was to make that Manzanar model at the Manzanar Historic Site. Can you share with us how that story came about?

BK: Yeah, when the Manzanar site was taken over by the government a lot of us in our class felt that it was lacking because no one knew what the camp looked like. They had a big photo on the wall, but that's not like having a diorama like we have at the museum that lays out the whole camp and the blocks. So Sam Ono, who is a classmate of mine, he's a structural engineer and he is so brilliant. He said, we're talking one day, I says, "You know, Sam, the people up at Manzanar want to have a camp layout. They want a miniature camp layout." He says, "Well, we don't have the figures." I said, "What are you talkin' about?" "Well, we got a map and the site, site of the barracks and where they were located..." Says, "I could put something together." So it turns out that I had one of the studies made of the camp that the government had made and inside it had the measurements of everything, so I took it over to Sam. Sam says, "Hey, we could do it." So we call members of our committee, Archie Miyatake and Saigo, what's his name from West L.A., anyway, some of our old classmates, Kaz Inagai, to a workshop. What he did, Sam, he got all the measurements and he cut up a big map into different parts, and he knew what the measurements were of the barracks and so he had cutouts made of the barracks and he laid it out for us. He had about six pieces laid out and he had miniatures, sizes of the barracks and the larger places that we needed, the hospital and all the, he had everything laid out. He's an engineer and he does everything precisely, everything perfect, and a structural engineer is one of the top engineers in the field. I mean, they design the high rises and, and so he's one of the best, but he's retired, he had nothing to do, and when I gave him all these figures he just he just grabbed them. He transformed that into a display and we used to meet down in San Pedro from, one of his relatives had a big warehouse where they laid out the forms and the little barracks and everything. And we used to go down on weekends with our high school crew, work on it, and Sam just took it upon himself to do everything. He says, "Okay, you guys work on this." And he had little miniature barracks and he had other stuff that looked like trees where you'd place the trees, and he had everything ready for us. He just did an amazing job. And so we prepared that for our Manzanar people and he had it built in sections that you could put one on top of the other, and we put it in a car and they took it up there and put it together. And so it's up there now as a display, and that way people could see, just like we have here at this museum, what the camp looked like, what... any camp would be fitting that model because the barracks are lined up in the same sequence. But yeah, we were blessed to have Sam around, and we spent about maybe two months and I would go out and buy hamburgers for them on Saturday. Somebody else would buy hamburgers the next weekend. Yeah, we worked on that and, and Sam and another fellow took it up and installed it at Manzanar. So that was our contribution. Yeah, so you heard about it, huh?

MN: Okay Bruce, I've asked my questions.

BK: That's good.

MN: Is there anything you want to add, or did I miss anything that you want to share with us?

BK: No, not really. I'm just, I'm just happy that I was able to put everything in writing for the museum. I just put that book together and they had the signing on August 14th. We sold over a hundred books. They're gonna sell some more and I'm gonna do outreach program. They're gonna go out to San Fernando this month, mid month, and sell some more books. But the program we had for the 25th on August the 14th, I had Mary come down and sing and she sang my favorite song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and she just, they did a wonderful job. She's so great. And it amazes me, and I tell my wife, I says, "These Manzanar people are forever doing things I can't believe. I mean, we're still getting along, and they're still doing great things."

MN: And when you say Mary, you're talking about the "Songbird of Manzanar," Mary Kageyama Nomura?

BK: Yeah. She started singing in Manzanar, that we know of, and she's still singing and her whole family sings. I've heard her son sing and they got, they all have beautiful voices. And her son-in-law has a band, orchestra, and I don't know if he performs, and if he does he does in Orange, Orange County, but her daughter also sings. The whole family sings. It's beautiful. So what are you trying to do, write something up? I already wrote my book.

MN: These are my notes.

BK: Yeah, you got a lot of notes. Okay.

MN: All right, Bruce, thank you. I appreciate your time and coming down here twice and sharing your story. I appreciate very much.

BK: Oh, that's okay. You see, I'm unemployed.

MN: But very busy volunteering.

BK: [Laughs] Yeah.