Densho Digital Archive - Bob Santos Interview II

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: We're gonna start interview number two with you, Bob.

BS: Okay.

TI: And today is Friday, June 3, 2011. We're at the Densho offices doing this interview. On camera is Dana Hoshide, observing we have Casey Ikeda and Nina Wallace, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda. And so, Bob, the first interview we covered pretty much the prewar and wartime, and to start this interview off, during the war your father lost his eyesight, so why don't we start right there and tell me about that?

BS: Okay, we lived in the NP Hotel, and my dad had this girlfriend. I don't know if they were married or not. When you're a little kid you don't, you're not really that... I'm living with my aunt and uncle, and I'd come down on weekends, live with my dad. So he had this girlfriend, and he was going to a doctor, and his eyesight on... his one eye, he lost sight of one eye while still boxing, and then the other eye, his left eye, started to deteriorate, so he went to the doctor and had that checked out. And they told him that we should try cataract surgery, and so he -- he didn't know much about it, and he did a little research on it and figured that that was the right way to go to save that, the left eye -- so he had the surgery, and it failed. He lost both eyes, sight in both eyes. So his girlfriend left, and so he was, he was pretty much on his own except when I came after school or on weekends to take him around. And I became my dad's seeing eye dog. So Saturday or Sunday, I'd go down Saturday morning and we had this ritual. We would, I would take my dad -- he'd get dressed up. He always wore a shirt and a tie and a suit. And as I said earlier, we lived in this one room, single room occupancy unit, nine by thirteen, and there was this closet and the closet had all his clothes, and when he was boxing he acquired a pretty nice wardrobe, and so he always dressed in a suit. So I'd take him around the Chinatown-International District -- and don't forget, I'm ten, eleven years old then -- and we'd go by the barbershop on Jackson Street, Vince's Barbershop, and we'd stop in the barbershop, and you could hear the rattling of the domino chips in the back, in the back room where they're playing haikyu. Paikyu, they call it now. And we'd go in the back and the guys that were winning would give me a little money. I always had money in my pocket. And we'd go in the back room and I'd get a nickel or a dime from the winners, right, and my dad would get a cigar from these guys, and then we'd go down and go into Delphine's barbershop. That's in the Atlas Hotel, where one of the restaurants are now, and it was Delphine's barbershop and it was the biggest barbershop in Chinatown. They had six chairs, three on each side. And in the back room you could hear the click, click, click, so I'd bring my dad there and made, oh, I might've made twenty-five, thirty-five cents going around, talking to the winners, and my dad was still a hero, sports hero, even though he had quit boxing seven, eight years before that. And we'd leave Delphine's barbershop and then we'd pass Ray's barbershop, and I said, "Dad, why don't we go in there?" he says, "We're Tagalog and they're Ilocano." That's that, you know, that...

TI: Like tribal?

BS: Tribal kind of thing, and so we never went into Ray's and I felt bad about that. I said there goes another quarter or thirty-five cents. Then I took, bring Dad to Tai Tung for lunch. We either went to breakfast early at the Jackson Cafe or the Paramount Cafe that was on Jackson, or if it was closer to lunch we went and got hum bow at Tai Tung. And we'd sit there and I'd say, "Dad, you have to take the paper off the bottom." He'd say, "Bobby, I know that. I knew this before you were born." And so we'd eat there, and I'd take him to the Filipino Improvement Club, the club that, owned by Rudy Santos, the biggest gambling hall in the state of Washington.

TI: And before we go there, back to Tai Tung, how did the Chinese community treat your father?

BS: Oh, he was a, they're old sports fans of the old man at that time, and he was quite a hero with the workers there, and so they had his photo up there, too, in boxing pose. And so he was pretty popular there, and so he did well in the Chinese community. To the Filipino Improvement Club and a lot of gambling going on there, and they served lunch there, but since we had hum bow already we didn't have to eat lunch. That's on Maynard, and then we'd go back to King Street. We'd walk down King Street, and Dad said, "Let's stop into Mike's Tavern." Mike's Tavern was on the corner of Sixth and King, on the south, on the southeast corner of Sixth and King. It's a brick building now owned by Howard Dong. And he said, "I want to go see my friend Felix. He's having a beer today." So we walk into the tavern. You know my dad had a cane. Tap, tap, tap, tap, so everybody knew he was coming, tap, tap. We walk in, and as soon as we walk in the door of the tavern we hear this argument going on, these two guys yelling at each other, and one of 'em is Felix, my dad's friend. And someone, either him or the guy that he was arguing with, the big Swedish guy, Nordic American guy, were arguing over this five dollar loan or bet, whatever it was, and we sat down and they were still arguing, and Dad said, "Bobby, take me over to that fellow that's talking to Felix." I says, "Okay, Dad." He says, "Put my left hand on his right shoulder." "Okay, Dad." So we go, tap, tap, tap, tap. I put his hand, and he goes [throws a punch] boom, and he drops the guy. My dad's blind, but he could, he could feel his shoulder, he knew where his chin was, he goes pop and he goes down. He says, "Bobby, we better go now." So out the door we go, and we go down King Street. Tap, tap, tap, tap and he's dragging me down King Street and towards Fifth Avenue, and all of a sudden we hear this, "Hey, Sammy. Sammy, stop." He says, "Bobby, who's that?" I said, "It's the cops, Dad." He says, "It's okay. Let me do the talking." So everybody knew him, right? And the cops, "So what's happening back there, Sammy, at Mike's Tavern?" He says, "I don't know, officer. I don't see nothing." So anyway, that was, and of course they laughed, and blood is streaming down my dad's knuckle. Now, Dad was not a violent guy. He was a very, very patient guy, was really a fun kind of guy, but if he got riled up with someone picking on his friends he came to their defense, even though he was sightless. He knew he could cause some harm. Anyway, that was my old man.

TI: That's a good story. Now how did, so how did you, what did you think when you saw your dad do these things? I mean, did you, were you surprised when he punched this guy?

BS: Yeah, because growing up I never saw him lose his temper at all. And my brother and I, we'd fuss and when you're living in that one room hotel room there isn't much to do, so my brother and I, when we got to, when he came up from Tacoma we'd bounce on the bed. That was a trampoline. That was a pretty big bed, and so he never got angry with that. He'd just sort of grab us when we were in the air and sort of set us down and tickle us or whatever it was, but I never saw him lose his temper at any other time except that once in that tavern.

TI: Now, during this period, how did your dad support himself?

BS: He had the social security and some kind of disability. It might've been from the boxing industry, just couple dollars a month, not very much.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: In talking about supporting yourselves, so when you were growing up you had to have various jobs to, for spending money and whatever, so let's talk about that now. So what were some of the jobs as a teenager you had growing up in Seattle?

BS: Well, one of my first, a friend of ours, Jim Beltran and his family were pretty prominent in the Filipino community, Mrs. Beltran, they're the family that lived across the street from the Matsudairas, and they always had a house full. They had their own children, four children, and they took in foster kids, and so there was always a houseful of kids. And Mr. Beltran owned a gas station on Tenth and Jackson. It's where they have the Vietnamese sandwich shop. That was a Union gas station. And so on weekends I would work for Uncle Jimmy, just putting the air in the tires and just washing the windshields and stuff like that, and he paid me a dime or, a nickel or a dime for the whole day, which was pretty cool for me. Then a friend of ours owned a stall at the Pike Market, and I remember working several weeks selling cucumbers at the Pike Market. And I'm just a little kid, and I was a mouthy kid, so I was like the barker, you know, "Get your fresh cucumbers." So that was the first two jobs I had, and then I delivered the Star newspaper. Remember? We had the Times, the P-I, and the Star.

TI: And the Star was more the union, wasn't that the, a more union paper?

BS: I don't remember what it was, but it only had, they came, they came out on weekdays and they never had a Sunday paper, so, but I delivered papers for a year or two. But those were my really, really early years. And of course, during the summertime we'd go down to Sears parking lot and jump on the truck to go bean picking or raspberry picking. Or in the early summer our family, my aunt, my mother's sister who we stayed with, would pack up for a couple weeks and we would travel to Bainbridge Island and work the strawberry fields, the strawberry fields that were owned by the Filipino farmers. And so that's our summers. Really roughing it, right?

TI: And this was, the strawberry fields, were they previously Japanese strawberry fields?

BS: They probably were. They probably were, and then the Filipinos took it over during the war, and I don't know if they were ever handed back or whether they were just holding them temporarily. I never knew that part of it.

TI: Yeah, I think it was a combination. Some, some...

BS: Some of 'em did, some of 'em hung onto 'em.

TI: And I think some Japanese farmers actually split their fields and gave Filipino families some of the fields, and so it was a variety. Okay.

BS: Yeah. Right. But since my family grew up in Port Blakely, they knew all the Filipino farmers that had farms, even before the war.

TI: Now, do you recall, during the war there was, for some of the Bainbridge Island farms they actually got Filipino workers and they were, I think, married to Native, Natives from Canada.

BS: Native, yes.

TI: And they were, they came down and worked the farms. Do you remember that at all?

BS: I remember some of the kids, the Native American kids, the Indian kids, we called 'em "Indipinos," half Filipino, half Native, half Indian. And they were our neighbors. They were our friends that we played with and held friendships all the way to the '60s and '70s, we knew these kids. When they grew up we were all involved in the movements and all that kind of stuff.

TI: And was this Bainbridge Island or just in Seattle?

BS: Well, the kids in Bainbridge Island that were part Filipino, they were always on the, sort of the leading edge of the Civil Rights Movement in terms of they didn't follow the Filipino side of their family. They followed the Native American Indian side of their family, and they were out fighting for Indian fishing rights very early on in the '50s and into the '60s.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. So they also were probably in some ways a link or connector between the two communities, the Filipino and the...

BS: Yeah, they'd go to the, you know how the Filipinos, we love to dance and we love to party and stuff, and so every weekend on Saturday there would be a dance at the Filipino community club in, on Bainbridge Island. So all these kids would grow up at the dance hall, but in their daily lives during the week they were Indian. They became Native. It's a pretty cool life to live on both sides. Bernie Whitebear was one of those kind of kids.

TI: Because, I'm sorry, he was mixed?

BS: He was mixed. His father was Filipino and his mother was Native.

TI: I didn't know that.

BS: And he changed his name to Whitebear when he got involved in the Native movement, the Indian movement.

TI: Okay. I didn't know that. So going back to you and other jobs growing up, so what else did you do?

BS: My dad got me a job -- I must've been a freshman or sophomore -- as a waiter at the Pier 91 Officers Club. That was really cool because I had to wear this white uniform, and I'm just a kid and I really didn't know how to deal with working face to face with customers, and so I served officers in their officers dining hall, and that was sort of a growing up experience. And all these old timers would watch to see how I would handle this, but I was okay. I was pretty cool.

TI: 'Cause there were other, the other workers were Filipino?

BS: All the, all the workers, the whole kitchen, all the cooks, the dishwashers, the busboys, the waiters, were all Filipinos. And my dad's friend, Julian, he decided I was old enough to get a job with him at the Pier 91, so that was one of my first higher paying jobs, so that was pretty cool doing that.

TI: It sounds like you probably even got a check or something at that point.

BS: I don't remember how we got paid. I think it was under the table or something.

TI: [Laughs] Okay.

<Begin Segment 3>

BS: And then in 1951, as a junior in high school, a guy named Jean Navarro, he was the dispatcher for Local 37, the cannery, the seafood union. Most, most of the cannery workers at that time were also Filipino, took over the industry from the Japanese and Chinese from before the war. So I got my first job being dispatched to Alaska in 1951 to a cannery called Ugashik on the Ugashik River, and there's a old JA guy, Japanese American guy that took me under his wing. His name was Roy Hashimoto. And he's still around. He's eighty-five, ninety years old now. And he took me under his wing, and I'm just a kid, a teenager, and we'd go into, we'd fly into, on one of these biplanes, water...

TI: Like a float plane.

BS: Float plane, landing plane. We'd see this cannery and the fish house. They have the warehouse where they stored all the canned goods, and then they have the fish house where you did all the work. You cut up the salmon and you cut off the heads and you do the sliming and do all that kind of stuff. So we land at the warehouse and we take our gear and we walk down the boardwalk, and the first house you see on the little hill is the superintendent's house. It's a white house, two story house with a white picket fence. And then you go down the boardwalk, and then you see these other nice little houses like cabins, and there's a fence along, white fence along there, and that's where the white fishermen live and the mechanics who maintain the machinery. And then, then you walk down the boardwalk and here are the sled dogs in their doghouses. They're owned by the Natives there, and the Natives are on the other, they live on the other side of the superintendent's office in little shacks and cabins. And at the end of the boardwalk is this bunkhouse where the Filipinos live, and we're on the other side of the world, right? We're out in the tundra where the flies and the mosquitoes and all that kind of stuff, and so they put eight of us into a bunkhouse room, eight of us. Had four double deck beds, so we're crammed into them, so that was sort of a growing up kind of thing, growing up experience. The dining hall also was used in the evening as a gambling hall, so some of these sharp gamblers would get their way up to Alaska and become the dealers at these gambling, at the gambling tables. And a lot of these guys, a lot of these cannery workers would lose their whole check, their whole season's salary in a week, and that was part of life. These guys went up to Alaska to earn enough money to come back and feed their families for three or four or five or six months, and they'd lose their whole check on the gambling tables.

TI: But these professional gamblers, it sounds like, were they workers or were they just up there?

BS: They were workers. They were the waiters. They were the, they call it the bull cooks. They're the ones that cleaned the outhouses. They didn't actually work in the fish house. They had, they had certain roles when they went up to Alaska.

TI: But the ones who were really, really good at cards, the dealers, were they also workers or did they just go up there to gamble and take the money?

BS: They had jobs, but they weren't in the fish house.

TI: I see, okay.

BS: They were... I don't know, they talked their way into jobs that they didn't have to get their hands dirty.

TI: Well, in a similar way, so I've interviewed --

BS: Excuse me. Let me... [reaches for a tissue]

TI: And while you do that I'll ask this question, so I've interviewed Japanese Americans who, before the war, did the cannery work.

BS: Yeah.

TI: And they talked about, also, the gamblers, and so they were always told, don't gamble. I mean, like, just like, because literally in a week or even in an evening you could lose all your money.

BS: Oh yeah.

TI: And so I think what happened with lots of the Japanese workers because of that, they were actually paid at the end. They wouldn't be given their money 'til the very end just so that they wouldn't get the money and then gamble it and things like that.

BS: Well, there were ways of bookkeeping that, even all the, it was the same way. We got our check at the end of the season, but they had record keeping on losses and winnings and stuff like that, so they always got around that. But Roy Hashimoto's the one that kept me away from the gambling table. He made sure that I never got to sit down. And a lot of my father's friends were pretty protective of me not getting involved in drinking or partying or hitting the gambling tables. I always came away with some money.

TI: So were you about the youngest up there?

BS: Yes. Me and a kid named Ben Simon, we were in the, we went out about the same time, and he was a year younger than I was. And Ben Simon became a colonel in the U.S. Army after his, his career was military.

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: The, again, talking to the people who went up there, it was really hard work, but it was lucrative. I mean, people will talk about literally working for two, three months and using that money the rest of the year because it was pretty lucrative. Was that the same for you?

BS: For me it was, it was really cool. I was able to buy a car when I came back home that first year, my first car. '39 Chevy.

TI: Good.

BS: The first year, 1951, I was in the warehouse and my job was filling these machines with tops of the cans, and the cans would come around this belt and then they'd go down -- it was a machine, right? -- and the tops were stacked, and they'd press down on the can and then it'd turn around, and the next can. My job was to fill that thing with tops. All day long that was my job. I was called the topper, was what the hell they called that. It was really tediously boring work, but I was just thinking the money I was making was pretty cool. The second year I went, 1952, I had to work in the fish house and it's called the slimer. The fish came off, the fish came off the, onto a belt. Someone would be in the bin hoisting the fish onto this belt, and the fish would come off the belt and the butcher would take the fish and place it into a section of the belt where the heads were chopped off and the belly was slit open by a machine, and it came down the conveyor belt to four or five of us on each side of the belt, and we would grab a fish and we'd clean out the inside. You had a water spigot and a knife and crusty old gloves, and our job was to clean out the guts of the fish. All day long. Boom, boom. Well, being the rookie, my first year as a slimer they put me at the end of the conveyor belt, and every once in a while they would sort of let every other one go by and they'd just pile up, and I'm going like crazy and they're laughing, you know? And I didn't think it was very funny, but that was sort of the introduction into the sliming business when you're in Alaska. And you, of course, they'd do that a couple times and then they, the joke was, it was laughed out.

TI: And this was also your, right, your first exposure to the cannery workers union and things like that?

BS: Yes.

TI: Tell me about that, how that was structured.

BS: It was, the leaders of the cannery worker union, say the president of the union, there was always, they were always the big shots in the community. The most important roles in the union in the seafood industry was the president of the union and the dispatcher. He's the one, when the workers came in to sign up, he's the one that pointed out who would get selected to go to a cannery, and so when you wanted to get selected, of course, you paid off. Under the table you had to pay the president -- this is Filipino politics, of course -- you paid off the president and you paid off the dispatcher. Well, my dad was still very prominent as that hero, and so I got to go up without having my dad pay off the dispatcher or the president. It was sort of an honor for them to have Sammy's son work at the cannery, so I never had to go through that. But that's how it worked. You, it was more like a seniority system, but you had to pay it off. You had to pay off. And years later, there were some problems with the union, cannery workers, reform movement, Selmi Domingo and Gene Viernes got caught up in that. And the gambling industry really started to take over the gambling in Alaska, so they would hire their shark dealers, which, who were gangsters, and they would be dispatched to Alaska, bypassing the seniority system.

TI: Oh, so they were in cahoots with the upper management.

BS: Yeah, the dispatcher, the president, who happened, when I went up it was Tony Baruso. And that whole, we can get into that a little bit later.

TI: Yeah, we'll get that later, because of the murder of Gene and Selmi.

BS: Yeah. But that's when that started, and it seemed like the president of the union was always a high ranking official in the Filipino community incorporated, the larger Filipino community. Either the president or one of the officers, because he... almost every family, or every other family in, Filipino family in Seattle had to have someone, a dad, an uncle, cousin, brother, sister, that wanted their kids to be dispatched to Alaska, so you always owed it to these two, the president and the dispatcher, to pay them off to get your kids dispatched to Alaska.

TI: And they got their power because they worked with the owners of the canneries?

BS: Who were lookin' the other way, of course.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Okay, we're gonna come back to that later, but let's go on. So 1952, this is about the time you graduate from high school.

BS: Yes.

TI: And so you --

BS: Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

TI: Sure.

BS: Junior high, I'm playing basketball at Maryknoll, St. Peter Claver Center, and Pauline asked me to go, whether I'd take her to the junior prom.

TI: [Laughs] Okay, this is good. We have to finish up the Pauline... wait, wait. She asked you?

BS: Yeah, to her, to the junior prom.

TI: Well, was that common? I would think the, usually back then I thought the man would ask the woman.

BS: This is Bob.

TI: [Laughs] Okay.

BS: What can I say? I owned a car.

TI: So when you were in junior high school she asked you to the prom.

BS: No, it was --

TI: Junior high school.

BS: It was the high school prom, but it was the junior, junior class would have a, they would have their own prom.

TI: High school, junior class. Okay. So all those, all those attempts back in first grade...

BS: It worked out.

TI: But took you, what, ten, eleven years before it...

BS: Yeah. Then we started, then we dated.

TI: Okay, good. So let me ask you, in high school what kind of student were you?

BS: Bad. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I was, my mind was just racing, 'cause all the stuff that was happening in the International District, Manilatown, Chinatown, all this stuff is happening. You discovered girls, and I was not, I was a bad student. I graduated right in the middle of the class. I got by. I studied for the exam. I never did homework, never did that. Crammed for the exam and just barely passed, so that was not a very good experience.

TI: How about discipline, in terms of getting in trouble in high school? Was that a problem for you?

BS: It was a problem for my aunt and uncle and my dad, but not a problem for me. One thing I remember, I went to O'Dea High School and I was this kid who wasn't really -- with the teachers, the Irish Christian brothers, and the coaches because I was on the boxing team -- I wasn't really this Filipino kid. I was just sort of accepted there as somebody, as an athlete. And I'd hear some of these comments. I went to school with the Laigo brothers and a guy named Albert Mendoza, Filipino, our Filipino kids that we grew up, all went to Maryknoll, and they would come to school in dress pants. They were slacks, the black slacks. And they weren't wearing tennis shoes at that time. They were wearing regular Oxford shoes, dress shoes, and always had nice clothes. And the coaches would, they'd comment, "Here comes the hotshot jitterbugs," the Filipino kids, you know? And it always, it really got me then because these kids after school would have jobs in the restaurants downtown, right? Or at the athletic club or Ivar's or some of these places, and there were no lockers at that time at these restaurants, so the kids that worked these restaurants had to dress up to go to school and then they went to work, and then that was their working clothes that they went. It always bothered me that they were termed "hotshot jitterbugs" because they dressed different from all the other kids at school. The white kids, right? And so I wrote about that in my book, I think, about, you learn these little things about little, just little things and it bothered you, little comments that were made about people, brown people, black people, and so it starts to sink in that there's two different worlds here as you're growing up. So that always bothered me. That's why I didn't have very good memories of O'Dea High School, because of that.

TI: And you would think the coaches would know better because a lot of these people, especially if they wanted to do sports and they said, "No, I have to go to work," they would understand that these people are, they're going to work and they had to wear these things. That's interesting.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So let's keep moving, so 1952 you graduate from O'Dea.

BS: Graduated from O'Dea.

TI: What do you do next?

BS: I actually had a boxing scholarship to Gonzaga. They worked out a boxing scholarship to Gonzaga, and I was thinking, I really have to go school and really study, and I boxed at O'Dea for the four years that I was there. At that time boxing was a, was a high school sport, and several schools around the state had boxing programs, but the Seattle School District didn't, so we would travel all over the state boxing, and I got the scholarship. And I decided right after summer, before I went to school, I hired on at Boeing. I wanted to earn some money for school and worked through the summer at Boeing. And all my buddies, before... my buddies were all older, a year or two older, and they had joined the Marine Corps to fight in Korea, during the Korean War, and after I worked that summertime -- and that summertime I worked in Alaska, came back early, and worked at G.O. Gwy's drugstore on Third and Union, and that was the first Seafair torchlight parade, the year that I was working there, and all my buddies came in to the soda fountain, and I'm washing dishes and they're saying, "See ya, Bob," and then they go out the parade and I just felt I'm missing the whole world. I'm crushed 'cause I'm missing this big old celebration. But anyway, I decide to apply at Boeing, and I got a job at Boeing and the salary's pretty good, so I bypassed my first year of school at Gonzaga to work, and halfway through the year I decided to join the Marine Corps, to catch up with my buddies. So I didn't attend college until I got out and just did a couple of semesters there. But I joined the Marine Corps and became, I was an expert on the rifle range, and I thought, oh man, I'm gonna become the sniper. You know, that's the elite when you're an expert in firearms. You have the general medal and then you have a specialist and you have expert. But they assigned me as a mechanic to a helicopter squadron, so I spent my years going to school in naval aircraft schools, in Memphis, Tennessee, and in a base in North Carolina, and I was shipped off to Korea. And the armistice had been signed while we were on a ship to Korea, so I never got in, to see any conflict. And while I was on KP duty -- you know what KP duty is? You work in the kitchen and peeling potatoes -- I saw these guys running, jogging, a team, and I yelled out, "What are you guys doing?" And they said, "We're on the boxing team." So I joined the boxing team when I was in the Marine Corps, and you get all these privileges. You work, you get to eat in the, not the officers mess hall, but the sergeant, the noncommissioned officers mess hall, and you get special treatment, and then you go from base to base and box in certain tournaments, so that was more my life in Korea. And later when I was reassigned to Japan I joined the boxing team there in Japan, and so I had a good life when I was in the service.

TI: And my notes indicate that you were pretty good, at least in the service.

BS: Well that's what I told people, I was pretty good, but I was pretty, just, I won more than I lost, but I was probably like Uncle Tommy. I wanted, I wanted that status without really having the, I wasn't like my dad. I knew how to box 'cause I grew up in the gym, but I didn't have that killer instinct, whatever they call it. But I got along pretty well.

TI: How about things like racism and prejudice in the service during that era? How would, what was that like?

BS: That, that was sort of, well in the Marine Corps, when I went to boot camp in the Marine Corps half of the platoon came from Hawaii and the other half from Texas, so there was always this little conflict going on, and I'm right in the middle 'cause I'm from Seattle, Washington, right? And so I could see this playing out, and the Hawaiian guys were, they were pretty, seemed to be pretty patient in explaining cultures, what they were going through, how fun it is in Hawaii, and growing up, we all play football, and all of that. And the kids from Texas slowly started to embrace, not the culture so much, but the individuals, and so when we first started out, the first week or so in boot camp, there was a lot of tension, and that sort of played out in, after a month or so, everybody in the platoon pretty well got along. So it's always a learning experience when you go into a situation like that. I got into a couple of fights myself when people made derogatory comments about Koreans or Japanese or African Americans at that time, or Filipinos, comments that were made probably, insensitive kinds of things that probably they grew up with notions but not really, really didn't mean what they were saying. It's just part of their life, using derogatory terms.

TI: Now where did that come from in terms of standing up for other people? So here you have African Americans or Japanese or Koreans, I mean, you could think, well, they could just stand up for themselves, but you went out of your way to stand up for others, so where did that come from?

BS: Well, when you're, when you're growing up in Chinatown, International District you sort of know the difference of peoples and cultures and like that, and things like that. And when my schoolmates were sent away to Camp Harmony and later to Minidoka, that's when you know that there's this difference in people of color. That's, we said the Japanese kids and families were sent away and the German kids and Italian kids, the white kids weren't sent away. So you knew automatically that there's some kind of racial difference. There's some kind of difference between brown people, black people or brown people, and white people. So it probably doesn't register until you start hearing comments, and then you're fighting for, you're fighting to stand up for the people that they're saying derogatory things about. You're coming to their, to their defense or behalf. It was something you really didn't think about. You just reacted to it. At least I did.

TI: Okay, good. So I'm gonna keep moving along, so 1955 you were discharged from the military.

BS: Yes. And I'd like to, I loved the service. I probably would've stayed in the service, but I got in a little trouble on the last day in Japan, got into a big brawl in Gifu city. And all the, you know all the bar girls, they were all our buddies, and we'd go out on liberty every night or on weekends, and we had a Marine Corps platoon on an army base, so there were a bunch of us in the Marine Corps and then we always kept to ourselves, but that last day in Japan we had to mix it up with the army guys and got in a big old brawl. And they picked about seven of us off and they brought us before the old man, and he took our stripes away. My sergeant's stripes were on the desk. If I re-upped I would've made sergeant, but he said, "Santos, I got to do something here. It's on the record. You guys got picked up. You got arrested, and I got to take your stripes." I was a corporal then, so they took me stripes away and I didn't reenlist because I was a private then. I went in a private, got out a private. But, and he was one of my, he was one of my coaches as, on the boxing team, and he just shook his head, said, "There's nothing I can do about it. I got to take your stripes."

TI: So if it weren't for that incident you would've probably stayed in the military?

BS: I would've stayed in for, for...

TI: And then you would've been enlisted as a sergeant and then probably...

BS: I would've probably went up for a little bit 'cause I really liked that life, hot shot Marine and all that stuff.

TI: Interesting how one little thing can really change your life like that.

BS: Yeah.

TI: Okay. So, so after that incident, then you --

BS: We didn't win the brawl either. We got beat up like crazy. We're standin' there, all black eye, bloody nose, in front of the old man and we're giggling, and he got, he was pissed off because five, six of us were standing in front of him and we just couldn't hold down the, we thought it was so funny lookin' at each other all busted up. These army guys, they really took us to the cleaners. And so he, the old man just got mad and took everybody's stripes.

TI: [Laughs] That's a good story.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So after you're discharged, what happens next?

BS: I -- excuse me. [Reaches for a tissue] Here we go again.

TI: Sure. Why don't we take a...

BS: Little break. I was thinking about school 'cause I had the GI Bill, but I was in the middle of the school, it was in October and it was after the semester started, so I went back to Boeing and got a job in the, called the hammer shop. They had these big SECO hammers, lead hammers, and you have a flat piece of metal, and the hammer came down to shape the metal, right, and it formed the metal to the shape of the die. And so that was a fun thing to do. And then in that shop they had these rope hammers and the heavy hammerhead came down with the die on it, come down slowly, and then across the aisle were these siegal hammers that were used hydraulically, and they came down hard, like boom. You had to go like this and they'd go [moves arm up and down] and then boom. And I was, I became a hammer operator after the first, after the first year, actually, I made my way up from a B operator to A operator within a year, so I really started making some money. I'd get these raises every other week, seems like twice, twice a month I'd get raises. So this one guy, this old guy, a Nordic American guy who had been there for years, he was a shop steward and he was the jitney driver, and he was just livid that this young kid was making more money than he was making at that time. And I had to have a die brought in to the hammer once and I had to call him, Gus or whatever his name was, and I had to lead him in with this die that's dangling from a jitney, right, on a cable, and it's several hundred pounds, maybe a ton even, and it swaying like this. And he's going by me, and he stops and it starts to sway, and it hits me, right? The die hits me, not hard, but just enough to piss me off, and I, this had been going on for about a month or so, this antagonism between him and I, him really, really mad at me. But so when he hit me, instinctively, I grabbed him off the jitney and I hit him, and he went flying into a bin full of cut up aluminum scraps. And when I hit him I probably hit over here somewhere [points to head], right, and he went in there, and then when I saw the photos when I, when they arrested me and brought me to trial, he's all cut up. It wasn't from me, it was from the, from the metal scraps in that bin that he got cut up, and so I had to, went to trial of course, and I subpoenaed all my coworkers and they stuck up with me, for me. They said this guy had caused me trouble for a whole month and then I just retaliated. And I got, I got convicted, but they, there was no sentencing. They put me on probation for a year, if I stayed out of trouble, so I did that. He got transferred out of the shop and I got to keep my job.

TI: And so it's interesting, so Boeing, as a company, they didn't really do anything to really discipline? It was more a outside police...

BS: It was an internal, it was, yeah, it was the sheriff's department, and the discipline inside the shop was with the foreman, actually. He's the one that made the decision to ship that guy out, and I kept my job. But that was, that was just the only time I got in trouble.

TI: Was that first time you were arrested at this point?

BS: Yes.

TI: Okay.

BS: First time of many. [Laughs] First legitimate one.

[Interruption]

TI: So it was during this time also that you met Anita, also.

BS: Yes.

TI: So let's talk about that.

BS: Now, when the war ended and we all came home -- and all, the whole gang stuck together, from the basketball players, the Filipino kids, and there's a couple of black kids that grew up with us, Bob Murray and Bob Maxie, and we always told the league, the Asian league that they had Filipino blood. You couldn't really prove it, but they went along with that. So our team and our gang, we stuck together, and we would roam the International District, Chinatown lookin' for trouble. We hung out at the Manila Cafe, which is where the post office is now on King Street, right next to Hing Hay Park, and the waitress at the time was Anita Agbalog. And we, you know, I started hustling and we dated. We started dating. And she was pretty popular, 'cause she was, she was just ready to graduate from Franklin High School, and we started going steady and her mother, Mildred, wanted to have a big wedding when the time came for her to have her daughter get married. She's saving up all this money. And Anita and I decided we would elope. We didn't want to go through all this church wedding and all this kind of stuff, we went to Everett to get married, and I had to bring my best, a best man, right, this guy to stand up. And I had to bring someone who wouldn't blab about this marriage, so I asked Bob Maxie to come up to Everett 'cause we were getting married and to bring his girlfriend, Mabel. Well, it just so happened Mabel was married to a musician, right, and seeing Bob on the side, so I knew if I brought Bob and Mabel up they wouldn't blab about me and Anita getting married 'cause they had this thing going. So we went to Everett and got married, and it was pretty cool.

TI: Although your mother-in-law probably wasn't very happy.

BS: Oh, she wasn't very happy at all, especially the dad. The dad wanted his only daughter to have a nice little wedding, but the dad and mom, they liked me, so they got over it. So we had, our union had six children, and that's, those six children have produced nineteen grandchildren, and those grandchildren have produced twelve great-grandchildren, so I've got this group, these, this group. And I don't all their names right now.

TI: That's okay. [Laughs] We won't go through that.

BS: I know their names, but I don't know how to connect 'em with the faces right now, especially the great-grandkids.

TI: That's amazing.

BS: That's terrible, but I'll see 'em and I'll just hug 'em and throw 'em around and stuff, and they tell me later who that kid was.

TI: And you're such a strong connection to their heritage. I mean, you can tell all these stories about their, not only their great-grandfather, but their great-great-grandfather and on and on, so that's, that's neat. So you're at Boeing for, what, about ten years or so?

BS: I was at Boeing for, yeah, just about ten years, probably about twelve years, I think. And it was during the cutbacks from the dinosaur program. I was an A hammer operator, and they, they took my A rating away and gave me a B rating. I could still be a hammer operator, but I lost a little bit of money, salary range went down, and so I decided I was going the wrong way, so I was looking for another job and decided, I had joined a Catholic fraternal organization called the Knights of Columbus. And it was, when I was a member of the Knights of Columbus, it has a really nice insurance program, too, life insurance program, so the director of the insurance program asked me if I wanted to work for him, selling insurance, and I said sure, I'd leave Boeing. I loved that work, but I decided I was going the wrong way, so I hired on as an insurance salesman for the Knights of Columbus and did pretty well, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do. My heart wasn't into it. And so I was hired by another member of the Knights of Columbus, a guy named Bill Herr, to work in his lumber yard. He had four or five lumberyards scattered around the Puget Sound area, and so he hired me and made me the manager of his little store in Everett called the Caboose. It was right by the railroad tracks and I was manager of this lumberyard up in Everett for a couple years. And then I was reassigned to Skyway, the lumberyard in Skyway, and it's the same time I'm starting to get involved in civil rights movement. And I, from the Knights of Columbus I met a guy named Walter Hubbard, and he was an activist in the black community and happened to be also, happened to be a leader in the black Catholic community, and so he, he talked me... let's take a little break here.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So, Bob, we had just talked about how you started selling insurance for Knights of Columbus.

BS: Yes.

TI: And how you were, how you met Walt, I think you, did you, yeah, you talked about Walter Hubbard, meeting him.

BS: Yes.

TI: So this is kind of the beginning of your sort of social activism, social justice activism.

BS: Right.

TI: So let's get into it. So tell me about Walter Hubbard and...

BS: So Walter Hubbard was, he was president of the Catholic Interracial Council of Seattle. And at that time we had an archbishop, Archbishop Thomas Connolly, and he was becoming a champion in the Civil Rights Movement locally, with the local clergy, and so the Catholic Interracial Council of Seattle was born. [Coughs] Excuse me, start over again. Seattle became pretty prominent in the Civil Rights Movement because Archbishop Thomas A. Connolly is, his heart was in the Civil Rights Movement. And Walter Hubbard started the Seattle chapter of the Catholic Interracial Council with the blessing, you might say, of the archbishop. The Catholic Interracial Council would be the civil rights arm of the archdiocese. It's not officially, but it'd be an arm. And so there were a couple of demonstrations, a couple of meetings about the movement, Civil Rights Movement, and how the Catholic Church should be, locally, should be involved in the, in this struggle for civil rights. And we're talkin' about the mid '60s. Walter came up to me one day and said, "Bob, the Catholic Interracial Council's gonna sponsor this march on open housing." It was a march on supporting legislation for open housing that would allow blacks and other minorities to purchase housing anywhere in the city of Seattle. Seattle, in all these neighborhoods in Seattle there were these covenants where owners of the homes did not have to, they didn't want to sell their homes -- when they were, time to sell it -- to people of color, or Jews or, these covenants were very restrictive on who you could sell your property to. So the open housing movement became strong, and Walter said, Bob, come to the march. So I says, okay, I guess I -- Walter's my drinking buddy, so I said okay. So I go to the march. It's at St. James Cathedral, and Walter says, "Bob, why don't you hold this pole, this banner? There'll be another guy holding it over there and you don't have say nothing. You don't have to sing, you don't have to say anything. Just hold the banner as we march." And it was a November afternoon and it was rainy and windy, and I'm struggling to hold this damn banner, right, and I don't dare, I mean, I don't dare drop it, but it's really heavy 'cause it's blowing. And none of the other guys around, these beautiful Catholic people, they weren't willing to take it from me, right? 'Cause they knew it was gonna be, anyway, after that, after that march ended at the cathedral, all I could think of, I'll never join one of these marches again, ever. So I said, Walter, that was really mean, all this kind of stuff. He says, "You did a good job." So the next morning in the front page of the paper, of the Catholic paper, here I am holding the banner, Bob Santos, Catholic Interracial Council. I said, hey, that's pretty cool. I got media already.

So I started attending meetings, of course, and we were aligning ourselves with some of the other, Catholic Interracial Council was meeting at St. Peter Claver Center. That was their meeting place. And it was an organization called CARITAS; it was Community Action, Remedial Instruction, Tutoring, and Assisted Service, CARITAS. And it was a tutoring, a tutoring school that was funded by the state, and the responsibility of CARITAS was to match up students that were in a remedial program one on one with either high school seniors or college students so they'd get one to one tutoring to help them out in their schoolwork. So this old St. Peter Claver Center was the old Maryknoll school where I went to school and as a teenager hung out at St. Peter Claver Center at the dances and stuff, so it was like me returning home attending these meetings at the auditorium at St. Peter Claver Center, Catholic Interracial Council. And we would have banquets and raise money for some of the causes in the community, and Walter Hubbard was executive director of CARITAS program. And people would put the CARITAS program together with this Catholic Interracial Council, which really was no connection. CARITAS was not a Catholic program. It was just a tutoring program that happened to based at St. Peter Claver Center. So when Walter was offered a job as civil rights officer for King County, he asked me to apply for his job as executive director of CARITAS, so I applied for the job and got interviewed, and I actually got appointed to that job. So as executive director of CARITAS I had, it was my responsibility to go to all these schools to recruit tutors to, for one-on-one tutoring programs for the kids, mostly black kids, that were having problems. They weren't all black. Some of 'em were Asian kids, some of 'em were white kids, but ninety percent were black kids, and it was a very successful tutoring program, a very popular program. The St. Peter Claver Center, we had the old church, the auditorium under the church, and then we had a bank of classrooms, and there was a guy named Father Harvey McIntyre. Harvey was the pastor of Immaculate Conception Church up the street, but the archbishop had Harvey McIntyre, Father McIntyre, manage St. Peter Claver Center, to rent out the classrooms to community groups and rent out the auditorium. And since I was the, since I was on site as director of CARITAS, Father McIntyre said, "Bob, why don't you become my assistant and then you do the renting out, you do all that kind of stuff? You have a staff and they can take care of the rental and all the books and all that stuff." I said that's cool. So some of the first people that came to us were Elmer and Aaron Dixon. They were, they are, they were the leaders of the local Black Panther Party, the chapter, Seattle chapter.

TI: And before, so when Father McIntyre was in charge, did these groups use the St. Peter Claver Center?

BS: They weren't, not so much yet. There was a Catholic women's group that met there. They were called the Marion Club. They were elderly women. My aunt was part of the women's group, and they met there once a week for tea and coffee and talked about social issues. And there was another Native American group that would meet there once, once a month, and they were the Blackfeet Indians from Montana whose families moved to Seattle, and they'd get together once a month at St. Peter Claver Center, just sort of a tribal family get together. But they were the only two groups that, when I became director of CARITAS, they're the only groups that I remember meeting there.

TI: Okay, so I just want to establish, so before you had that responsibility, there were a couple of groups and they would be probably groups that the Catholic Church would have no problems with using that facility.

BS: Yeah.

TI: And before we get into these other, other groups, I just wanted to ask a couple other questions. Archbishop Connolly, did you meet with him? Did you know him personally?

BS: Father McIntyre is the one that met with him a lot. I met with the archbishop several times, sometimes under stress, and I'll get to that later.

TI: Okay, so we'll get that. The other question was, we're talking about the '60s, I was just curious, the influence of having President Kennedy, a Catholic, become president and his sort of stance in terms of social justice and all that, I mean, what was the influence of Kennedy on you and other Catholics during this time?

BS: I think the influence of the Kennedy administration on Catholics locally -- I don't know about anywhere else -- was very strong, because this was the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the South, where the Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy, had to send down FBI agents to the South and at one point sent the, called out the National Guard in Mississippi and Alabama to protect the rights of black kids trying to integrate the schools. So Kennedy had an impact on many Catholics around the nation, but in Seattle the impact was very, very positive, that the archbishop and a lot of the priests and many of the nuns felt very comfortable getting involved in the Civil Rights Movement because of the Kennedy factor.

TI: And how about you personally? Was that something that you were kind of paying attention to also in terms of what the Kennedy administration was doing?

BS: I wasn't that involved in the Civil Rights Movement, but I, I was interesting in watching, when I could, some of the issues that the Native Americans were having on their fishing rights issues on the Puyallup River. That was local, that was on the local news. Even before the local civil rights movement with Tyree Scott and the black movement, the Indian fishing right movement was heating up, and this was in the late '50s and into the '60s, where the traditional Indian fishing rights were being, were being compromised by local commercial fishermen and there were problems on that river. Remember Marlon Brando would come into town and sit in a canoe out in the river and highlight, and that would bring the attention of the Indian issues on, the fishing rights issue to a national prominence because Marlon Brando came here and then Jane Fonda, she followed and she became part of the fishing rights movement along with her anti...

TI: Anti war.

BS: Vietnam War issues. So when Jane Fonda started showing up on the river I said, hey, I could get involved in this. So I started following what was going on there actually, not physically going down there yet, but I started following that issue in the newspapers and on television. Back at St. Peter Claver Center, Aaron and Elmer Dixon, they want to start their Black Panther breakfast program and they asked us at St. Peter Claver Center whether they could use the kitchen and the auditorium during the school week for their breakfast program, and Father McIntyre said, "Bob, that's pretty cool. Give 'em a key." And so that's going on, they're having their breakfast program, and after a couple weeks Father McIntyre comes up to me and says, "Bob, have they paid any rent yet?" And I'm thinking, I said, "No, Father." He said, "Well here's an invoice, and why don't you hand it to Aaron or Elmer Dixon?" So the next morning I, after the breakfast program and they're milling around, I start walking up to Aaron and Elmer Dixon, and when I looked up they were about eight feet tall. And, "Yeah, Mr. Santos, can I help you?" And I says, "Um, how's everything going?" You know, oh, fine, fine. I take the invoice and I place it behind me, and we're just chatting and stuff like that, program's going good, there's twenty, twenty-five kids coming down. I turn around and I walk away. And McIntyre said, "Did you get the money?" I said, "You know, Father, they're really the Lord's work." So he lets the archbishop know that these guys are doing the Lord's work and we shouldn't charge them. Well, the word gets around, so all these other civil rights groups, they start calling to have their meetings at that little auditorium. One of them is a group called the Central Area Contractors Association, Jim Takasaki's a member of that.

<Begin Segment 9>

BS: So these guys would meet because the minority contractors, especially black contractors, were putting pressure on the construction industry to get more contracts in the labor industry, in the contracting industry. And their meetings were pretty loud and tough. These guys, they wanted, they wanted jobs and they were being cut out of all this, all the construction jobs that were happening in the area. There were a couple of demonstrations that they had to voice their concern about not getting any of these contracts and these jobs, and parallel to that Tyree Scott was putting together groups of minority, mostly black, young black males who wanted to be construction workers so the contractors would have construction workers to bring to the table. Tyree Scott was an electrician. And when all this is happening I happened to be appointed by a guy named Mayor Miller, he was, it was the mayor, Brahman, and he left for health reasons or something and Mayor Miller was the interim mayor, mid '60s somewhere. And I got appointed to Seattle Human Rights Commission, probably as the only Asian that was involved in the Civil Rights Movement at that time, which was false. I wasn't. I was, it was Reverend Katagiri, Jim Takasaki, Fred Cordova, a lot of these people were involved before I was, but I happened, my name happened to go up to the city, to the mayor's office, so I got appointed. So I'm on the Commission, and Tyree Scott asked me one day, "Bob, we're getting our members together, and then what we have to do is we're gonna drive around," Tyree would drive around the neighborhood and find construction jobs, and he'd look to see the construction, the team, and if there were, if they were all white, no blacks on 'em, he would come back to St. Peter Claver Center and meet early in the morning when the Black Panthers opened up the door. He would come in and his group would meet, and the next day they would go to the construction site where there were no black workers and they would surround the construction site, and as the white workers came to work they would tell 'em, "Why don't you guys go back home and we'll talk to the superintendent of this job to get jobs for our people, and if we get some of our people hired on this particular job then you all can come back to work." I mean, it was, it was as simple as that.

TI: But were they kind of threatening the white workers as they were coming, like, stay away?

BS: Stay away.

TI: Okay.

BS: It's you against us. We're just gonna shut you down. And that was working. That started to work, and so more guys were getting jobs at the small construction firms that were doing business in the Central Area, and it started to escalate into larger constructions around the Central Area. And Tyree wanted to pick the jobs that had, that were being funded in part by federal funds because, don't forget, in 1964 -- this is about '65, '66, '67, and the Civil Rights Act had passed by President Johnson, and talking a little bit about affirmative action and all that stuff, not hard and fast rules, but there was language on the books. So Tyree and, started working with other minority groups because it was a lot of federal money going to construction sites at the University of Washington, and it was about that time Tyree got his group of people together with the Oriental Student Union, Al Sugiyama, Tony Oglivie, all these were young students then. Mayumi Tsutakawa, I think she was in that group. And they shut down a job at the University of Washington. Dolores Sibonga was involved in that, her husband, Marty Sibonga, Larry Matsuda, all these folks. And so this was our first involvement in a minority demonstration, joining the black construction workers and the contractors. More meetings were held at St. Peter Claver Center with the contractors and United Construction Workers with Tyree Scott.

Tyree Scott became a little more, he became more of a leader in this movement, in this construction industry movement with the workers and the contractors, and one of the biggest, one of the biggest construction jobs going up in the, in our neighborhood was the administration building at Seattle Central Community College, that... they razed the old Broadway High School building and they were building this new administration building. And I think it was five stories. So Tyree and his group met at St. Peter Claver Center one Monday morning and said, okay, we're gonna go on and we're gonna try to shut down this job at Central, Seattle Central Community College. So there was about twenty-five, thirty demonstrators, and I didn't go then. I didn't go that day. Michael Wooand some of these guys went, and they went out to the, out to the construction site and it was a battle between the construction workers and, the demonstrators and the cops. They didn't get very far. They got to Broadway and then they, and I think the cops were tipped off and so the cops, there was a pitched battle in the middle of the street somewhere, and a bunch of people were arrested and let go that night.

And the next day -- it was in the paper, of course -- the next day Tyree says, okay, we're goin' back. So this time, from twenty-five to thirty people, it was about eighty to a hundred people. And we start at St. Peter Claver Center and Tyree says, "Okay, brothers and sisters, nonviolent now. This is nonviolent," because of the scuffle before, the day before. So we go down Jefferson, up the hill to Broadway, and then north on Broadway to the school, and we're chanting and we're having fun, and I'm at the end of the demonstrators. Human Rights Commission, right? I'm a commissioner. So we go towards the campus and we go into the gate -- there's a fence surrounding the construction site -- and we're marching to the superintendent's trailer. And Tyree said, "Don't forget, brothers and sisters, nonviolent." So we go to the trailer, and the construction workers, they were all throughout the building, they all come down to the second level and they're yellin' at us -- they're all white -- they're yelling at us and giving us the finger and throwing little pieces of wood down at us. And we're marching. Nonviolent, nonviolent. And finally they start throwing down little pieces of lumber, two by fours and stuff, and it was pissing us off, the demonstrators, so like in unison we say, "Nonviolent, bullshit," and up the ladders we went. For some stupid reason the construction workers left the ladders on the sides of the building, so up the ladders we went, up to the second floor. And there's this Nordic American guy, this baldheaded foreman, and he's fifty, fifty-five years old and standing, "You'll come up here over my dead body." Well, everybody just went over his body, man. Up and then the pitched battle starts with the demonstrators and the construction workers. And these guys are armed, right? The construction workers, they're armed. But we had our two by fours, the signs on two by fours, not little old piddly pieces of wood, but two by fours, so boom, boom, boom, pitched battle. And about ten minutes someone yells, "Tack Squad," so we look out and here comes, down Broadway, from the north, comes the police in their visors and so everybody says, "Let's get the hell out of here." So down the ladders they go, out the gate. And I'm still there 'cause I'm worried about this old guy, he's bleeding and I'm bending over him and saying, "Man, you look bad. We better call an aid car." So I'm with him 'til the aid car comes. Those guys come up and take care of him, and so I leave. I'm down, I go down the ladder, I look around, I'm alone. And so I go out to the gate, and to the side is this tree, and under the tree is Tyree Scott, Todd Hawkins, Michael Ross, Sylvester Carter, and they're in handcuffs. And I just glance over and see them, and I'm walking out the door, and Michael Ross says, "Hey officer, he's with us." [Laughs] And and the cop runs up to me, says, "Are you with them?" I said, "Yeah, I guess so." So boom, I get arrested, right? I'm under the tree with them guys.

And then they take us downtown and they book us, and they put us in a cell two at a time, two to a cell, and I'm with Todd Hawkins, the old crusty construction worker, and he goes right to the cot and he lays down and shuts his eyes. And I'm nervous, right? I'm thinking of police brutality in the South, Bull Connor and the dogs and all the commotion that was out there. I said, oh my god, we're gonna get beat up. And I stand up and I start humming "We Shall Overcome," 'cause I think all the demonstrators had to follow us down to the jail, right? [Hums] And Todd says, "Bob, will shut the F up? I'm tryin' to sleep." I said, "Todd, man, I've never been in this situation before." So I sit down and the arresting officer comes in and says, "Okay, you guys, we'll let you go you sign a citation." It's like a parking ticket. "You sign a citation and you'll get a court date." And so I jump up to sign, and Todd says, "Bob, we're not signin' nothin'. We're here to give them a message. We're gonna stay here a week. We're goin' on a hunger strike." And I say, "Todd, Todd, my wife and kids expect me to come home and cook tonight. I got to go." So I sign the citation and I leave. Todd stays there. The next morning, of course, it's on TV, front page, and it shows Tyree and Todd Hawkins and me being led by the cops to the paddy wagon with handcuffs on and stuff. So I go to St. Peter Claver Center the next morning for the next demonstration and all these guys are yellin' and screamin', "Right on, Uncle Bob," and all this kind of stuff, and I said, "Yeah, we're gonna stay there for a week. We're gonna go on a hunger strike," and they all laugh and all that stuff. So that was the first of a series of five demonstrations at Central Seattle Community College. Every day, and the demonstration became larger and larger and larger. The Indians came, the Latinos, Roberto Maestas and the Latinos came, and the antiwar hippies, they were involved, and the last couple demonstrations two or three hundred people. And the cops were, knew they were overwhelmed, so the administration, the chief of police and some of his captains, lieutenants, met with Tyree and Sam Martinez and Eddie Rye, said, "Listen, would you guys mind if we did a symbolic arrest so that we hold down the injuries and stuff?" And Tyree agreed. He says, "Okay, there'll be seven of us, six or seven of us that will go through the fence or climb the fence, and then we'll do that." And that sort of set the tone for the rest of the movement in Seattle, where the police officers were less inclined to beat up the demonstrators and retaliation and vice versa. It wasn't, wasn't extremely calm. There's always still a lot of tension, but the police were willing to talk to Tyree to hold injuries down at these demonstrations.

TI: So there's almost like a pre-demonstration negotiation with the police?

BS: Yeah.

TI: And they say, "Okay, so we know you guys need to make a point and we have to do our job, so let's, in this case, do a ceremonial arrest and then go from there."

BS: Right. Yeah. So there was a whole week there and a lot of changes were being made, lot of the superintendents of these construction companies knew that they couldn't carry on business as usual. They had to really think about training programs, and they were funding training programs and they were hiring more people of color into the industry. Don't forget now, the unions were the ones that hired the carpenters and, various unions hired these skilled workers, so they had to be educated. Not only the superintendents and the construction companies but also the unions, they were hard to get into, hard to get blacks and other minorities into the unions. You had to go into their apprenticeship programs and all that, and they were, they were tougher than the contractors.

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: So what was the feeling by you and the others as this is going on? I mean, how are you feeling about --

BS: It was very exciting times. We saw that, when the politics of the street, when we started hitting the streets, changes were being made. Little by little more blacks were being hired in these construction teams. There was a lot of, the port was building the garage at SeaTac. A lot of federal money was going there, so Tyree gathers everybody up at St. Peter Claver Center and said, "We're bringing our folks out to SeaTac." And they worked with the Central Contractors Association and a lot of other civil rights groups. The United Farm Worker -- the grape boycott was going on at that time -- they sent their people up to Seattle. Lot of Asians, again, Dolores Sibonga and her husband, and all these Catholic priests and nuns were, we all went out to SeaTac. And what we did is we went from one concourse -- we're still, we're not allowed to go outside, but we went from one concourse to the other. The sheriffs were out there at, on the tarmac and they'd be monitoring us, and when we'd move down the concourse to another end of the airport they had to run twice as far to get around to the other end where we ended up. So finally we filtered our way down to the tarmac and we were singin' like, [sings] "We shall overcome," and airplanes were goin' over and all hell was breaking loose. The sheriff's department had to call in all the police departments from Federal Way and Renton and Fife and Kent and every, and it became like an armed camp. And we were running the sheriff's department people crazy. In the meantime, Jim Takasaki and a Central Area Contractors Association, they were lining up for tickets at the ticket counters, and there would be a bunch of them, right, so that the regular people that wanted to buy tickets to go on flights, they were at the end of the line. And Jim and them guys would take out their credit cards, they said, no, I think, no, I don't want to use this one, I'll use this one. They were just, just messing up the whole flight schedule of the whole terminal that day, doing these little side kind of things. It's legal. It wasn't illegal to stand in line to get a ticket, but to disrupt the process was very helpful.

Finally the announcement came, "If you don't leave the concourse you'll be arrested," and so, boom, people sat down, decided to sit down. And it was the same day that Uhlman had just won his election for mayor, and he was on his way to Hawaii on vacation and he came through, and everybody wanted him to make a statement about this civil rights movement. He supported it, of course, then he flew off. Then the cops came in and started hauling people off to jail, and two of the people were Dolores Sibonga and her husband Marty Sibonga, and a guy named Mike Holland, who was the parish priest at St. Mary's. Now, with us were Phil Hayasaka, director of the Human Rights Commission, Harvey McIntyre, Father McIntyre from, who was president of the Human Rights Commission, and me. I was vice, chair of the Human Rights Commission. And as the cops were hauling Mike Holland, the priest, out to the paddy wagon, Harvey runs up to the cops, says, "You can't arrest him. You got to arrest me. I'm the civil rights priest." He was all pissed off 'cause Mike had been arrested before Harvey and it was this internal kind of thing, and funnier than hell. So a lot of changes were made through the courts because of the disruption at Seattle, SeaTac Airport. One of the judges became very supportive of opening up the unions and the construction industry for workers, especially black workers, and we started to win some of these court cases through the ensuing years.

TI: So all this activism was really paying off. I mean, it was, changes were being made.

BS: Oh yeah. It was really paying off. See, Tyree was, Tyree was a strategist. He was very bright, and he, and some of his activities were being paid for by the Quaker group.

TI: Oh, the Friends?

BS: Friends, American Friends Service Committee. They were actually funding a lot of the activities for the United Construction Workers.

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So I'm guessing that some, there were quite a few people who weren't really happy with all this, and because the Claver Center, St. Peter Claver Center was such a center for a lot of this activism, did the Catholic Church come under pressure to kind of put the screws on you guys?

BS: Oh yeah. Yes.

TI: So tell me about that. What happened?

BS: The archbishop was under a lot of pressure to stifle the movement from his groups. And I just remembered, and a group of Indians met there one day and it was Bernie Whitebear, and those Indians, they were planning the occupation of Fort Lawton at that time. And the FBI was sort of milling around the corners, and you could tell who they were. They were in, they were in their jeans and their lumberjack shirts. They all dressed alike. They tried to blend in, right? None of the demonstrators wore lumberjack shirts, and these guys were all white and they had all their hair trimmed good, and they were sort of cool, you know? And we knew who they were, but there was a lot of that going on. A guy named Jim Yearby was with the police department, he called, and we're at St. Peter Claver Center and Jim Yearby called Tyree one day -- no, no. Jim Yearby called Walt Hubbard one day and said, Walter -- 'cause Walter was still involved in Seattle Interracial Council -- and there was this system, Sonitrol system that would pick up sounds. You hired the Sonitrol company for...

TI: Like security?

BS: Security. So they picked up noise, and so the police, the police chief wanted Sonitrol to open up the mikes during meetings.

TI: So they could eavesdrop onto what's...

BS: To eavesdrop, and Sonitrol called Walter and said, "We're getting calls from the police department that they want to eavesdrop." And so Walter tells me, I tell Tyree, and we tape up all the, all the mikes that are up in the walls and stuff and had our, had our meetings that way. But then we lost control of security for several weeks while meetings were going on. So a lot of that kind of stuff was happening.

TI: But keep talking about, then, the pressure on Archbishop Connolly and...

BS: There was a lot of pressure on Archbishop Connolly, but he was a very stubborn, stubborn man, and he started instituting some programs that would bring the church even closer to the Civil Rights Movement. He started a project called Project Equality that would, that would force all church related business to do business with companies that had opened up their businesses to minorities, companies that integrated. And he, a lot of money was going through the archdiocese to these contractors and to these firms that did business with the archdiocese, and so he started up this program called Project Equality, and that was a big issue with a lot of companies who had to scurry around and start hiring minorities so they could keep their contracts with the archdiocese. That was a bigger issue than the construction issues.

TI: So not only was he, so he was walking the talk.

BS: Yeah, he was walking the talk.

TI: I mean, not only was he supportive with groups using it, but he would change the business practices of the archdiocese.

BS: Exactly.

TI: That's good.

BS: He was, he's quite a leader of the, of the movement in terms of the religious sector, and there were a lot of other leaders in the religious field that were also following suit. Rabbis, the American, the American Jewish Committee, AJC, and Father Katagiri with the, I think he was Methodist, they had their movement going. Probably one of the most powerful movements was Archbishop Connolly because if he wanted support for an issue in our communities, he'd force his pastors to make announcements over the pulpit during Sunday sermon, so he got a lot of mileage out of his, the movement got a lot of mileage out of his involvement.

TI: That's good.

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: Earlier you were talking about Bernie Whitebear meeting there about sort of doing some demonstration at Fort Lawton, and the FBI guys were on the outside.

BS: Yeah.

TI: So whatever happened with that one?

BS: Well, Bernie Whitebear, he was a veteran. He was a paratrooper and he fought in the Vietnam War, and he'd just got out and he became involved in the fishing rights movement with a guy named Bob Satiacum, who was chief of the Puyallups. And Bernie became involved in the movement. And his name was Bernard Reyes. His father was Filipino, and when he started getting involved in the Native American movement he changed his name to reflect his Indian heritage and he named, he named himself Bernie Whitebear. His father was White Grizzly Bear, so he took part of the name from his grandfather and made Whitebear. And he was very, Bernie was a very charismatic guy and he... and when he was getting his people together, about a week or two before he got the representatives from the tribes together, a group of Indians had occupied Alcatraz Island, the old prison that was vacant. They closed it down, so these Indians got in a boat and they sort of occupied Alcatraz and they were there for a couple of weeks and they got rousted out. And that became the impetus of Bernie, because the federal government had just surplused Fort Lawton, an army base out in Magnolia, and so the army surplused the land to the original owner, the city of Seattle. Well, Bernie and those guys said, "Well bullshit, we're the original owner. We should have the land, this government land, this whole fort." So Bernie decided to get his people together, and they got fifty, sixty people together, and they climbed over the fence at Fort Lawton and they occupied Fort Lawton grounds. They set up teepees and stuff. There was, it was illegal occupation. And the army didn't know what to do, right? They didn't know what was going on. They they were in an area that wasn't bothering the military, whatever the military was doing. It was mostly the reserves then, and so they were left alone for a couple of weeks. And Bernie was having his meetings, he'd come out of the, he would come out of Fort Lawton and he'd have his meetings at St. Peter Claver Center. Said, "Bob, can we use your space to have our meetings here to plan what we're gonna do after we're forced out of the fort and how we're gonna deal with acquiring the land?" They had to bring in lawyers and everybody else, and so to have this meeting at St. Peter Claver Center, all these young Indians are there, and you know, you been to an Indian, a Native American ceremony? You know they, they have the sage and the smoke from the sage cleanses your spirit and it, whatever it does. Well, after the meeting Bernie has one of the nuns -- the Maryknoll nuns were still, they were still living in the convent - - comes running up to me and says, "Mr. Santos, Mr. Santos. Those kids are starting to smoke the sage." I said, "It's okay, Sister. It's okay. They're cool." Well, they were, yeah, it wasn't the sage. It was somethin' else.

Anyway, so Bernie and I met and we became very, very close 'cause he wanted to know more about his Filipino heritage from me. It was about the same time all this stuff was happening and all these groups are meeting at St. Peter Claver Center. Larry Gossett was the leader of the Black Student Union and aligned himself with the Black Panthers.

TI: So the Black Student Union at the University of Washington?

BS: At the University of Washington, and him and some of his buddies, there was an issue at Franklin High School where two young African American girls were sent home because they were going, they were attending school with their afros, and the administration at Franklin said, "Tthat's not proper. That's not proper dress for school attire. You have to have your hair cut." And so there was this big occupation of Franklin High School by Larry Gossett and some of his folks from the Black Student Union, and so they disrupted the whole afternoon, and the students, the black students came into the auditorium to hear Larry Gossett and the only teacher to show up with the students was a guy name Bob Maestas, a teacher at Franklin High School, history teacher. And that was Roberto, and it was from there that Larry and Roberto became very close, right after that. They had met a couple, Roberto started attending more of the meetings and the demonstrations and the rallies, that kind of stuff, and became very militant. Roberto became very militant, quit the school and brought a bunch of Latinos together, and after Bernie occupies Fort Lawton, Roberto occupies the vacant school, Beacon Hill School, to be used as a cultural center for the Latino population. It was about two months before Roberto occupies Beacon Hill School that Larry Matsuda, John Eng, and some Asian guys got together, were planning the occupation of Beacon Hill School for Asian, for an Asian community center.

TI: Oh, I didn't know about this. So the Asian community had a similar idea?

BS: Yeah, had the idea before the Latinos did, but for some reason it sort of, it sort of died out, that issue, and without knowing the Asians got together, Roberto got his people together and they actually physically occupied the building, the school building. And as --

TI: So was there any behind the scenes conflicts between the Asian group and the Latino group about that?

BS: No. It was, you know, they beat us to it, so we have to move on to something else. At that time a lot of issues were happening in the International District, so a lot of the Asians started to pick up some of the concerns about the construction of I-5 through the International District, I-90. And this was even before the Kingdome was planned, but there were a lot of, our attention was starting to focus on issues in the International District.

TI: And this is, like, the beginning of InterIm and things like this?

BS: Yeah. This is towards the end of the '60s.

TI: Okay, so we're gonna take another break right here before we go into that next phase.

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: So, Bob, we're gonna get going again, and we just finished up with how Roberto was occupying Beacon Hill School and Bernie was doing Fort Lawton.

BS: Yeah. Fort Lawton.

TI: And we were just gonna start now transitioning, talking more about the Asian American movement, things happening, so let's pick it up there.

BS: And as I mentioned, John Eng and Larry Matsuda and some of these other guys were, had talked about the occupation of Beacon Hill School prior to the, to the Latino occupation, but it was still a movement of Asians, Phil Hayasaka, Lois Fleming, who married Phil later on, a couple of young Filipinos started up Filipino Americans for Equality. Joan Kis and Tony Oglivie and those folks, they started talking about more, they wanted to be more included in some of the issues going on at the schools. They wanted ethnic studies, Asian studies, and they were forming groups there. And the Asian Coalition for Equality was starting up then with, as I say, John Eng and those folks, Dave Okimoto, Joe Okimoto. And there was an issue that came about when Senator Jackson during his campaign wanted to have his kickoff at the Everett Elks Club, and the Elks Club was an exclusionary club. Only white males could join the Elks Club. And the conversation started that, well, they're, they can't be an exclusive club. If they apply for an H license through the state and if they're granted an H license, then we have, we should be able to join the club or at least take advantage of the services at the club because it's actually, they're opening it up to public, using public services to serve their members, the Class H licensing which licenses liquor. So I don't know exactly how it, how it was organized, but a group of Asians led by a lot of Niseis, Phil Hayasaka, Reverend Katagiri, and they worked with Tony Oglivie and the Filipino Americans for Equality and we picketed the Elks Club because of their exclusionary practices.

TI: And this is right during his kickoff event or reelection?

BS: This was during his kickoff event, and it was one of the very first times I remember that an Asian group was out in public picketing or involved in a demonstration against a private white club. And that picked up quite a bit of publicity, particularly in the Asian community because finally the Asians were involved in a movement. Well, we were saying all along the Filipinos were involved in the movement at the, during the United Farm Workers boycott, walkout of the fields of California in the mid '60s. It was the Filipino farm workers who first walked out of the fields before Cesar Chavez, and when they walked out Cesar Chavez joined them and they formed the United Farm Workers association. So Asians were involved very early on. Indian fishing rights, we're telling the other, blacks and Latinos, "We've been involved for many years, even before now, but we're really joining forces with you." Seattle was --

TI: And prior to that, I'm curious, was there, what's the right word, a push from the black or the Latino community to the Asians, like, "Hey guys, you guys have to get more in the game. I mean, we're out there doing things. Where are you?" Was there any of that talk going on?

BS: That might've been internally, but this is, we're talking about the same era, the Black Panthers, the United Construction Workers meeting at St. Peter Claver Center, the Oriental, ACE, Asian Coalition for Equality were meeting there, and the Asian activists were joining the Latino activists, the Asian activists were joining Tyree Scott. Michael Woo, Doug Chin, I forgot his name, Steve Locke, Steve Louie, they were, they were also going out on the marches that Tyree Scott was organizing for the construction workers, so the Asians started to get involved in that movement, and then the Asians started to show up at Fort Lawton when Bernie was occupying that fort. And so you saw a lot of the Asian activists starting to support other ethnic demonstrations, other movements. So Seattle was very unique in that happening, 'cause much of the meetings were at St. Peter Claver Center, so if you had the Asian Coalition for Equality meeting and then you had United Construction people meeting and then they joined forces for various events, demonstrations, rallies, and so it became a multiracial movement. It's never happened before anywhere else in the nation.

TI: And it sounds like it's because of the place. I mean, having everyone meeting at the same place, there could be that, that cross, that collaboration.

BS: Yeah. We were sharing each other's knowledge. And it's as if people didn't want to miss out on hitting the streets, and when, when Roberto occupied Beacon Hill, Beacon Hill School, all the other minority groups were following him and helping him occupy that building. They had it to one winner. And we always joked to El Centro people, we said if the Asians occupy a building it would be in the springtime, not in the dead of winter when there's no heat, and then we'd get a big laugh about that. But demonstrations that were happening, Tyree Scott at Seattle Central Community College, eighty people, hundred people, two hundred people, and it was a multiethnic, it wasn't just blacks. It was the war movement, white hippies, it was the Asians, the Indians, the Latinos, and then when -- that's at Seattle Central Community College and the construction industry demonstrations -- and then when we moved to the Native Americans, Fort Lawton, the whole, the two hundred people would go up to Fort Lawton, two hundred people would go to...

TI: Beacon Hill?

BS: Beacon Hill School, and those two hundred people would come down to the ID when I called for help. So the media was saying, god, we've got thousands of people out there demonstrating; it was the same two hundred people, really. The core group was all these groups supporting each other. So Larry Gossett was now head of CAMP, and this is when we start the Gang of Four cooperation.

TI: And before we go there, I just wanted to finish up this story, the Everett Elks Club, and you had that demonstration, the picketing. What, whatever happened? What happened?

BS: That, that was the first demonstration, locally, against an all white men's club, and that sort of spurred a movement called the Coalition Against Discrimination, Coalition Against Discrimination. So that first group that went to the Elks Club, they formed this Coalition Against Discrimination, and it brought in the American Jewish Committee. It brought in all the, the Oriental Student Union, the Asian Coalition for Equality, Filipino Coalition for Equality, and a lot of fringe groups, and they formed this group to fight the discriminatory practices of all these private clubs, including the Washington Athletic Club, the Rainier Club, the Elks, the Eagles, the Moose. And so this became a citywide movement that one demonstration led to this, and it forced, eventually forced the clubs to open up.

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: As, as now Asian Americans are coming out more, were you getting pressure, or other Asian Americans getting pressure from, I guess, the older generation? I'm thinking in the Japanese American community some of the, the older Niseis, if they were critical of this activism. Same thing in the Filipino community, were you getting sort of pressure, like, "Bob, back off"? I mean, was that happening during this time?

BS: That, now we move into the International District issues and InterIm. When the Kingdome was planned lot of, a guy named, a guy named Sabino Cabildo, he was RCP. He was a Communist. And he called me one day and said, "Bob, we should have, we should get some people together to fight the idea of having a Kingdome -- or a, not the Kingdome then, a stadium -- built in the community. And this is about the same time, well, right after I-5 was built to the ID and I-90 was being planned for the south end, and then so you had a multipurpose stadium on the west end, so it was the Asian, the Filipino activists that said, "What's gonna happen to our manongs, our oldtimers, our alaskeros? They're gonna be displaced out of their homes." So the Filipino activists were the first ones to meet. Pete Bacho, his brother Norris Bacho, Selmi Domingo and Nomisio Domingo, and Sabino, and myself, we started to talk about how, how do we, how do we fight this intrusion of all this development that is surrounding the International District and will eventually -- and we looked at the hotel, I Hotel issue in San Francisco. Remember the International Hotel? That was the last building in the old Manilatown, and that became a symbol of, of Asian activism, trying to keep that building open for the old people that lived in that building. So that idea of fighting to keep that alive in San Francisco transferred into Seattle to keep the Filipino Manilatown alive in Seattle. And it so coincided with a lot of other Asian activists that were now being concerned about the health and future of the first generation.

So the first meetings were held at St. Peter Claver Center by these Asian activists, Filipino activists and Asian activists, and I even have a photo of that meeting. That was a great meeting. And we're talking about using the organization that was formed by the business community called InterIm, International District Improvement Association. Starting, we should start attending those meetings that InterIm was holding. InterIm was started by the property owners, the business owners, as a quasi chamber of commerce. Tomio Moriguchi and Shigeko Uno, Terry Toda, Don Chin, they started InterIm, and we, the Asian activists, we started attending their meetings. InterIm was funded in part, we got a contract from the Model Cities Program. It was a federal program. Money came from the federal government to the city of Seattle to talk about issues within a sector of Central Area and downtown Seattle that included the International District, so the federal funds were coming into the city to fund community groups within that model city boundary. In the International District we were part of that boundary, so we said we're eligible for some of this money.

So we wrote a little proposal and the Model City advisory committee met at Seattle U library to vote on the funding of these proposals that came in, and one came from InterIm, and the person that presented the proposal to the group was Tomio Moriguchi. And I didn't, that's the first time I had met Tomio, because I was on the advisory committee of the Model City Program because I was part of St. Peter Claver Center. So the vote, the vote to fund the first, to fund, the vote to fund InterIm came out fourteen to fourteen. It was a tie vote, 'cause most of the, most of the blacks were saying the Asians don't have any problems. That's when that first came out. So the chairman of the Model City Program there was Judge Charles Johnson, and he voted to oppose the funding, and I could have killed him, but he was a judge, right? So we woke up to the fact that, it's okay, we're not gonna get funding, but we really have to be in a position to educate the black community and other ethnic communities on the plight of the neighbors and the people in the International District who would be displaced with all this development that's going on. People didn't understand it. Everybody thought if, and now, it's now that the Kingdome is being planned and the idea of construction of this multipurpose Kingdome, people outside the community said, "Well, it's gonna help your community. You're gonna have sixty thousand people going to your restaurants and going through the International District."

TI: Just going back, I was just thinking about that meeting, the fourteen, fourteen and then the tiebreaker.

BS: Yeah.

TI: I mean, tactically, in hindsight, would it have been better if more of an activist had presented the InterIm proposal rather than Tomio, who was a businessperson so he had a successful store that he was representing? I was just thinking of, yeah, the politics in terms of how it was perceived if someone like you or more of an activist...

BS: Well actually, the InterIm hadn't been infiltrated yet.

TI: Okay. So they were all businesspeople.

BS: They were all businesspeople and property owners, and they had just won an award. Metropolitan, City of Seattle Metropolitan Club gave InterIm an award for beautifying the International District with new lighting, got rid of the prostitution problem, and the community was starting to rise up. But InterIm, the InterIm meetings then, that's when we started, after they lost the Model City funding, there was a guy named Eric Inoue, he was the staff person at InterIm, and he got people involved in helping him write a new proposal. Donna Yee, Louise Kamikawa, a lot of these students from the University of Washington School of Social Work, they became involved in the International District.

TI: So the business component realized that they weren't, they need that help.

BS: They didn't know that yet.

TI: So there's still some fighting in terms of, fighting about --

BS: We were a bunch of Communists, you know? Really. Here, all of a sudden the business community and InterIm, they're having their meetings and then these activists started infiltrating the monthly meetings, and it came to a point where there's a lot of disagreement about whether the stadium would be good for the district or bad for the district. And at time, at the time of electing the executive committee, there were just as many of us as there were the businesspeople at election time, and we could vote. It was open voting. You didn't have to be a, all you had to be is interested in the International District. You didn't have to be an owner or a business owner.

TI: Just be at that meeting, if you were at that meeting.

BS: Just be at the meeting, and so we had some of our people that were elected to the executive committee. I think it included Donna Yee and some other folks like that, and so when that happened a lot of the more conservative businesspeople at InterIm, they decided they didn't want to deal with these Communists. And that's what we were called, called Communists, Socialist or whatever. So they left InterIm, and the people who stayed were people like Tomio, Shigeko Uno, Dr. Terry Toda, 'cause they were very intrigued by the passion, the energy and the smarts of the young activists. Tomio was very cool then. He didn't agree with us at all, but he said, he started thinking together we may be, because of the vote that was taken, he himself thought, if we do start accepting this activism maybe next year when the vote comes out we will get the funding from Model City. He and Shigeko and some of these folks, they talked about that, just like you brought up, maybe it should've been some of us to present that. Well the next year, when we applied for funding we got the funding. It was almost unanimous.

TI: And who presented? Who...

BS: I forgot who did it. It might've been me or someone else, but I think I was, I think I was hired soon after that. But the community was really divided, the International District. It was hard, it was hard... I was hired by InterIm in 1972, but I didn't start work until '73 'cause I, the Model City money was hung up by (Mayor Wes) Uhlman. He didn't want me running the show down there.

TI: But going back to this, this whole InterIm, and I'm curious about some of the more longstanding Japanese American communities, like the JACL. Were they at all involved with civil rights and some of these activism movements during this time?

BS: There were individuals, but not so much as an organization. They were sort of standing apart. I wasn't a member of JACL, so I don't know what was happening internally, but you had Tomio and all these folks that were a part of JACL, Shigeko, and at their meetings they must've been discussing what was happening with InterIm and the new crop of young activism that were involved in trying to preserve the community.

TI: Especially when you think about, their stated mission is civil rights, here we were in the midst of the largest civil rights movement in Seattle, and I'm just curious, where were they during this time?

BS: They weren't opposing us, and as I say, there were individuals. There might've been some actions taken by JACL supporting some of the, some things we're doing, but some of the things we're doing were just spur of the moment kinds of demonstrations against the Kingdome, the occupation of the HUD building in 1972 or 1973. There were actions that were taken right after a meeting, the next day we'd be in the streets, so there wasn't very much time for the organizations, like JACL or the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, to really react.

TI: What's your sense, thinking back to those years, sort of in the '60s, was it because they wouldn't react, or did you have a sense that, even asked, would they have participated in the way you wanted?

BS: I think because we were so far left that they didn't want to be perceived as supporting a leftist group, you know? Some people would brand us as Communist and I don't know where that came from, but hell, we didn't want to be involved in that political thing, even Democrats, Republicans, Communists, Sandinistas. Didn't matter to us. We had, our goal was to, was preserve the neighborhood for the people, the pioneers who built it. What we did was we looked at other neighborhoods similar to ours in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and we saw that neighborhoods were being lost. Manilatown in San Francisco, completely wiped out. Little Tokyo was being wiped, the residential population was being wiped out to make Little Tokyo more of a tourist attraction, and they were fighting for many years to try to keep it a residential base, but they lost it out. So, learning that, we said we will not, that will not happen in Seattle. Preserving either the buildings or building new buildings for the residents who built this community was the number one priority. Tomio, Shigeko, and those businesspeople agreed with that, to a point.