<Begin Segment 18>

BY: So the story of Scott calling you and getting you to meet Steven Spielberg is, I think, pretty well documented, and I don't know how much of our time I want to spend on just that because it is well documented. What I'm curious about is what about that visit has not been conveyed, if anything? What don't we know about that trip of meeting Spielberg? And I think I looked at some photos where it appears that your kids met Spielberg as well.

TI: Right, right.

BY: So how did that happen?

TI: Well, so there was the initial meeting down the Shoah Foundation, and then the Spielberg visit was actually several years later after we had actually developed some technology, and so it was an opportunity to actually show him. Like, one, thank you, because your organization helped get us started with the ideas, but take a look at this. Because rather than using really expensive technology, we did this all on personal computer technology. And I remember him being astonished, because he didn't understand personal computer technology. So I was doing this on a little laptop, and I was talking about streaming video and stuff like that. And he's looking at his people, says, "So how can he do this on this little computer, and what's this streaming video?" So I remember mentioning Rob Glazer, who was at RealNetworks, and so I think he went over there and talked to Rob about streaming video. Because he said, "We're like fiberoptic cable, from point to point, and that's how we do this. What's this internet and streaming video and how do you guys do that? Because it seems like that's the way to go." So that was interesting.

But going back to the first thing I'll share that I don't think I've shared was how skeptical I was about doing this project. That there was a lot of convincing, and part of this was I had a career doing pretty sophisticated technology projects, creating new products and things like this. And walking into community meetings where people really don't understand what's involved in doing these kind of projects, and then wanting, and not understanding what was possible either, and there were a couple things going on. One side, when they said, "We want to capture the story of the Japanese American community," and they're talking about, we'll do some interviews and maybe create a VHS video that we can then duplicate and then give out, was probably the top idea that was being discussed. The second one was, or we can write a book and that would be another way. And I just, having just left Microsoft and knowing all these things, said, oh, there's just so much more that we can do, but then also being somewhat reluctant because you're walking into a situation where people don't understand what's involved and maybe some of the resources and the kind of work or people you would need to do this. And so there was kind of this reluctance on my part to start this, knowing that it was going to be fairly difficult to do. But the trip to the Shoah Foundation was probably done, in talking to people, to recruit me. They knew that if they could somehow show me this, that it would make a difference in my thinking. And so part of it was, in talking to some of the people who were arranging the trip, it wasn't just to learn about what the Shoah Foundation was doing, which was, they wanted to, and Scott Oki could get us into the door and see that, it was really, they felt that it was important for me to see this, to sell me, which it did. Because I looked at this, and the challenge of, okay, we can do this with personal computer technology, we don't need the expensive mainframe technology, the robotic hard drive systems, the fiberoptic cables, we could actually bootstrap this up with personal computer technology and upcoming networks like the internet. So that was... but the thing that I don't really share was how skeptical and reluctant I was at the beginning. And if you talk to some of the people there, they would say the same thing. They said, "We could see that you stood at the back of the room with your folded arms, kind of going, 'Oh, what are these guys doing?'" [Laughs] It's like they're so old-fashioned or backwards in terms of what they were thinking, and I said, "Why would I want to walk through that door," because it would be so hard. So the Shoah trip really was kind of a turning point where I just said, "Okay, I know we can do this. It's going to be hard, but it's worth it."

BY: That's interesting, because it's often depicted as, rather, you go down there and you see it and go, "Wow."

TI: And there was that, but going in, I was literally not on board. And I think Scott, to his credit, was also, he's the master sales guy. He was an executive vice president at Microsoft, heading U.S. sales and marketing, he was good.

BY: Well, it seems like you had a good bit of foresight, and that story about approaching Encyclopedia Britannica, and, of course, the value of the CDROMs to them, and them not getting it, and it just was a painful reminder of what the newspaper industry has become, just not seeing the internet. Has any... so a quick question, so were you thirty-nine or forty when you quit Microsoft, somewhere in that range?

TI: I was thirty-five or thirty-six when I left Microsoft, and I started with Densho when I was thirty-nine.

BY: Okay, so there was a little more of a gap there than I thought.

TI: There was a three-year gap where I played kind of the stay-at-home dad helping, bringing the kids to school, got involved with a lot of youth sports, started doing a lot of coaching during that time period. So there's large segments of, at least in our community, that I'm known more as a coach of youth sports than anything else.

BY: That's cool. Has any Densho donor equaled or approached Scott's initial one million stake?

TI: No, not at this point.

BY: And you started working at Densho for free. When did you start taking a salary?

TI: So it was about ten years in.

BY: And so what are we up to now in terms of the number of visual oral histories, digitized images, annual visits to the public, by the public?

TI: Right, so there's about a thousand oral histories. I think we're a little bit under that, but we're close to a thousand. In terms of other objects like photographs, documents, newspapers, about eighty thousand. I think in terms of hits on our website, I think it's over a million annually.

BY: And how many of the interviews did you conduct personally?

TI: About two hundred fifty.

BY: Two fifty

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2020 Densho. All Rights Reserved.