<Begin Segment 1>

BN: So we're here on May 17, 2022, for the second interview with Frank Sata at his home in Pasadena, California. My name is Brian Niiya and I'm one of the interviewers along with Brian Takeda, and Evan Kodani is shooting the video for us this morning. So we will get started. Where we left off last time is Frank was talking about his year at the Berkeley School of Architecture and leaving after a year, and we wanted to start this session with his stint in the army. So, I guess the first question is, how did you end up in the army?

FS: Well, I think a lot of us, during the time I was at Berkeley, we were quite aware of the Korean War. And the draft was going on, and so in a way, I think leaving school, I knew that I would get drafted. So that was a transition for many guys. We either fully graduated and then got drafted or... I was near completion, I think, I just sort of walked away, but I got the credits. Then when I came back to Pasadena, then I was called up.

BN: So was it that if you were in school, you would not be drafted?

FS: I'm not sure because I know a lot of the talks with certain guys that were, we were kind of roundballs, we played a lot of basketball, that kind of stuff. And we used to hang out and talk about the possibility. One of the good friends, he became a permanent bird colonel in the military, and I think he flew around a lot. But yeah, it seemed like a natural transition. A lot of guys my age got drafted about the same time, so we just accepted that and moved on into the stuff you had to do in the army.

BN: So where did you end up going once you were...

FS: We started out at Fort Ord. Most of us, again, we all had long hair. I didn't quite have the duck tail, but had the hair, so that was quite an experience to have that all shaved off and stuff like that. And then the, I remember vividly my assignment, we were in the 63rd, which is, they were called The Flying 63rd because it's the furthest from the rifle range. We had to do double-time all the way there, things like that. It was a pretty much automatic sixteen-week basic because they were training people to go to Korea.

BN: Then amongst the other people you were training with, were they people from the same geographic area, or who...

FS: No. Actually, my barrack is probably the most... another thing I'll never forget is that my bunkmates, they're double bunks alongside of each other. And the one above me, and on three sides, they were Black guys and they were from the South. And I think some of... and they're really nice guys. But they only had like third or fourth grade education, and that struck with me and stuck with me for a long time, how... yeah, the importance of education, so the army really helped me grow up. And I knew a few Japanese guys, or I met them, and what I recall most was the fact that they were smaller. I wasn't that big a guy, but at that time, I was one of the taller Nisei types. All the equipment and all the stuff you had to carry and the rifle, and to have to double time to the firing range, that kind of reminded me of the 442 guys. Because it's a lot of weight, and even though I was a ballplayer type, it was tough. So I do recall that type of thing.

BN: You talked before, considered the 442 guys like heroes. Was that part of why you wanted... I mean, were you thinking about them when you went in?

FS: No, I think it's more in retrospect, because of the timing and I remember... and I'm not sure when that first movie came out, Van Johnson. I think, I might have been already about getting out of camp or about that time...

BN: Go for Broke!, yeah, that was 1951, so that had been out for a couple years by then.

FS: Oh, okay.

BN: So I remember that movie, and you know how small the guys were and how inspiring for me? I had no role models, because I don't have any siblings. For me, that was very special. So the thing of education, I guess, to be... I did have three years of college, and so then to have my bunkmates be Blacks that didn't even get a chance to go past fourth grade. And they were, you know, normal, nice guys, and I really... yeah, that's kind of kept with me and other things I've done in my life.

BN: So you said sixteen weeks?

FS: Yeah. Well, when I was in the army, I thought of joining OCS, and so it had an additional eight weeks of leadership school, prepping to go back east for OCS. And yeah, I got my samurai roots and everything, I was quite good at marching folks around and looking spic and span and all that kind of stuff. So I was a pretty good cadre they called it, they got blue helmets and all this stuff, and you march the military, the other soldiers, the basic people around. And there was all... I think my whole experience in the army helped me in the rest of my life. I wasn't a quiet Nisei certainly because of that. I mean, it did help me be stronger and hold my opinions, or not hold it, but to share it. And I really looked back at that period as being a very positive time of growing up. I didn't know what I was going to do, so it was good for me.

BN: Did you ever experience, you feel any discrimination for being Asian at that time fighting... we were at war with an Asian country and so forth?

FS: I didn't sense anything like that because of the circumstances, I think, that I was in. And the timing of the basic, I didn't go abroad with that troop that I was training with. But we bonded because -- and not just the Black guys, but others. Something about the military and the forced marches and all that stuff, I felt that was a very positive relationship. I could see how you can bond in the military, and I can understand what I read about some of that kind of stuff in the war, and the kind of guys that I had as trainers. You always watch your back, and these are guys that were master sergeants that came back from the war and they have always told stories about the guys that were trained OCS (Officers Candidate School) or the lieutenants coming out of the army training to be officers, schools. But they didn't always succeed even though they had a bar on their collar and they were the leaders, supposedly, but they didn't understand what the fighters were about, and the kind of cohesion you need in the military. So they reminded us about what it's like to go to war and things like that. So I didn't feel any, for me, any discrimination. And because of my second term there at Fort Ord to do... I had a little more time as part of the training for OCS, I could play basketball. And we had a pretty good basketball team that went around and played other Buddhist churches in Northern California. We had a good team because we had some guys that played in college.

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<Begin Segment 2>

BN: And then you said you didn't go overseas. How did that come about, or how did you avoid...

FS: Yeah, I didn't try to avoid it. What happened is because of the timing and because of... I realized that I didn't want to serve an extra year, and I didn't know anything about this. I'm not a very good form observer, I don't read what I'm given. So when I found out that if you go in the service to be an officer, you had to be active for an extra year. And that's when I realized that it's not my thing, and I declined and they reassigned me. And then so from there, I was assigned to Fort Sheridan in Chicago, and of course, the jock side of me, I was playing basketball and I broke my foot and had a big cast. And then I got transferred from there to Fort Carson, Colorado, where I spent the rest of my career.

BN: Were you disappointed you didn't go overseas or relieved?

FS: I didn't quite understand that.

BN: The fact that you didn't go overseas, was that a relief to you or were you actually disappointed that you didn't get to go?

FS: I don't think... let's see. I was twenty-one years old or twenty years old, I was pretty young. I don't think that kind of thing really occurred to me. When you're growing up, there's a lot of things that you don't think that deeply about. I guess if I were good friends with the guys that went to basic with, it might have been one thing. But because I had a gap by being in leadership school, they went their way and were already going to Korea, and I stayed back a little longer. So I don't think there was, for me, any awareness of that kind of thing. A lot of it is you keep going. That's why I started learning more about... I have different thoughts of those experiences. It was all positive for me.

BN: Okay. And then how long were you in in total, then?

FS: About two years. Not quite two years, because they cut it back a little bit and get early release, but there was nothing... but my time in Fort Carson also was sort of special because I had different experiences. Because of my background, I had a little bit of engineering and things, so they put me in the Corps of Engineers. And I was assigned to a battalion, and they called me a Chief Draftsman, I felt pretty good, that seemed to give me a title. It didn't give me more ranks, I just moved up the natural way. But I had a different kind of relationship again. I came to understand how the military -- and you take a large camp like that, it's now Fort Carson but at that time it was Camp Carson. And the battalions, our commander's wife was the head of the women's club for the whole camp. So she kind of controlled... and the women's club controlled the military. They're the ones that the ladies could tell the commanding general, "Hey, those guys look sloppy," and boy, they clean it up in a hurry. So that's something I learned, early politics of the military because I was kind of... well, I became sort of the favorite of this woman, the wife of the commander of our battalion, the colonel's wife. And it was because she discovered I could draw a little bit, so I made signs and things for our unit, kind of a little bit special. I did a carving for the women's club wall that depicted our battalion, so I became sort of her favorite, if you will. So again, it's, yeah, everything was positive. Because of the few skills I had at that time, playing a lot of ball, first time I got my teeth knocked out by playing baseball. Some guy... I loved sports, so I played baseball for the battalion team, so I got my front teeth knocked out. That wasn't good. But I also played against Billy Martin, who had just won the World Series and got drafted, so we got that kind of stuff on record. It was all good. First time I made any money, because I had a salary. I came out of camp and my parents didn't have much, grew up at Westridge. I guess I was a little bit spoiled, and it was sort of nice to be somebody. I was able to become somebody in the military.

BN: So you were at Camp Carson when you were discharged then?

FS: Yeah. And I bought my first car that I paid for.

BN: What happened to the other car, the fancy one?

FS: Well, the car, see, the first car we had was the one my mother bought for me, it was a black Chevrolet. And it was partly so that they could get around, because neither drove. That car was left with my mother when I went to camp, to the army. So she was driving this black Chevrolet that was lowered, with pipes on it. [Laughs]

BN: I'm just imagining a Nisei woman driving that car.

FS: Yeah, she had to learn clutch cars, and you know how that is when anybody learned how to drive a clutch in those days, it was pretty rough. Yeah, so my first car then was a great big Buick convertible, and all the guys in my battalion, we can drive up to Colorado, I mean, drive up to Greely and different places where the colleges were, where the many Hawaiian girls used to go to college at Colorado State.

BN: So then when you were discharged, did you come back to California?

FS: Yeah, I came back to Westridge School.

BN: I'm sorry, came back to...

FS: Where I grew up, Westridge School, where my father was working. That was home still for me. This time I had a big Buick.

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<Begin Segment 3>

BN: Okay. So after you come back to Pasadena, where did you... what sorts of jobs did you take on?

FS: Well, I think... okay. After I came back and, as I say, I was still living at Westridge School. And then I got some small jobs. I know, I think I was doing more the gardener's helper kind of stuff. So I remember doing, washing driveways, because in those days, I can do that pretty well, for some really prominent people. One was Tam O'Shanter (owner). Right across the way, the valley, is the Frank family (home), they were related to Van de Kamp family. So I used to continue playing tennis. No, I guess that's even before. We may have already discussed that when I played tennis with John Van de Kamp. After the military, I did other odd jobs like that, but also working with a paper company stocking boxes and things. And I worked (a) regular job was at Hoffman Electronics, a big company not too far south of USC. And then they folded, or the economy went down. They laid me off, but then they laid me off after the top guys, the engineers were laid off. (That) was another experience. I sat in this huge drafting room and all these guys put their stuff in the box and leaving one at a time, so that was quite a visual experience for me.

BN: What did they make, Hoffman Electronics?

FS: Well, I'm not sure. Because they called, what I was doing was some kind of a low frequency tuner, and I don't know what that component was, I was just a good draftsman and I did what the (engineer) told me to do. I think Hoffman Electronics got into other stuff, hi-fi, whatever. And they might have been connected with the aircraft industry, (I think) a lot of those things are linked. And that was purely drafting. But when I got laid off there, I got a job then with an industrial designer that taught at USC, and their office is right down the hill on Palmetto. On the other side where Mihara's restaurant is now. I worked there for just a short time, and then it was time to go to school and it worked out. I already knew the teacher, when I started USC all over while working full time because they allowed people that worked to do some of the courses at night. Their curriculum was five years, so it's the design side that required five years in, so we started night school.

BN: Did you know all through this time that you wanted to go to architecture school?

FS: Not really. Well, architects, I'm still trying to define what it is. I think it's a fantasy thing that most schools don't know what they're really teaching. Because everybody has a different perception of what an architect is. And I'm the process of trying to define that a little bit more. But the only thing for certain is it requires money. So the buildings don't get built until they have money. So it's all related to economics. And in my opinion, most, not all, architects are puppets to the power of the money. Not, what do you call it, where we design buildings to support whatever that money is invested in, whether it's housing, schools, anything. And the premise and understanding of what the architectural field, it's kind of... I noticed most institutions have a hard time trying to really educate architects in a short time to understand. So they don't teach anything about money, they teach about technology and quality of design, the envelope, whatever. Well, but that's how it is. So I didn't know what I was getting into.

BN: What attracted you to the USC program?

FS: There was only two, Cal and USC. I wasn't about to go back to Cal.

BN: You knew, you already tried Cal.

FS: Well, and plus, being an only child and knowing what my parents went through, I felt the need to be at home and be... not that I had a heck of a lot to offer them economically, but I was close to my parents, they were good to me, and I guess it was only natural that I stayed with them and drove them around when they needed to go anywhere. That seems the natural thing. It never occurred to me, it wasn't a choice, it just happened, I guess.

BN: What were they doing at that time? Was your dad still, were they still at the school?

FS: Yeah. My dad was the custodian doing, cleaning the outside and the inside of the school. And my mother was a day laborer doing housework, still walking to the bus stop. She was still younger so she could do that, and doing housework. So nothing really changed for them.

BN: Were you still living there as well?

FS: Yeah, I lived right there. And I think, you know, you live so long, as long as I've lived, too, I can't... I guess I can't thank them enough because, to me, my parents, both of them, allowed me to really take advantage of life and what my field gave me, a chance to travel, a chance to learn, a chance to participate. Everything I've been able to do, I still thank them, that they made the commitment. Well, my mother was born here but my dad had made a commitment to try to be American. But yeah, I'm just totally thankful. I've had a very fascinating life that I'm very grateful to the experience in meeting people and things, yeah. For me, architecture is not about the building, it's about the people in the building.

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<Begin Segment 4>

BN: At some point, when did you meet Marian?

FS: When did I what?

BN: Meet Marian?

FS: Oh. Well, I was at SC, I was at Westridge School, and Bobby Uchida at Belfontaine Nursery, was a classmate from Gila. So when I first moved to Pasadena, it's natural that I met Bobby and a few others from camp. And when Marian and her family moved to North Pasadena near high school, Bobby knew them, the two sisters. That's how it is, the guys start looking for girls. And so he knew them, and he's the one that introduced me to them. He might have known Marian first, I don't know. And then he ended up liking her sister, and then there was one more available. [Laughs] So I got to meet her and I think that was after she had already been going around with another guy for a while. But after that, I kind of entered the picture in my big, blue convertible that she never cared about. Anyway, yeah, so that's how we met. It was probably about a (few) years before I graduated USC, or maybe... I graduated in '60, and so maybe it was '57 I met her. And then by then, she's going to... I could miss the years, but she was a student also at Cal State L.A. or at LACC. And then when they moved the campus, then she was also a song girl. He didn't me to say things like that, but that's fine. So we hung on, and she doing schoolgirl, you know, I can't remember the areas anyway, better side of town, hired girls to do the ironing and stuff. So we met there and we ended up getting married in '59 before I graduated. I graduated in '60.

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<Begin Segment 5>

BN: So at USC, what was your sense of the course of study? I mean, we talked earlier about what you didn't like about Berkeley, was USC more along the line of...

FS: Sure. I think a lot of it has to do with circumstance (and) the kinds of professors one has. It happened that at the time I went to USC, several of the professors were younger, they were veterans of World War II. The first person I had was one of the most popular -- this is night school -- and he taught basic design. But he immediately responded to a book I happened to take in because I liked it and shared it, and it was on Katsura Palace in Japan. Well, he was a landscape architect. I didn't think about those distinctions then, and he really loved that. And it was the first time the world I knew as far as anything about architects. I didn't know that much about architecture per se, as I do today, but it was something that I kind of got from my dad about nature and the beauty of Japan and all the things that are, the Katsura Palace represents. And he immediately responded to that. So that's quite a change from the guys that were teaching classic Roman, European architecture, the Greek stuff, and all this stuff that's all over the UC campus that we, I couldn't relate to. And so at USC at the beginning, it was very meaningful. And then the subsequent different second, third year, people happened to all be practicing architects. Although they had hired nothing but people that practiced, they weren't scholars, they were practicing architects. So several of them were very people-oriented. To the point where I think a couple were red-baited during the McCarthy period. And in a positive way, these were people that, I guess, because they talked so much about people, they thought they were Communists, right? So I think those teachers were special in a human way. They're also quite good as designers and talented as architects or whatever. But several became quite prominent, too, but it was feeling very natural. It felt like I fit in, I guess. Even though the history course is taught with the same textbook that I couldn't deal with at Berkeley, they used what they call Fletcher's, it was written by Sir Bannister Fletcher, so you can get a sense of how it's written with all the classic stuff from Europe. That was the worst part. But other than that, the general faculty are quite good. They were not quite as ego-oriented. A few, in the senior year somewhere, because they lived in that world, the elite people. And they were written about by the media. And this all kind of links together, because people that liked to read about it are usually people of wealth. So that's how it goes, I learned a lot of things in my life. And it's through a field that I didn't know what I was doing in it.

BN: Now, had you been going to architecture school ten or fifteen years earlier, it would have been difficult for a Nisei to find a job on the outside. By this time, was it your sense that there was still some of that, or was your sense that you'd be able to find a job in that profession?

FS: Well, you see, I'd like nothing more than to open the door for people, well, for anybody to really understand that we had a lot of guys in Southern California that hit the glass ceiling, not known about. We only hear about the two giants, Yamasaki and Obata, but they're corporate. So they didn't have to hustle for work. Or they might have hustled... if they hustled, they had a team of Anglo partners. And I don't know too many... you know, it's only recently I realized, at my time, because the guy that was older than me, and I have become friends now, he looked up to me because I was, I had my own practice in the Bridge in Pasadena. And I used my name, Sata, Japanese name. And he didn't know anybody else that had their own practice. And that kind of made me wonder if there were anybody... I know O'Leary Terasawa, I know other guys, Caship Horie, Mark Horie was like a big brother to me because we worked at the same place. And he was a few years older, but I think we used to always talk about whether, you know, how can a Nisei/Sansei, at that time, or earlier, get out there and make a living? It was that simple, you had to get to work. And Kazumi Adachi, I think, is one of the few (I heard of). But he was able to do it because by doing many residential stuff, and I guess there must have been enough people that knew him, but not too many like that. So for me, I recently, somebody sent me a link to watch an interview because there's a lot more interest now in architects of that generation. Even though Latino/Mexican guys that were trying to practice in the '70s, '60s, how difficult it was, and this is an interview being conducted at SCI Arc, which is now one of the elite avant-garde schools. And they were talking about the difficulty of practice and things, just getting work in the public sector. And that didn't occur to me because I was, I walked into a situation that evolved. But I know of a lot of Niseis that, very talented, that didn't have (recognition), that contributed, but they were hidden, and that's kind of how it is. I mean, but times have changed, so there's many Asians now that are succeeding and women, too. But I don't know that the story about what happened to, like you say, the generation before World War II and after. And I knew several of them, so I'm even hoping to educate JANM, which is supposed to be the history center for everything. But they don't know the architects' struggle. That's how it is.

BN: Yeah, something no one's ever written about, other than the two famous ones.

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<Begin Segment 6>

BN: You had mentioned earlier that you had built kind of strong bonds with some of the, your classmates also, you're class of 1960 at USC.

FS: Yeah. Well, the class of '60 was sort of unique because at graduation at USC, in the big quad outside of where the, I think in the library and so forth, our class all had top hats, and when they put that on, it would go, ponk. [Laughs] So that kind of... I think because there were several veterans, guys who were older, we had one woman who was the top student, and she's quite an artist, and she's succeeding doing very beautiful woodwork stuff. We had an interesting group of guys who... well, I didn't like this one guy that, he built a little... well, we helped him build a dome on the side of a hillside, got a lot of notoriety at that time, years ago. And he had a connection with the number one guy for Bucky, Buckminster Fuller, who everybody sort of knows the name. And it turned out that student, my friend, who recently passed away, he also came into architecture because his father, he gave me his memoir, was dean of the school in the east somewhere, or Midwest or East. And then I'm thinking, even recently, I got involved in Head Start. That's what Head Start means. There's some basis in which one can take what they learned early in life to another level. And I reflect on those army kids again, too. He and I and my buddies are studying architecture, well, this guy already has sort of a framework of what it might be. And so he took it in a different way for himself.

My best friend and I were very enamored with, for different reasons, with Frank Lloyd Wright, because that was something they didn't teach at school. Because Wright was a little bit out there, and it didn't quite fit into Sir Banister Fletcher's book, kind of stuff. And what I related to Frank Lloyd Wright most was that he had such a high respect for Japanese culture, which I didn't discover as a non-reader for a pretty long time. But it kind of came together for me because of his period in Japan when he did the Imperial Hotel. And ironically, that's the first building I went to see in 1964, when I first went to Japan. And it was also, I don't remember where we stayed there, friend of mine and I went. But that was a starting point of some of the more prominent architects today in Japan. So that whole situation -- I'm losing track of what I'm trying to get at -- see, when I talk about Wright and the Japanese prints that he always did, you know, what comes to mind is because of YouTube. I've been watching a lot of Steve Jobs and how he died, and one of the last images they present about his love affair with Japanese prints and going to Kyoto many times, to Ryoanji and sitting there meditating.

So I kind of feel a creative bond with discovery or with the creative side of the human mind. I'm not sure how to explain that, but it really, it kind of makes sense and I kind of respect a deep part of my cultural roots. But I didn't really know it, you know what I mean? It was within me, and I thought that way, I thought about nature and my relationship with Native Americans, all these things all kind of stem almost from a spiritual root, I guess. I don't want to go too deep into it, but it was a very natural part of how I continued to grow, if you will, or to survive in architecture. I mean, I don't like to use architecture as... it was only a vehicle for me as an architect.

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<Begin Segment 7>

BT: I have a question. What you just described, your father was an artist.

FS: Yeah.

BT: So I'm really curious, do you think your dad had a big influence on your feelings toward design and architecture and the roots, your connection to Japanese culture?

FS: You know, my dad, the irony is I didn't think of him as an artist. Whatever he did, it was kind of around me, it surrounded my life. So it isn't... obviously, the art we collect, it's not because it's famous, it's because they are all people I know. And that's what it is. I'm surrounded by people I knew. Most of them are gone, but they've been a part of my life. And so I'm not sure because my dad... see, the depth of our tie to the real, the whole samurai roots, you know, which a lot of young people are looking for, that was already there, and he came knowing all that, the Shimazu clan, that's pretty big, and that we have a part of Japan named after our family. Well, he never tried to impose that on me. Yeah, I guess his message to me is that what he did is probably what my grandmother did, who I didn't know at all, and I didn't discover 'til five years ago or whatever, as a person. She must have instilled and raised him in a way that my dad kind of also molded my mother to raise me. It has to be that because there's nothing real distinctive. I might have danced with the sword a little bit and all that stuff, but it was nothing... there was no lecture, no discussion. I'm like a lot of kids are, I mean, I probably talked to my grandkids more than my own son. I think in my case, I really had a strong bond to Japan. But knowing it, that I'm American, I mean, it's hard... anyone that worked for Japan, and you see the culture, and you see the good side and the weak side, I call it. I'll not say the bad side. And we all brought it here, and many of the... it's hard to define it because everybody's a little different. Going back to the 442, there could be some of that spirit. And so maybe for me it's, I think he never... my dad never put that message out there in front of me. He never talked about camp, but he had this one drawing that was one of his favorite ones from Jerome. And it was always, it traveled with us all the time, it was always on the wall, no matter how dinky the situation might be. So that was his way of maybe reminding me the trail I took, and I didn't think of him as an artist 'til I shared some of the pictures that I had taken of his pictures or his drawings. I shared it with people, and everyone, some of my recent friends like Delphine (Hirasuna), who did a whole study on that kind of stuff, reminded me that my dad was an artist. So I'm not sure what...

BT: But do you think that experience with your dad, even though he didn't outright teach you these types of things, you learned it. Because that's through his way of raising you as a child, right, you learn all of that. So did that transfer to your work?

FS: Well, see, I don't use the terminology "work," right? That's what architects like to use, and writers. Yeah, the way I worked, I guess. It's more natural, I guess. This is what inspired me about the Native American culture that we killed, is that there was a natural process in which from young to old, there was a respect, all these positive things. And even Japan used to have it and it's losing it, to a degree. Yeah, I think my dad, it was never articulated in any way. I observed, I know what he did, I know how hard he worked, like most parents. But there was nothing that I can remember that I would say, I guess it's the whole person, the way he was, that influenced the way I am. Again, I can't put anything further on it because he could have talked about the samurai thing more, you know what I mean? Because we were pretty prominent in the southern part of Japan. I mean, it was hard to explain. Took me a long time to discover all this stuff.

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<Begin Segment 8>

BT: Well, so you graduated college, you're going to school at night working, you're married, where did you live after you got married? Where did you end up?

FS: Okay. We got married in La Canada. And we had our marriage reception, it was quite a large one right under the camphor tree on Westridge School, when it was all lawn. Now they got it all paved, and the tree is still there, but it was a great big lawn area which my dad took a picture of that and (Archie M.) Toyo, of course, took many pictures. And so the reception, probably the one and only reception of the garden lawn of Westridge. So that was our beginning. And then what's also interesting is that it was this guy, the catering, I forgot his name now. He first became a pretty big catering service for Japanese in L.A., very well-known, I forgot the name.

BT: Chet Yamauchi?

FS: Yeah, yeah, Chester Yamauchi, right. That was his first job, right there on the Westridge lawn. And so then we got married, we did a little short stint. By that time I had a little MGA convertible, and so our brief honeymoon trip was up the coast, (S.F.) back to Vegas and back, kind of thing, which is kind of stupid, if you think about it. MGA didn't have much of a radiator (across the desert), it would cost them a lot, but we made it. It was war. And we came back to... oh, I know. Right before we took the trip, I had put an ad in the Star News. "A Japanese (student)," something like that, "Japanese boy looking for a place to live in exchange for housework," or that kind of stuff. Okay, so from Westridge, I think it was right before we got married. And this lady called me up, and she was Mrs. Warner with the Borg-Warner Estate in Chicago, big time company. And she had a mansion right down here adjacent to Mayfield school. It was five acres and a great big condo is there now, but it was one of the more beautiful mansions. And it was very Spanish, all that stuff, and tile roof made of concrete. So she was living there alone, and the only person else that lived there was the chauffeur who lived away, came in every day, if she needed to drive. And then there was an accountant that managed all her money. So these were just two people just hanging on, I guess, until she was gone. And so she called me and she said she had a garage apartment in the back of her property. It was like a, there were two apartments on two separate, two or three car garage units below, and a stairway up the middle and you go left or right at the top. Well, the one, both of them were unoccupied, really dirty. Marian and I took the one to the south, to the left, and that was kind of where we started.

It turns out Mrs. Warner was probably more lonely. I don't think I've ever seen such an exquisite interior. So I spent many hours with her just sitting and talking in her library, which had like a twelve-foot ceiling full of books, luckily. [Inaudible] would be just drooling over it. And then she had several other sitting room and then a large room that had all these mounted African, I don't know if they were lions or bears or whatever they had on the wall. And the woodwork all over was probably African mahogany, it was dark wood, beautiful wood, and sort of a curved stairway that went up to the second floor. Quite elegant I think. Claire Oogard would be drooling if she knew that place. But they tore it down and put in this big condo. Anyway, it was 891 South Orange Grove. The reason I remember that is the Heritage had a story about 891 South Orange Grove, it wasn't that house. Marian looked at it and said, "That's not 89 South Orange Grove," so anyway.

So we went from there, then we took our trip. We went with our good friends the Bentons, they were in our wedding. Tom Benton was kind of (different), more far out than me. As an artist, he decided he's going to build his own place in Aspen, Colorado. So he had already started looking for the property, (he came) from the Glendale area and his mother had some, a property in the mountains there, in the hillside. And their family must have had a little bit of, well, not big level. And I had to bring him up because he was really a very integral part of my life early on. And he went... well, he bought a minibus in Europe, and in those days, you can buy. And so he got seven of us adults to agree to ride with him and share the gas expense in Europe. So Tom and Betty and Marian and I, by then I sold my MG for a more practical car, the German people's car, Volkswagen VW, a little beetle. And we drove all the way across country, four of us, with luggage for four people to travel Europe without a clear-cut number of days. So we went across country, up Route 66, and saw the architecture, and we looked at some of the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. And then when we caught a ship, then we found someone that was willing to keep our car in New York. And we took a ship across because that was the least expensive way of travel, and ended up in England. I don't know if it's New Haven, I forgot the port. And then he picked up his car and the other three people met us over there. So then from there, we had a rough itinerary of maybe the cities and countries that we went to see, but we didn't have a (plan). We kind of discovered our way all over Europe in this minivan with seven, I don't know, forty-five horsepower. So seven adults and seven suitcases. So we traveled Europe for about eight thousand miles, five dollars a day per person, that's when that book came out. So that's kind of how I got my experience. And some appreciation for the old gothic churches and things like that. And because of that, I was able to pass the state board (exam), had all the Sir Bannister Fletcher stuff. Yeah, because I have to see... I can't read it --

BT: Instead of reading a book?

FS: I got to see it, yeah. So that's kind of how we started, that's how I studied and learned about, you know, all components of architecture. I come from that side of it, seeing it. It was quite a memorable trip. Can you imagine going down the Swiss Alps and a forty-five horsepower, seven. [Laughs] Yeah, it's before that movie of the yellow... I don't know what they call it, it went all over the place.

BT: That was fun.

FS: But yeah, quite an adventure.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

BT: So what happened after you get, you return from that trip?

FS: Well, we came back here, and I worked at the Warner's estate for a while longer. She kept all our stuff. I was... well, what I learned with my dad watching is you get, solve problems, do everything with his hands. So I was able to sort of convert these places to make it habitable for my wife. For example, we had goza. No padding, but goza for the flooring. And I had plywood, I mean, one-by-ten knotty pine that I stained dark so there was bookshelves down low, like everything, down low. We had, these wedding gifts, three chairs. And that was kind of our furniture other than the coffee table was, hollow core doors stained dark, that kind of stuff, mattresses on the floor. So that's how we started out. And then because of my lifestyle, and because we didn't spend a lot of money, and by then Marian was already teaching. We were, you know, we did save a little money and so we started looking for a place. Ended up, they never showed us... the irony of Pasadena, this side of town, like houses of this, wasn't that much more than that side of town, east side. So the realtors never showed us this way, they showed us that way. Or we knew John Carr, of course, you've heard of him. But so we ended up on that side of town after we... and she was teaching and I'm working, so saving a little money. And then knowing that I might have to care for my parents because of the way my mother turned out to be, our first place on East Orange Grove was two houses on a lot. So I guess I was smart enough. We lived in the back little house until Leigh was born, and then we rented the front house. So we managed all that without having big bucks. It worked out. And the original idea of traveling, of course, was more my wife. She was all into traveling and things like that, so we didn't move towards nicer houses as much as just investing in using our money for that type of thing, traveling.

BT: So from this time when you were living in, off of Orange Grove...

FS: Both Orange Groves.

BT: What?

FS: I was at both Orange Groves, south and east.

BT: Both sides, yes, that's right.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

BT: But as far as... you were working, and then how did you come to being an, putting up your own sign, Sata Architecture, that whole period?

FS: We have enough time for that? [Laughs]

BT: I'm kind of curious about your career there.

FS: Yeah. It happened in a lot of ways because all of a sudden this discovery of travel, and then we went to Mexico several times, too. And in the meantime, I was still working for a year or two after I graduated at a firm up here in Pasadena, Neptune and Thomas. And in working there and working in the other firm -- I only worked for two companies, one in Los Angeles while going to school and then by then I worked up here. And then we traveled, and then I worked... well, at Neptune and Thomas, and then I decided I wanted to travel, or learn more. I was very serious about architecture and the people, big time people of that time. And so Marian, you know, to her whatever reasoning, she said, "Oh, you go ahead." I wanted to go to Japan to look at what Tange did in Olympic Stadium, 1964. I saw that and I thought, wow. And I had a chance to then meet another architect who was part of that group, Kikutake, who had lectured at USC, my first professor I met that I really liked, the landscape architect, Emmet Wemple, he knew Kikutake, and he talked to him, an architect, young architect, wanted to go look at all of that new construction going on because of the Olympic time. So when Tange and about half a dozen architects, very prominent, they were doing all the new stuff. So Kikutake set up a whole tour for me. So I spent at least a month or more with my classmate, Tom Furushiro, and we traveled most of Japan looking at the architecture, all that new stuff they were doing.

And so from there, I don't want to go on and on, but then I came back and then I worked again because they still wanted me at this firm. Because I guess, even though I'm fairly young, I knew how to get along with some of the big clients they had. And I worked, and then I got a call from this other classmate that also traveled -- he was a single guy -- traveled in Europe together. He had a chance to join this guy he worked for in Portugal, so he asked me if I wanted to go. Well, first of all, he asked Tom Benton, who was good friends, too, with him. And Tom said, "No, I'm trying to build," his little art gallery house in Aspen, and so he didn't want to go. So I asked Marian and I said, "Can I go and work on the design of a new city?" I had never done that, I thought, well, that will be a challenge. So she said sure, so I went. [Laughs] And I was there about a month or two, and called my phone, and she said, well, "The kids, boys are kind of missing you," because they were small. And so I said, "Why don't you join us?" Because it was kind of early pre-planning stuff that I guess the people funding it, again, the big money, there was enough play money that they could pay me what I wanted and I could call my wife and kids and they could join us. So they joined us over there.

BT: What city in Portugal was that?

FS: Hmm?

BT: What city was that?

FS: Well, it's called Vilamoura. I'm not wild about... well, that's my philosophical self, but anyway, it's like Orange County, looks like Orange County. It's hot, it's become really hot. They've got five major golf courses, it was a golf course-oriented place. And as it turns out, because now, there's a lot of stuff on the tube now, and they got beautiful slips for boats and all this stuff if you've got the money there. And if you don't have a whole lot of money, it's a place where a lot of people and expatriates apparently are trying to gravitate to. It's a hot market because the people are nice, the food is inexpensive, and now it's become kind of upscale, shi-shi, lots of nice restaurants. I recommend that because the climate is just like California. My recollection is the '60s, '65, I guess, or '66. It was very similar. The beaches, beautiful beaches, all that stuff. It's a nice place.

BT: So your family came over to Portugal, and how long were you there?

FS: Oh, probably a little... I don't know. Because we were just doing preliminary work, and I could have stayed longer. Marian and the kids were having a harder time, because what was fascinating is that they, wherever they walked, she had a stroller for Warren, and Leigh was about four or five. And he could run aside with them, but they would be surrounded by, like, twenty kids. They were like an animals in a zoo. They couldn't go anywhere without getting surrounded by kids wondering what the hell are these people with funny eyes? There weren't any Asians, didn't see any Asians, and I don't recall any Blacks. We've gone back a couple of times, changed quite a bit.

BT: Was it a bad or a good experience for them, for the boys?

FS: I think it was harder on Marian because everything... well, we had a maid. But she's pretty independent, not used to somebody being in your house all day long and doing this for you, doing that, going shopping, because you can't speak the language and all that. So I had my little studio office with these other guys that were doing the work, and we were living the Life of Riley. I mean, when you're on the top side of society, since it was a dictatorship and Salazar was in charge, and I think it was the same name. Caetano was a Portuguese guy who had a team of guys, but the Caetano, there's a Caetano that took over after Salazar that got over, they got rid of him. And I think they're the same family? But there were two architects apparently, when I started researching, that had a similar name. So I would think, they had to have been the same Caetano that was connected to the upper class so that we had parties on weekends or you go out for two or three hour lunches and go to the horse stable and swimming pool and ride horses. It's surreal. It's not my world, but so that's what we did. And I could have stayed longer.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

BT: But you had to come back?

FS: Yeah. And then the American money is no different than today. It was related to the Kennedy side of the family, Skakel family. So what's new for me? My perspective on the world is different than what most people see. The money, people create all the issues, problems. But then what's interesting is we did this work and I got [inaudible] and gives credits and all this stuff. But then the year, they had a statue now in Vilamoura, and when it was founded, well, it was founded about three years after. The master plan, all it did was probably, the work we did would probably just whet the appetites of people with money and the investment and so forth, and helped Portugal develop that place and now it's booming, all these funky hotels all over the place. [Laughs] And so I left. I saw what was going on, and that was what I learned. Try to make a quick story of it, come back, and then my partners, or subsequent partners, these guys and classmates from USC, well, one guy in particular, he had and his wife had traveled with us in Europe, came back, he started a partnership with another guy. And then he recruited me and this other guy that went with us to Portugal, a single guy. So we became four people, Black, Palusa, Sata and O'Dodd. So now I had three hakujin partners, but they already had the contacts, you know, with Balboa Bay Club. So then, you know, that was the elite club at that time. I don't know if it still is, but I think so. Related to all the big developers of Disneyland, you know, the Disney Hotel, the first hotel they built there was one of the guys that, in that network of people that worked through the Balboa Bay Club that are my classmates, another guy. So that's when we got a, there was a chance to get a job. Again, architects, you do all this silly stuff ahead of time, freebies, to get the job kind of thing, which I, also I have a distaste of that.

And we came up with a concept, so we got one of the early to-be high rises in Hawaii. So my partner, this Italian guy, he just loves to live at the top. And first time I rode a first class plane, going to Hawaii and getting fed mai tai and stuff like that. I think those were still prop jets or something, Pan American and things, airlines used to be, a long time ago. Yeah, so we were doing the Hawaii thing, and then, of course, Hawaii, they didn't have all these hotels then, the big one, Royal Hawaiian or something, the tall one in the center of Honolulu. So we used to... and there was already contractors on the site in Hawaii, the big guys had the big work. So our client was ahead of a fairly prominent savings and loan, and he was really growing, so then he got politically ambitious and he wanted this building to kind of stand out. So my world, okay, we got the job, the guy signed us up. Well, without putting a negative side on it, it's the part of the industry, the guy that did Trans-America (William Pereira) is big time, he tried to pull it away from us while we had it. That's how it works because we were small guys, they were already big. But he didn't, they liked art projects. And then we were doing stuff in Kona coast, white sand beach and all this stuff, and planning. I learned how to do all this. I didn't like that because the local people were selling their land to these big time developers, it was always a money thing. And it isn't that I was against people making money, it was the fact that they were losing their identity by giving... and so this whole influx of Texas money is all over Kona coast, which was developed by the movie star way back. And I couldn't be a part of that, and the hotel thing or the office building in Hawaii kind of hit the wall. Because when the guy tried to run for political office, and he had ads for, Shirley Temple Black used to come out and help him campaign. Well, the savings and loan industry went after him because of the way he built his own empire, and he got put in the penitentiary. Not while I was working, I had quit by then. It took me about a year working with the Palos Verdes guys, becoming all this stuff. That wasn't my thing. That's how I ended up in the Bridge.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

BT: So after you left that job, then you decided... how did you find the Bridge, by the way? How did you end up there?

FS: [Laughs] Why do you find anything?

BT: Well, were you attracted to that place there?

FS: Yeah. When I was a young guy and working for the Pasadena firm, we were doing work in Glendora, all over the place. Didn't have all the freeways, so you go down Green Street and pick up Foothill or whatever. And I always noticed that thing sticking out, and it had a big space at the end, it had windows on both sides. Yeah, I though that'd be great for an office. And when I knocked on the door, there was a woman artist in the Bridge, but then I asked her if I could share half of it because I wanted to kind of have a place to work. And she said, "Yeah, I don't need it all," because she was just using the Bridge part for stacking her paintings, and she was working in the back, the rotunda. So I literally, that's all I did. I went and asked her if I could share it, and then I kept hoping she'd move out and she did.

BT: What year was that?

FS: Oh gosh, it must have been in the '70s, no, maybe late '60s. Yeah, because I went to Portugal. See, I have to look at all my lists of stuff. That must have been... yeah, Portugal was '65, Japan was '64. And then '66 I worked with the guys in Hawaii, so that must have been late '68. And it was very reasonable, because Old Town was dead yet and there was nothing there.

BT: You had the confidence to want to do it on your own.

FS: Well, yeah. I really don't know. I knew I couldn't stand that office. We had these guys, they're good friends, and they drove jaguars, they lived, we had a fancy office and all that. And heck, we had a list of jobs. Well, it wasn't making money because there would be times when we didn't, as partners, didn't take money home, we had to pay the staff. I didn't know anything about business, that's how my partner, this guy, Italian buddy that was good friends, he got all his money from the bank. He'd get all the money he wanted and then he'd run and he'd eat all the fine food and live, fancy cars, and I did see how the costs, a lot of my money was going to maintaining a silly Jaguar that was ridiculous at that time. So I learned a little bit about business. You know how they operate, it started with a bank. Well, architecture is a crappy business unless you kind of know what you're doing or you got some money to carry you at the beginning. And for me, I didn't have that money, I just... yeah. I thought those guys were good marketers, hustlers, but no, I had to do the hustling. So I brought in more work during that time than they did. So I realized that I didn't fit.

BT: So you feel like, as a Japanese American, you didn't have access to capital like those guys did?

FS: Well, I never knew anybody with money. I didn't meet Ko 'til fifty years later. I didn't know anybody with money. I only knew my background because of the happenstance of the companies I worked for. They were primarily school architects because that's where a lot of money was, just like housing is right now. There weren't that many big time developers, and of course, they wouldn't talk to somebody like me. I don't... see, after that, I'm caught like a lot of guys -- not a lot of guys -- but I remember somebody recently, Nick Nakatani, who wrote that book about Crenshaw. I see where the Yellow Brotherhood and all that time of turmoil of the Vietnam War, and, of course, I'm living that period, too. Not as, when I was in the military, but I'm living it, now in hindsight, what I did at Fort Carson playing the enemy, that was on the government payroll, right? But we had to beat the Korean enemy while they made a movie. And I learned recently from my friend, that it was called "Top Gun," was the name of the movie. And Branson or whatever his name is, they rode motorcycles? He was the star? Anyway, I thought I was a movie star in Fort Carson, too. But yeah, the thing, going into business was what I learned... see, I didn't know how to go to a bank or anything, so I guess I must have developed a level of confidence, and also the people that were in higher level that I worked for, like the president of Citrus College and a few other people, superintendent, and people that knew me, felt I was capable of doing whatever it took. So I had to... that's how I started marketing again, if you will, making connections.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

FS: But then after PV, as you may or may not... I think you knew, I got into Head Start because that's where it took me. And that I have to thank my family, too. Well, Marian, of course, helped me all the way as I started. But she, the kids are small, and I started to get interested in children. I learned that Pacific Oaks, that they don't, at that time, especially, they don't really teach A, B, C, D, they teach it for the, you observe. And so that's what I did, and that took me somehow into the world of Head Start because when I was, became good friends with the president of the school and one of the founders who was a Quaker, he introduced me to these guys that were educators on the East Coast that got a big grant from Johnson's Head Start program. And they were connected with the big leagues back east, Harvard, MIT, was sort of a... there was a big component, big organization, I think, that did publishing research, called EDC. Our group was called ECES, more specialized to respond to any Head Start group or early education group that wanted help from this organization that this guy set up. So the upside of that experience was that I got a salary, so I didn't have to worry about hustling. See, that made it a lot different. And the salary was a basic low beginning teacher's salary, but it was a cashflow. And so I could... and it was enough to supplement that need, so I was allowed to, thanks to Marian, and we had a place in East Orange Grove and so forth.

BT: So what kind of work did you do while you were at Head Start?

FS: Well, whatever... well, see, they had mostly to do with play areas. But then a lot of the workshops, we were teaching teachers how to do things... you know, the whole world of education was trying to, how would you call it? There were many possibilities. There were ideas from Europe, British teaching, lot of different theories, and UCLA had a lot of things. But we were only supportive of going in and helping teachers if they wanted to look for different ways to manage their classroom. At the time, there was a product that everybody, it was reasonable, it was called Triwall, cardboard that was maybe a half-inch thick. And we just taught them how to drill holes through it and make shoji screen kind of components and create different kind of spaces. So in that sense it was sort of architecture, but not architectural, you know what I mean? It was educational and it was an attempt to look at ways that you can motivate children, young children to learn by creating this one school, Black guy that was superintendent, or principal, he was trying to do a new school in Roxbury, and his idea was to create sort of a little home, I guess, home units where maybe six, seven kids of different age, group, not just children, but older, too, could have a home base. So that's kind of architectural, if you will. All they had in those days were big buildings that were burnt out many times. Boston was having a turmoil all over the country. We were having a lot of issues, and cities were burning, Harlem, all these things. And so it was a lot of interest to, in the educational community, to look for solutions that would try to bring society to another order. I mean, we were kind of going through that again.

[Interruption]

BT: So you were doing this type of work...

FS: Yeah, there was nothing structured.

BT: Yeah.

FS: We were trying to teach... most teachers at that time were women, too, young women. And so it was sort of, even teaching teachers not to be afraid of using a drill or whatever. There was a lot of components to this whole thing. And the rest of the team that I was, you know, on this group that he assembled there, were all educators. I'm the only so-called architect type. I just happened to have the license already, but it wasn't, I wasn't creating the beautiful thing, Noguchi garden or place base that you could take photos in there. It was sort of a reaction to that because about that time, all the AIA, there were honorary awards for all these beautiful playground kind of stuff in New York, and they weren't working. They were all based on how well it photographed, shades and shadows, architects could put it in a magazine and you can get an award. So this was sort of down and dirty, let kids behave the way they are. It's okay to get dirty if you're learning something. That was kind of the theory behind the motivation. It's so different, the coasts, east and west. I'm meeting the hierarchy back there and, again, I have to make special permission to go to Cal Tech and meet a few people there. My first trip back there was, my friend and acquaintance said, "Let's have breakfast with the science advisor for the president." I forgot who, the president then, but probably after, maybe the Johnson administration.

BT: So it was more access.

FS: Hmm?

BT: It was more accessible than on the East Coast?

FS: Well, no. But I was more, how would you call it? You don't feel intimidated, you feel like a normal person, like we're talking. But you could be the president of MIT and we're talking like that. You know what I mean? Here's the National Science Advisor, he and his wife. The wife, they're all raised on all the elite East Coast. She gets somebody over here at, yeah, I don't know. It didn't feel the same. I mean, it's just a dinky, if you can imagine, like in San Francisco, there's still a few of those small mom and pop restaurant kind of thing, like New York has them. Yeah, meeting them, and my acquaintance, he's a new acquaintance, right, that I met through PO. "Oh, this, by the way, he's the National Science Advisor." [Laughs] I mean, no big deal.

BT: Interesting.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

BT: So how long did you do this with them?

FS: Work with them?

BT: Uh-huh.

FS: About three years. Three, three and a half years, I don't recall. Mostly, you know, I really, I guess people felt I contributed because I've got some letters that only did workshops, meaning they'd have a whole big conference of educators, and I'd do a film show or something that I put together and talk about it. And they really related to it and I feel, yeah, I'm more proud of this one letter that I got, that kind of stuff, that I don't need trophies. I feel like maybe I did a little bit, right? But there was a limit, and the limit became apparent after I spent more, well, I spent time in Harlem, Roxbury, all these kind of areas that were blighted, but also on a Native American reservation. Yeah, that kind of disturbed me that I couldn't, there was nothing I could do. I got to give up family, whatever, and go there and live there, or I can't contribute anything. You know, you don't need too many more observers of this damn situation. It wasn't changed is the sad part, the reservation. Because we visited a few years back. And I just, I don't know, what can I say? I'm fortunate to have witnessed all this stuff. And so I guess I've been encouraged to talk about it.

BN: I was actually going to ask if your memories of camp, if you saw parallels or reminders when you visited the reservations?

FS: Well, the only thing that occurred to me, and I've mentioned it somehow, and the Rafu picked up just a little blip of it, was I felt that when I visited in the Dakotas, and my friend Leslie Williams showed me all over the area, she took me to this one city that, it was a small town, actually. It's a fairly new typical tract development, but now with all the trees, it's just barren. And that was a town of Native American Indians in that area. And it's one of those that were ninety to ninety-nine percent alcoholic. This is the whole community, you didn't see anybody out there, desolate. And I think my connection to camp would have been only if the government had taken away our culture, I think, we had the potential... of course, we were only a small community, but of having, going that way. Where the men would give up, right? It would only be because... you know, and that potential was there, of course, in camp, but not, I don't think it was long enough to have made that happen. The Native Americans were killed over a long period of time. So I tried to bring that out. It was too much for anybody to rally around my flag, and it just went over everybody's head. So when I witnessed later, like the Wounded Knee incident, and yeah, the government shootout and all that stuff, I still can relate to that. Because I saw the church where I saw that, in fact, it was within aa few years of my not being there. And we did revisit the church, it's no longer there, and there's only a little monument, dome kind of building with one sign nearby that says this is where the massacre site was. Yeah, that's how our history moves on. Well, you're more of a historian than I am, but I'm just, I feel very fortunate that I saw a lot of that.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

BN: Now, when you were working for Head Start, what happened to your architectural office?

FS: Nothing. There wasn't one. I've always been a one-man shop.

BN: So that just was sort of on hold?

FS: Well, I was working for somebody, so I never really started an office. I didn't make a commitment 'til after my Palos Verdes/Hawaii incident. And so when I was at Head Start, well, I hadn't really said I wanted to start again. I think maybe that was a way that... well, I know I'm always sort of soul searching, and I think the relationship with the headmaster at PO, and I think he empathized. And, of course, Quakers knew about us in camp. Yeah, he introduced me to a Nisei older man, I don't remember his name, but he was one of the more prominent, one of the earlier Nisei. I think he was a banker or something, but I remember meeting him. I didn't really have a practice. I had to develop... it doesn't happen with putting a sign on the wall. It was a studio space that when I went into that transition after Head Start, because the PO, see, that's a kind of elite children's school, certainly was at that time. And I met people that had some money that were involved. One is the lady that eventually ran for the president, she wrote a book, Artist for President. Anyway, she happened to be a senior at Westridge, the same age as me when I was a senior. But anyway, I didn't know her there, I knew her after from PO. And she had property up in the mountains next to this other artist, Zortian, who inherited property up there. So she allowed me to build a little addition to her house, (and) I became a carpenter architect after the Head Start period.

But during the Head Start period, I had a free reign to use my time whatever way, because the airport is back east, well, kind of like here. And it was all based on trust and knowing that I would do something with my time. But as soon as I was called, because they had a project they wanted me to connect with some clients somewhere there, here, there, whatever. There was an institution or some program, I guess, called VOLT that provided all the air tickets, that kind of thing, money for staying at a hotel, whatever. So I did that, and then in between time, I kind of got involved with the Pasadena schools. So there were people that were trying to create open classroom projects, and we got involved there. This one lady at Jefferson School in Pasadena, she was experimenting with something that, she was following this woman who was teaching at UCLA who happens to be Frank Gehry's sister. And she had a theory, wrote some books, and she was working with that kind of experiment. And then Washington schools, Greta Pruit was the principal when I was helping her with whatever. And so I worked in the area by assisting, I know they don't know it, at Sequoia school. But it was a temporary, when they first moved over here, a couple of guys that I knew from PO, they asked if I would join the board there for a short time as they tried to reestablish. You know, Star-News guy writes about all this stuff, but he talks about his grandfather way back or whatever, they don't know. We had this other kind of thing that started there. So I had, you know through circumstances, Betty Williams, who also, she had money, and she was married to this famous kooky artist. They called him kooky because of the way he was, but he was a very fine artist up in the mountains, Altadena. And he was good enough that Saddam Hussein invited him to bring some of his paintings over there to the castle that we bombed up. [Laughs] You know what I mean? The art world and money world, it all runs together.

And so the journey from Head Start back into a so-called practice happened in the Bridge. And the reason I selected that is it allowed me to be totally independent. I could set up a lot of drafting tables, because those days, a drafting table meant bodies. So it looked like it might have ten people there, whatever, that kind of thing, so I could present the image. And when I got into the public sector work, I think the city manager of West Covina, I think he knew Asians and he knew, he was from Northern California and I think he knew about the camp. I think he was very empathetic to them, he knew my dad was an artist because I told him some of the stuff he did. And then he was an artist, too, but he was city manager trying to change the structure of cities. There was a connotation of city administrator was the titles of many cities at that time. So that implied that the city council ran the city. Well, he advocated for city manager so the city manager ran the city. So that's the kind of guy it was. So he turned out to be quite a supporter when I was just starting out. West Covina hired Neptune and Thomas, the company I worked for, stipulating that I have to be assigned to the job, that's unheard of. No architect would put one of the workers on a contract. But so that's kind of been how I evolved back into the Bridge and people like Betty Williams, who by then divorced and gave him the property. And then she moved to Solvang where she had a horse ranch for thoroughbreds, and now it's a winery that's still there. And her daughter, who's still alive, and I still know does a lot of painting. And the reason I know her well, or not well, but she came to the Bridge to, she wanted to go to Japan to study sumi-e, brush painting. So she was going to go for a year, she was Zortien and Betty Williams' daughter. So after Betty died, she inherited the ranch up there, and they'd grow, it's a winery now, and they have wine. And so she'd doing some nice, abstract paintings using sumi and color. So she's successful that way. But yeah, that's a long story to get around, how we started it. It's because like Betty allowed me to do a conceptual design of a small house that she was bringing in a guy that was from Denmark or somewhere, it's a craftsman type, needed a place to live, so she, "Okay, just design a little simple boxed house." So that was a small contract, but it helped me get started, I guess.

BN: So going forward, what would you estimate was like the percentage of work that you did? Was it more public sector work versus private residences?

FS: Mostly public. I had to... I'm one man, and I had to market. So every job, if I can simultaneously do jobs, that was good. But I marketed and then I looked for larger projects so that I could bring in support companies that had enough manpower that would give the impression of a team, but they knew that I was the guy. And so that allowed me to negotiate my way into using my skills, which I was fairly quick at doing, because public sector, there's a limitation, you're not trying to make your ego thing. So you try to solve problems and making sure it came in on budget. So I managed to keep all my clientele out of the headline by doing a job where it runs... when they at least can go overbudget and they still survived. Like police department building here in Pasadena, they brought in, I forgot his name, something Stern or something like that, big time architect. And they were about twenty-five percent overbudget when they built it. They built it because Pasadena's got money, and we are elite. But when I did the fire station here, it was a million bucks or whatever. But you know, got it right on the number, because I couldn't afford to let it run over. I had to do that. I had to do that, and I learned enough by different things, how to make sure I could control the costs. It's not worth taking a gamble, in which guys that become prominent do, but many people have some backing to take a gamble. And a lot of the Niseis, now getting back to the Niseis before the war and after the war, they couldn't do that. They couldn't do that unless there was some money or access to money. Money, architecture is strictly a money game.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

BN: Actually, I wanted to ask you about this house, and the story behind your buying this house.

FS: I guess you ought to ask my wife, too. Yeah, because houses are, you can't select it by yourself. You're in trouble if you do. Yeah, we weren't shown the area before, and the interesting thing with this house was it was the least expensive of all the ones that we were shown. And I didn't realize it at the time, it was also damaged from the earthquake, and the people, family that lived here, they got out in a hurry. And so it came up, and so the price was more reasonable, even there. Even though the damages didn't show, because they had covered the ceilings upstairs with wallpaper and painted it, and we didn't know it was all cracked up. And outside, I didn't look at all the plaster on the walls that were patched up real quick and pretty bad. And the reason is, I had a cast on my leg. I was playing ball at Cal Tech and I pulled my Achilles tendon (operated and so) I couldn't move around too well. And I was still younger, because I think she said we bought it in 1972 or thereabouts. So you know, it was the first house... see, I guess because I did work with my hands, and because of the time and everything I'd done, I kind of improved the little places we lived.

[Interruption]

FS: Yeah. So what happened is because I... and then we moved two times on the east side. It was not far east, we were right there near Chester and Orange Grove. And so each time, when we came back and we moved in, we moved from a house that we purchased with a low down payment and all that stuff, and I was able to sell it for a little bit more. And so we moved across the street to a house that was kind of haunted, and it was a concrete house that somebody had built, but the reason I bought that one was it was adjacent to a lot where my parents eventually moved to and then allowed us to sort of take advantage of my mother being around. So my Head Start work and even when we traveled to... when I went to Japan, and when I was doing Head Start, that's where we lived, in this little six hundred foot concrete house that was, that we sort of fixed up to where Marian could accept it. And then when we had the first child, third child, Mutsuko, the house got too small and she wanted to move. So by then we had fixed up the house enough that someone else wanted to buy it right away, it happened to be a guy who was working for me or helping me in the Bridge. So he bought it, and then we were able to then get started here. They didn't show us all these houses, you know, there were certain houses. But the lady that happened to show us this house, I discovered while we were talking about it, what we liked, of course, was the size and scale and the price, obviously. She happened to be the daughter of a very famous writer who spent most of his life in France, because he used a lot of foul language in his books. Don't know if you know the name Henry Miller, very prominent at that time, but I guess he had to get out of here because it was illegal to even sell his books in this country. When we first went to Europe, I did sneak one in my bag, so I got a pocketbook of that Tropic of Cancer, I think, was the name. So that's how we, again, interesting ironies of who I meet and how we ended up in this place, in this neighborhood.

And when we moved here, there were nothing but big houses on the street. And we didn't know that the lady who lived in one of them was a real estate agent, and she had her mind set on developing the condo there. And so after we moved in and settled in, they got a variance to build that. And the three houses got demolished, so my good wife really got upset about that. We didn't know, we thought it was our one, we were sold with the idea to have the single family residence. I don't think that realtor knew, because I don't think she lived in Pasadena. So that's kind of how we got started and it was before the big hole over here before the pseudo railroad track, right, where we always have the good side and bad side of the railroad track. Well, that side of that hole was all the Latino Mexican people, working class, used to be working and living. So we moved in here into a very, the more elite side of town, not knowing what I know now, and nothing's changed, thanks to the railroad track there, we were secure. And Bryan now knows all about the west side people. And it's going to continue that way because it's been almost landlocked to be preserved. Other side of the Arroyo is all well-established, it's a certain scale of Pasadena, it's upper class.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

BN: Did you ever consider moving out of Pasadena, or if not, what did you like or what was the appeal of raising your family in Pasadena?

FS: No, I loved the mountains. I loved the quality of the neighborhood physically. My wife loves it, we've been involved in the city of Pasadena and she was much more active before, when we were younger. So I think it's natural. I mean, if I had a choice, I used to always fantasize, and I still talk to Marian's cousin up there in the Lodi area, big open land, beautiful. We used to take our camper and go on trips that way with the kids. Yeah, I guess in a way I'm like my buddy Tom Benton. I can't... I have a harder time now, even more with the traffic and how fast people are going and that kind of life. But I can't complain because of why I stayed, and why Marian loves the neighborhood. And here we are in a neighborhood that we were excluded from and yet we're the longest ones on this street as minorities. And they're slowly allowing minorities across the street in the condos. There's several Korean families now. I think there might be one Black family. Yeah, and we have friends in the neighborhood because we were here the earliest and people, they accept us as we are. We don't have to wonder whether we're looking different or that kind of stuff. When we were younger, I think I was much more aware of that, sensitive to it, and especially knowing Mrs. Warner, how she aged there, and we're very comfortable here. So it's circumstance, everything is kind of... I know the street well. Not by street name but by visual, I'm strictly a visual guy. So yeah, we're part of, and I grew up here, right, Western School, it's my first home. And the irony is, yeah, and so I kind of know, I watched it change, I know the history. And I think part of my being an architect, and even it's my understanding, I heard, there's one name I remember, it was called Ted Adsit, and it's my understanding that the City Manager of West Covina who allowed me to get my first, control my first job. He checked with a guy that happened to be the Planning Director of Pasadena, I think. Name was Ted Adsit, I think he might have been teaching at USC. But you got a back check, you're going to have a young come in and work on a major project, right? So I got plenty of ties, and ties with the Van de Kamp family.

BN: What was his name, Ted what?

FS: Oh, Adsit, I think, A-D-S-I-T, I think, was the name. Somehow I thought he might have been with the city, but I don't know, none of that might be totally accurate. But certainly he told the City Manager he had this, whatever, that I was capable enough to work on the Civic Center. So that's kind of how it started. And just, yeah, I don't think... my dad didn't knowingly follow his trail from camp to Guadalupe, from Phoenix to Guadalupe to Western School. It's all the little circumstances that led him here, and I think he was pleased because I think I mentioned in the book that it was kind of an oasis or fantasyland for a young kid, I had everything. Safe neighborhood, I had a basketball court, I had a tennis court, private, I had everything. I mean, not the best room, bedroom, all that kind of stuff, that didn't matter because I grew up in all these little shacks after camp. So it was easy to adapt to these different places, which is a funny way to come into architecture, I think. [Laughs] Everything felt natural.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 18>

BN: So, yeah, we want to jump ahead a few years and talk about your involvement with the Japanese American National Museum. How did that come about?

FS: Well, it's not that ahead as much as... see, my classmate, Tak (Shida). He was very involved, a very quiet guy, most of my classmates were very quiet Nisei.

BN: This is classmate at USC?

FS: At USC, yeah. In fact, he was... my hakujin partner and various others used to tease him and he didn't make any noise, "What's the matter with your life?" whatever. That's how quiet he was. But he was, always seemed to be involved in J-Town early on, and he knew Bruce Kaji and Colonel Kim, so that's kind of the start of the JANM story. And Tak kind of brought us together, there were about eight of us. And I knew Bruce because of Helen Kawagoe, who worked for Bruce, who was a relative, distant relative of mine. Yes, so I knew Bruce early on, too. And Tak told me what was going on, he was in on some conversation between Bruce and Colonel Kim early on. And so that's sort of how this group of eight architects came to be. And they were not just the young ones, mostly younger, but (George) Shino was part of it, and he was one of the little bit older guys who would have been in... well, I don't know what camp he was in, I don't know that much about him. But he and then his wife was into the arts, and she used to do something that was quite unusual, sell paintings and things to try to "educate" or maybe inspire Japanese Americans her age and things. She went around with my paintings and things, and she used to do that type of thing. So they were a unique couple, and I think the woman recently who did some history on the Japanese Americans before the war. She would have a bigger story about those people, and I think George might be part of that. So that's kind of the JANM thing. Of course, on the JANM site, you're... Nancy, she was involved early with the, who's the whole, your movie people from downtown L.A.? Gosh, I'm terrible. I didn't realize I forgot all those names.

BN: You're talking about Nancy Araki?

FS: Nancy Araki, but she was with the group that was filming early on that did...

BN: Oh, Visual Communications.

FS: Yeah, yeah. See, I kind of knew them more, well, they walked into my office years ago when I was in the Bridge. But I don't know the timing between Tak, because I knew Bruce. So I didn't hesitate to join, but I know a lot of the... and we had one woman, too, and I'm trying to get her recognized more. Because I've never seen JANM talk about these people. And architects don't make a whole lot of money whether you're working for people... you can. I made enough, I had no complaints about the profession or field or whatever you call it. And they gave their time to these workshops and things that Nancy conducted. And I think it's underestimated some of the early input. You know, buildings don't start without money, as I said, and I know that world very well. and JANM didn't have money back then. They had an idea, there was an old church, and Bruce had a space to have workshops, because he was a developer. And it came together, but people gave their own time. It's not easy for a lot of architects to give that kind of time. But it was a commitment that it was of importance at that time. And I keep saying "at that time" because that's how all the excitement, disagreements, whatever, there were a bunch of us that used to meet. And I truly want to make sure that the museum, now that you bring up JANM, that JANM really has a better understanding of those people that gave the time. By then, I've got my practice going, I've got my thing, and so maybe I was doing bigger projects than anybody, but not because I was a big corporate type. So I just had the luck of the draw, you know.

So for me, there's, I won't say anger, but it's disappointment because our field is very little, it's not understood. They were talented, just as talented people with license before the war and right after the war that nobody knows about. And not everybody could be Obata and Yamasaki, but I think it's unfortunate that those voices weren't heard. And in a way, I hope I'm speaking for those people that I really respected. Because anyone going into the field at my time, we didn't look up to Yamasaki or Obata because we couldn't. They're big corporate giants. It's another world. I was looking for people that I could relate to, and fortunately, I did meet a few that worked under the glass ceiling. So I'd rather speak for those people, the Niseis that did their job, had the skill. And even the guy that's ninety-two or -three, we've become good friends. I try to tell him, you know, he did what he could with him, the limits that he had, where he always looked up to me, which I didn't know, right? Because I had my own practice, and I didn't realize I was, he wouldn't even come in the office, and his daughter worked for me during the summer 'til he came to pick her up. And he never went in the office where I was because he thought I was, I had my own place and all that stuff. But, see, there's guys... we didn't have an association, we didn't have all these things, and people like me never wanted to be part of AIA. We knew we didn't belong in that world. So it's a... as it relates to the 9066 history and all that, I think it's unfortunate. Because it's not like doctor, lawyers, dentists. Architects... the symbol is pretty big, right? Because you get the headlines and the rich folks loved to talk about them and take the tours and they'd go all over the world talking about architects. But the reality of the Nisei talent is kind of buried, I think. That's my opinion. Because, see, the writers who write for the response, right? And the audience is people who travel because architecture, unless you have money, you don't travel. You don't come to understand all these reference points. I think I would like to speak for all the guys that paid their dues, and they had to do it the hard way because they had to earn a living to support the family, whatever, if that makes any sense. I'm not speaking for me, I had circumstances that worked for me. But I know it wasn't the same for everyone. It's changed, it's changed a lot. But it's a quirky field. It's sort of fantasy in a lot of ways.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 19>

BN: With regard to JANM, though, what your group did, was it the conversion or the restoration of that old Nishi Hongwanji building?

FS: Yeah. Well, that's kind of meaningless other than the history of it gave the springboard to the new building Obata did. So, you know, architects are, we were just a tool there. But we should feel satisfied that we made it happen, yeah. And I think, but it's never... see, what's hard for me is it makes it sound like it's about me and it's not. Because I got my name on plaques and all that BS. That's why I hate to be the last man standing. [Laughs] Well, because unless you had a practice of some... I hate the word significance, too, but then some people knew I did the Civic Center over there, and Carson, West Covina. And so maybe that makes me qualified, but I used to look for people to respect that could teach me about the field. And I had some of these guys spend the time to talk to me, and I had the chance to watch some of them. And I also, later on, got to know some of the, these guys that were at the end of their careers, that were the "giants of the field," guys that did the Kennedy Flame and all of Washington, D.C., and all this stuff, and he was Jackie Kennedy's lover. He's the only guy that quit on me. I got a lot of architectural tales, but see, I guess JANM, if it is the hold, where you hold the whole story of JA, then it seems to me, those JA A and E, Architect Engineer, they all contributed as much as the current people. I know George Takei has done a lot for the... but they don't talk about architects other than Obata and Yamasaki. Yeah, talk about Dyke Nagano, talk about Kaz... I forgot his name, Shimamoto, something like that. I could find it. But they were talent, and they didn't have that opportunity to be in the big leagues, which my observation when I, early on, got involved in the East Coast as well as the West Coast, I could see where the money and power, you know, it still starts on the East. There's still, the schools of the East Coast are the Ivy League schools, all that stuff, it's all still... and maybe that's rightly so. I'm not criticizing, but the reality of those that contributed to the start of JANM, I think it's unfortunate that those people that I knew, that was on that original team, aren't acknowledged in a way that it was critical. You can't start any project without architect, that's how it is. I mean, what can I say? I'm not trying to criticize the institution and what it has become as much as the idea of where it has to go. And it has to have a clear understanding of how this thing started. I guess that's what people like yourself know more about the history and are interested in the history. There's no JANM without some architects.

BN: Very true.

FS: Well, there's some Nishi Hongwanji people that did it. I don't know the whole history of that. I didn't have time to study history of all the churches, but I know some of the guys that came later and they were involved in the cultural center stuff. Well, so I should remember names, I don't anymore, but Miyako Hotel, the Kajima building, all that stuff and how Kajima moved over here to Monterey Park and to put an office in and develop as they could. And the irony there is I'm related distantly to the Kajimas through the Shimazu and all that, my grandmother's side. It's in that whole, way big family tree. So that was the only company I visited when my relative picked me up and showed me Japan in 1964, the Kajima corporation. Takase, I'm thinking, he did a lot of Japanese town architectural stuff. But he was, I think he might have been born in Japan, I'm not sure. Because he spoke like he did, but I know he was good friends with the younger president of Kajima Corp, who's now gone or he's my age. That's kind of interesting, huh? The journey into the projects, and they talk about the people in J-Town. Well, when we were involved in JANM at the beginning and even before Nishi Hongwanji, there was, the guy who was married to Kats Kunitsugu and her husband were very involved.

BN: Kango.

FS: Yeah. He was trying to help people like myself, actually, my good friend that was a little bit older, Mark Horie, who, he was trying to get people like that involved in J-Town through the CRA, that didn't, the commitment to help us, or help Japanese American grow from there, didn't, there was a gap in which it died, and I guess now the Watanabe who tried to do things. But that was kind of interesting, that whole process. Some of the people they brought in to make J-Town theater and things like that, I think that was Kajima on that theater. Well, the money, what's the gentleman's name who's on every building? They give grants now.

BN: Aratani.

FS: Aratani, yeah. Oh, see, I knew Aratani briefly only because of the job we did at the retirement home, Keiro. So I know a little more about the history and the development and the motivation, so some of the young activists that's going after it, they didn't understand the full story of where the commitment was. So it wasn't fair to the board people that came in later, someone like Frank Kawana that I got to know, who took the heat for the sale. It was a lot of circumstances that went that way. I know when Aratani, I think Wada, the people with money, they went to Japan and they got Kajima involved again. I didn't even know at that time how they're related. So we, as architects, we worked with Kajima corporation, because they held the purse strings in a way that they controlled the budget. Because they had to get it within the budget because they were contributing so much to the process. So it was a very unique project because they had to import this concrete forming system that they used. Most concrete buildings at that time were built with, you put a lot of stick work up and you form it and then you pour the concrete. This was called tunnel form, and it was used exclusively abroad, and they started bringing, Kajima brought it into, I think, Hawaii, and then they started building condos because it was restricted width all that. So that concrete, they can move it daily, so you were building a concrete building fairly quickly. And that was unique because the building department didn't know anything about it, so it took a little bit of jockeying by Kajima, and they were able to pull it off and get the project built.

But it was, all of that was orchestrated in a way that Aratani and Wada, when I heard some of the early discussions, they were thinking Issei and Nisei. They weren't necessarily thinking of the Shin-Isseis you call it, or the next generation coming from Japan. Because those people didn't have any money, but Aratani and Wada had the businesses and then they had the connections in Japan, and they made it happen. So yeah, there's a lot in that whole process, which is like JANM, but it's all, it's a lot more behind it. I didn't mean to get away from JANM, or Little Tokyo. And the early people that really made the effort, I think, people seemed to forget easily, the real early people, the Niseis that came back. You know, they were different than people that had money. And even those people didn't have much money. They would talk about Toyo and his family, and they had a house or whatever in Boyle Heights. My dad knew Toyo real well and I knew Toyo. There's a difference between not having anything when you start. Fortunately, Aratani had some land in Guadalupe, which is kind of interesting that I made a stopover there. I'm only an observer of this process, and I did my little share to be a part of it. That's JANM for me. I'm only discouraged when they had issues at the top and they changed. I don't think... I'm not sure how much clarity there is in the depth of the history. I know you put programs on and do exhibits and all this. Well, anything that's clear is the camp thing, that's pretty straight up, and it's excellent. But every other story comes through there, everyone has a different story. But they forgot one story. So that's sort of my cause even by spending the time with you guys on this thing, is there were a lot of good people. There's no reason you can't write about good people even if they're not famous people, or they're not as famous as 442. There are other very good architects, not just two. And I don't mean to belittle their skills or talents or success, but it was disappointing to me when the local community seems to know nothing about that group, or very little about it. That's all I can offer about JANM.

BN: I think that's a good place to finish.

FS: J-Town? Oh god. [Laughs]

BN: And the architects.

FS: Well, I really... you know, like the thing I got upstairs, or the guy gave me, called the Prime Mover, you know, the little telephone pole slice. They gave it to me because during that time, also at Head Start, we worked trying to help people. All the parents were really getting uptight about all these playgrounds and kids getting hurt, that they, Pasadena paved everything, because low maintenance and hard to maintain and everything. So parents started rolling up their sleeves, and dig out the asphalt, bring in sand and build these tire swings and all this kind of stuff that I helped initiate when it was Head Start through my, some of the program things. So that really... it was only a period, but what was happening was that even the playground equipment at that time, they had limited stuff and it was all how to tell, man. You couldn't touch it, it was all galvanized. So kids didn't play on it much.

BT: Yeah, it was hot. I remember that now.

FS: Yeah, so there was a transition. And they developed, since then they developed other equipment and they're coated now so you don't burn your hand with those things, the early ones, you run around, man, they were hot.

BT: Yeah, they were.

FS: So that all happened about that time. And so I guess architects can do different things, right, you don't have to build your monument or anything. I guess my little bit, and my reward is not a placard. That's why I gave Kristen that thing they gave me at triple-A. It was about the JANM award that these architects... I'm listed on there, but I didn't, I was trying to make a statement, but I left it there because I didn't want it anymore. I don't know how you educate people, you do the best you can.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.