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SF: I'd like to ask you a few questions about your own career after the war, too. So you came back, and got re-established at the University of Washington. Rapidly move through the professorial ranks at UW, became chairperson of the sociology department and eventually became acting dean. What accounted for your, sort of rapid mobility in academia, which is very unusual for a Japanese American?

FM: Well, to tell you the truth, my rise in the professorial ranks was far from being rapid. And the problem was not discrimination or anything like that, it was, it's simply that I have great difficulty writing, putting things down on paper. If it's informal writing, I do that with ease. But when it comes to academic writing, I do it with great difficulty, and it's a kind of problem of perfectionism. And a problem, basically, of insecurity. You may not think of me as an insecure person, perhaps, but my mother was not a, she was a worrier, I guess. And my father, he was a secure person, but he was a perfectionist. Now that combination [Laughs] didn't go well, as it turned up in me. If I had had a little more confidence in my own thoughts and ideas, I think I would have done better. And if I'd had less of a perfectionism, however, somehow the kind of sense that my father had of having things fully organized before he could act, then I might have done better. But, anyway, that's the nature of my personality, and therefore, I didn't write as easily and as rapidly as I needed to, to move up in the academic world as I might have.

SF: But that would've been a rare, an incredible combination of positive characteristics for academia, right? [Laughs]

FM: [Laughs] That's true. A lot of guys have that problem, right?

SF: Right, right. I mean...

FM: But I had it in, kind of excess, I think. I had more of it than... and so I rose through the ranks more slowly than, as many of my friends have. And, on the other hand, these qualities that I'm just talking about, also made me very good in certain respects. I, my fame as a sociologist was initially established as a critic. I was very good at doing reviews and I was very good at criticizing manuscripts of other people, and of recommending what to do with manuscripts that were turned in to publishers, and so on. So the publishers got to me as someone they could turn to. The journal editors got to me as a person who would be useful in helping them with that kind of thing. And organizations turned to me as a person who was reliable on certain kinds of organizational matters. And so I, in a sense I got up faster through that route than I did academically through my writing.

SF: The NIMH Council would be a good example.

FM: Exactly, yeah. And you've remarked one time on your surprise that I was president of the American, uh, the Pacific Sociological Association, so early in my career, actually before I'd become full professor or anything like that, I made the Pacific Sociological Association presidency. And the reason that happened was that, as a critic of papers, Ralph Turner became acquainted with my capabilities. He got me in as a secretary-treasurer of Pacific Sociological Association. That organization then discovered that I could do some things for it, and so I moved up the political ladder that way. So, although I wasn't efficient in the thing that would get me ahead most rapidly in the professorial ranks, I did have certain capabilities that got me up in, organizationally, in one way or the other.

My rise to the chairmanship was somewhat accidental. In fact, my rise through the administrative ranks were all somewhat accidental. The reason I became chairman of Sociology was we came into this turmoil, period of turmoil, in the academic world, of the Berkeley riots and so on in the mid-1960s. The student rebellion became part of the University scenes, everywhere. And prior to my chairmanship, the chairman of the department, chairmanship was held by people who were in their office for a long time, ran their office with considerable control and discipline, and laid out programs which would in due course be fulfilled by persistentive effort of everybody concerned. Whereas, under the protest, the student rebellion and the protest that generally developed around the campuses, all this was turned over, and the strong chairmanship became anathema to a lot of the faculty. Students rebelled against that kind of control, also. And so they began looking for someone who would run things with some feeling for what other people wanted, and democratically, but at the same time with enough organization so that the department would not fall apart. And I happened to be sitting there, so to speak, when they chose a man who was from Yale, who they thought would fill that kind of slot, and then all of a sudden, he decided he would not be able to come out. And, lo and behold, we were left with a vacancy, and the department then decided I would serve as a one-year term fill for this vacancy until they could find a new person.

Now in that slot, then, it turned out that we didn't find anybody satisfactorily, and so the department voted me in as chairman on a longer term basis. And from that position, I got to know the dean very well, and they liked what I did organizationally, and that was how I moved into the associate deanship, and so on. But I think that the initial feeling about me was that I was not sufficient -- among the departmental members. They did not vote me into the chairmanship initially because I was not as strong and positive a character as they were looking for, or that's what they thought of me. I think my Japanese American characteristics showed up in that regard. I'm not an assertive in the way that Americans look, want in a leader. But, once I was in office, why, they then discovered that I could run things very effectively in my own style. And the Dean, Dean's Office, discovered I was effective in that sense, and that was how I was drawn into the associate dean-ship, ultimately, because of that kind of...

So, to reflect on my personal history, I think I was, I didn't rise in the professorial ranks quite so rapidly, because of some lack of confidence in what I believed in, and so on. Which was partly due to my Japanese American background. You know, I was never sure of myself, of my acceptance in society, because of the prejudices, and the discrimination which I faced, in one way or another as I grew up. So I was not as sure of myself as I needed to be. I had, however, a sense of my own skills. I felt that I could express myself in writing better than many other people did, but I couldn't push myself to get it down on paper as rapidly as I needed to, to be a good academic person. Once in office, however, as I say, I think my Japanese American skills showed themselves. I think I dealt with people well, or at least in a fashion that people trusted me. I think I was organized well enough so that I could get things done administratively. And thereby, I get the recognition from people in positions of power and authority, and get drawn into this position or that, which brought about my rise in the professorial rank. So that's would account for my history, personal career. I think I had skills, and I had enough confidence in functioning in the American world that I didn't have doubts about myself as a Japanese American. But, on the other hand, it did affect me personally, because of the combination of characteristics I had, have, in getting publications into the works, sufficiently to rise rapidly in the academic ranks.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.