<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So you had two Nikkei organizations essentially asking for the same thing to the same federal agencies.

HM: For the same funds. Yeah. And Chuck made a presentation to this other organization and they wanted a copy of his entire proposal. And I tried to convince Chuck that that might not be the best thing to do, but because Chuck's so straightforward about these things he thought, well nothing harmful could come if it, so he gave 'em a copy of the proposal. And unfortunately, they just changed parts of it and they submitted a proposal very equal to what Chuck had proposed.

TI: Now, was Chuck working with an existing organization to submit the proposal? Was it through the, for instance, I thought it was through the Japanese Language School or...

HM: Well, he had all the different supporting organizations like Language School, Seattle Dojo, JACL, all these different supporting organizations. So it was a kind of consortium of different organizations that would sponsor this function. And the JACL would be the nonprofit organization that would be the management function for this whole process.

TI: Okay. And that was -- and then Chuck also had a site picked out, was that the --

HM: Yeah, yeah.

TI: Where the current, where the Japanese Language School is currently?

HM: Yes. The other site that we had picked out -- well we had four different sites altogether. One was that Burbank North --

TI: Oh, the Luther Burbank? On Mercer Island?

HM: Yeah. That was being designated as surplus federal property at that time. So we had capability of accruing that thing on the basis of this, if we were successful on this --

TI: Well, that would've been wonderful. That would have been lakefront property.

HM: Yeah, that would have been -- and then the other properties we had, one was near where Paul Allen is securing his venture on Lake Washington north of Renton. That was another piece of property. And then we had another property, this was in Factoria, on the east side. And the reason why we were thinking of that was that potentially we could have purchased the entire property that was available. I knew the person that was selling it, and he said, "Well, if it's going to be a cultural center, I'll give it to you for a real nominal price." And our plan was to sell half of it to the Factoria Shopping Management Group and keep the other half, and have it paid off immediately. But anyway, we had all these grandiose plans, but unfortunately when the proposals were submitted, it was denied to us because we had two identical proposals practically and the EDA Administrator says, you guys make up your own mind, and they awarded the 1.26 million dollars to another organization, unfortunately.

TI: Was there ever an attempt by Chuck to work with this other organization? And the other organization --

HM: Well, they did it without our knowledge.

TI: Right, but then --

HM: They submitted --

TI: But then given that -- so it was just too late. I mean proposals were...

HM: Yeah

TI: ...were sent and it was the final proposals and they were competing ones, and so because of --

HM: We didn't realize that they had submitted one, also.

TI: And the other competing group was the Buddhist Temple proposing the Collins Playfield.

HM: Yes, yeah. They wanted to preserve the Collins Playfield entity. There was competition with the Randolph Carter Workshop for the Collins Playfield. And so this was to protect the best interest of the Buddhist Church, or that's how they felt.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.