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BF: Because I know that Keiro and Nikkei Concerns, another organization that you were a part of starting, I, from what little I know about those types of organizations, it's really quite unique and quite, quite special. And I know I've talked to Nikkei in other parts of the country who have said they're very interested in knowing how that happened -- why it worked here, but not so well in other places. Well, so let me ask you about Nikkei Concerns, then called Issei Concerns. You were there when it started. What, what got it started? I mean, what planted the idea?

TM: Here again, I was thinking about that. I don't know the chronological, but two or three things that comes to mind. First of all, before Nikkei Concern, Issei Concern, we had a group at the Seattle Chapter JACL called Social Concerns. And this came about because as I was telling you, as I became active in JACL as a local board member and vice president or whatever, Min and Don and few others, Phil Hayasaka and those people, felt that JACL should broaden their interest and bring in speakers from the greater community, like superintendent of school, politicians, or people like that, or the police chief. And so we were, we still, I guess they were meeting, we were meeting once a month, at least eight, ten times a year. And we would have this long agenda, and at the end of the agenda, we would have these programs. And those poor speakers had to sit through our agenda for hour, hour and a half, and then they would speak. We lost half of those people, so when I became president or the year before, I talked to people like Min Mas -- Matsudaira, and I says, "Why can't we have a Social Concerns meeting that will meet in different Japanese organization aside from the board because it's not fair to have the speaker come in and give them only five minutes at the end when everybody's tired." And also it just, we used to spend, I mean, have something that's strictly for the Social Concerns. And, and two things happened, first of all, we did broaden our interest. I think it continued to promote the JACL as a viable community. I think it's still viewed in the Asian community, I think, historically viable, credible community organization. But it enhanced that. And also I think in retrospect, the beauty of that was also as we went to different organization, they knew who JACL was, and we got to know what the Nikkeijinkai was, maybe, and churches. And so it was a little better relation. And thinking back, those relations probably helped me and helped us when JACL was asked to do that exhibit because we had those contacts. So that, that's a side story. But let's see, what was I thinking? But, anyway, that's one thing. And then as we went to the --

BF: So from, so from this group...

TM: Yeah.

BF: ...came --

TM: Well, and I can't remember, but one time, as one of the guest speaker, I think we had somebody from the health --

BF: Oh.

TM: Washington state or some health-related speaker, I'm guessing. I can't remember the detail. But, and I remember distinctly this meeting was at the Nichirenkai, Nichiren Church. And we were talking, and gee, what was the name? Mr., he was very active in the Hiroshima Club. But Uyeda, Mr. Uyeda, very nice gentleman, Issei. One of the few Issei that really went on a limb to support the nursing home. But anyway, they get up and they said, "What we need is a nursing home." And I said, "Okay, that's great. Let's go on to the next subject." [Laughs] And then, and so they talked about the need, and kind of just went through me. And then we had a meeting one time at Nikkeijinkai on King Street. And I think it must have been December because walking in there, we see dozens of poinsettias. I said, "What are these for?" They said, "Well, there's seventy Niseis, Isseis, in about twelve nursing homes throughout Seattle. And we bring these and blankets." I said, "Wow." Fortunately, I didn't know anybody -- the few I knew used to be at the Hirabayashi Nursing Home, which was small, but maybe I was there once. Fortunately, I was, we didn't have family or real close friends that needed those service. I said, "Wow. This is interesting." That's, so but they kept -- and then about two other things simultaneously happened: Doctor Ruby and her husband were involved with this corporation. I call it, I remember now it was the called the Swan Corporation. They were trying to build a 100-unit nursing home on the same site across the street from where Dr. Ruby used to practice. And they have acquired about half of that block. And they were going to build a 100-unit nursing home. And retrospect, there was two or three things, and I'm thinking as I was trying to put this together was, first of all, it wasn't going to be exclusively Nikkei because it was the, their friends were Caucasian, and they were looking at it from a broad business point of view. Number two, even at that time, twenty-five, thirty years ago, the state was trying to cut back the number of licensed beds. And they kept arguing that King County had too many beds. And so that, so that, I don't know how many bed they were, licenses they were looking for, but it was, the top was like they were allocated, they would be allocated approximately a hundred beds. The more I got into this and started talking to various people that operate these nursing homes, they were saying that a hundred is just not enough to break even. You needed about 120 beds. So anyway, so economically, it didn't seem to pencil out. So Ruby, she was at some of these meetings because she's always been involved with the community also. So I remember talking to her. And she says, "You know," -- oh, let's, let's put it that... and then the third thing that happened was this Glen Akai that was a very active member of the Nichiren Church, he was there. And he was at a few other meetings. And yeah, he says, "Well, yeah, we got to do a nursing home." And then he calls me up, he says, "This Mount Baker Nursing Home, 63-bed, is for sale, and they're going to lose their license. But you have one year before they lose it, if you buy it." I says, "Gee, well, that's interesting. What the hell we going to do about it?" So we got together. And he was, we were not best of friends, but we were able to get together. And he says, "Oh, we got to have a drink down at Bush Garden or Nikko, wherever." So we got together. So I called Tosh and Harry and Henry Miyatake, and Don Kazama was gone, so we called Ruth and kept meeting. "What are we gonna do?" He says, "Well, they want only 300,000, and you could buy it and we could do it." So anyway, we were thinking about that when a fourth thing happened, Tosh Okamoto's daughter Joyce was in LA, just married, and married a minister's son. But anyway, she was working for LA Keiro. I can't remember what she was doing. But just happened because she and her family very community conscious-minded and everything. So she was working at LA Keiro, and so she calls Tosh up and says, "My boss, Edwin Hiroto, and his wife, who are thinking of retiring in four, five years, are going to drive up the coast and look at properties they would retire in. So would you take care of them?" Naturally, when they come to Seattle. Just fortuitously, the evening that we were allow, or given the keys to look at the old 63-bed site, Edwin happened to be in town. So we walked through that place, and we're saying, "Oh, shoot, we don't want to do this." Edwin says, "This is a, for $300,000, 63-bed, you're not going get a deal like this. Buy it. Take it." He says, "It's a deal. You can't miss it." He says, "eHeHeThe need is there." And he's running 2, 300 beds in LA, and he has authority. He says, "Oh, gee." Okay, so we formed this non-profit. And we said, "We got to raise $300,000 because that's what it's going to cost." Edwin said, "Oh, no. You got to raise 500 because it's going to cost you a couple hundred thousand to open it, and cash flow." Says okay. So anyway, so we formed this non-profit organization. We went to JACL, I remember. And we kind of, I guess, back of my mind I was hoping they would take over. But they said, "No, here's $1,500." And to this day, they feel they were one of the first seed money, which is right, and they are deserving of credit for encouraging us anyway with $1,500, and I think --

BF: You would have to -- I mean, it would take a while to raise $500,000. So how, didn't you have to put down earnest money or --

TM: Well, I think, I can't remember, but we had to put like $50,000 down, yeah or something like that. And I don't know how we raised it, very frankly. I think, I can't remember.

BF: I've heard that, that, the, the folks, individuals like yourself who were organizing it, put in their own money.

TM: Yeah, well, I think we did. I can't remember, and I don't have anything written. But I'm sure, whatever it took, $50,000. And then we brought in people like Russ Akiyama, we heard that he was working for the state. So he was very helpful because he knew exactly what, what the state was doing. And then, so you're right, we had a deadline. And then we said, "What are we going to do?" We said, "Well, why can't we work with an existing organization?" And for whatever reason, we checked those off. And well, a side issue was, naturally, the Nikkeijinkai, which we thought was the most logical organization to do this, kind of just backed off.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.