<Begin Segment 36>

MM: For a reluctant administrator, you sure had a lot of administrative positions and had your fingers in a lot of administrative issues. In 1984 to 1986 you served as acting chancellor for Manoa. What were those years like?

RK: Yeah, that was my last administrative post. As you can see by my record, I kept on going back to the classroom and getting back on again. And I went back as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Manoa campus, which was an interesting job because you could see the whole campus and we were developing quite rapidly. Although I used to say Manoa is a, you have all the departments and divisions and school of this and that. You get an overview and it's, the university is a fascinating world. And many people think it's "a many splendored thing," but I used to say it's "a many splintered thing." Yeah, each one has its own fiefdom and some deans are more aggressive than others. And I was, anyway... so it was an interesting and worthwhile job. But when I got to be chancellor and we had a very strong president at that, who just came in, who was very active. And so I said to Al, "Al," I said, "you know, when the football team wins, it's yours, when it loses its mine. It's not fair. And you're right on the campus." I said, "I say, 'No,' to a dean, he gets mad at me, he runs to your office and twenty minutes later I get a call from you." I said, "That's no way to run this place." I said, so when... he said, "Yeah." He said, "I really want to run Manoa." So I said, "Okay, why don't you abolish the chancellor's office?" It's the most frustrating job I've had because I start all -- Al Simone was the president. It's not Al's fault. But when the position was created, when Harlan Cleveland was president and I was his vice president at that time, but Harlan created the position, assigned it to Dick Takasaki as chancellor. I remember Dick writing to Harlan saying, "Now, let me know what my responsibilities are, what authority do I have?" He never got a straight response. 'Cause Harlan's style of administration was... what did he call it? It has to do with ambiguity. At any rate, Harlan wanted to deal in an informal sort of way and he's the one who talked about not a pyramidal organization, but horizontal, etcetera. And anyway, so the chancellor's position was never clarified vis-a-vis the president of the university. So that last job I had was acting chancellor -- of course, being "acting" was also not that great, but the position itself was never clarified and I found that to be, unfortunately, sort of a frustrating experience because you didn't know exactly what authority you had.

MM: Comment on the comment that you just made about the acting part of it. Being the acting chancellor also put you at a disadvantage or in a difficult position.

RK: Yeah, well, partly it's, I asked for that because I knew the position was going to be going out. On top of that, I was, I was thinking again of not... of getting back into teaching or I was eligible for full retirement and I thought I could be doing other things. As it turned out, I did do other things.

MM: When the presidency had a vacancy, your name was considered. What was that time like?

RK: Well, there were at least two occasions when I guess I made the finalist list. And on both occasions I know that I had the faculty support but I didn't have the downtown support, which was crucial. The regents all came from downtown. I didn't know the business community. I knew some of the politicians but I didn't know the business community and in many ways they had a strong voice.

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.