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BB: So when you came here then in 1978, the church had been here at this site --

CE: Since 1952. They had that little rented house on First Street. And things began to grow, and they rented a couple more little houses for meetings and so forth. And they eventually in, I think in 1919 bought a house on 19th Street, Northwest 19th, and the old Victorian house had had a dance hall built onto the back of it, and they converted the dance hall into multiple space for worship and for Sunday school rooms with one side curtained off and so forth. And the house became the parsonage, but the parlor became the meeting place for the official groups of the church, the committees, and the board and so forth. And they stayed in that, in that location until 1952 when the, Southeast 28th, this location was empty, and the conference asked them if they would like to buy it and move to this site. This site at 28th and Madison had been a German Methodist Church. So this building has always been an ethnic church which is fascinating, I think. And they purchased the church and an old house across the street, one bedroom house which came with the church, and that was used as the parsonage for some years, and, but they moved into this location in 1952.

BB: So at the time you came, you mentioned there were some building issues. There were some things that needed to be addressed. And during the time that you were here, I think there were some pretty dramatic ways those were addressed.

CE: Well, I just, I saw the need first that we must fix the roof and paint and fix some plaster and so forth, but I sort of sensed that they might want to go on further than that, and I so decided to sort of challenge in that way. And I, so I proposed in that first year that we start a building fund for the purpose of as broad as you could get; repairing, restoring, maintaining, or adding to the building. And I ask them all to go on a retreat, a day long retreat, at Camp Leewood which is just outside of Portland where there used to be a lodge, and we got that lodge for the day, and we went away where there were no phones to interrupt us. And a goodly number of people went, and I put them all into work groups and day dreaming and vision dreaming and saying what do you really want to be in the future. And we did a lot of struggling with things, came out at the end of the day with a very happy bunch of ideas and with a decision pretty well made -- because part of it was do we stay in this location or should we relocate. And the decision was pretty much to stay in this location if we could get what we wanted on the space that was here on the north side of Leewood was a grassy space with flowering cherry trees on it, and that was between the building and the parking lot. And so eventually when we decided to build -- we all became little George Washingtons to chop down our cherry trees -- and made space where we could add to the building there and still keep the parking lot and give up our grassy space with cherry trees. The idea was sketched something that we might, you know, say this is what we want, what could be done. And we got sketches made of what the building, how it might be added to, and the first sketches were just one floor added to, and then a picture what it might look from the outside. And then I set up a whole group of meetings all over the metropolitan area and asked people in different neighborhoods to be hosts to their people around them and to get together with about maybe ten, twelve people, not too many for a living room. And I went with these sketches, threw them on the floor in the middle of the circle and started talking, and we talked and talked and talked. And several ideas emerged, but the major one was could we make that a two-story addition instead of a one-story. So that then led us to hiring an architect and seeing what he could come up with, what sketches and what that would look like, and we liked the proposal. So then we hired him to go ahead and do the detailed blueprints. And then we were all ready to do something and we, we were up to our ninetieth anniversary. When I came, the church was eighty-five years old. So by our ninetieth anniversary, we broke ground for the new building, and that was in 1983 which is just the reverse of 1893 when they started, 1983. And we had hired Jim Onchi as contractor. He was a member of the church, and of course he would take a personal interest in everything that was done, and he did and did a wonderful job. And we had to meet in an abbreviated basement for a while because one-third of it was cut off with a huge piece of plastic where the work was being done on the front end of the building, the entrance end of the building. And Ikoi no Kai met there, and church was held there, and we just squeezed ourselves in and did the best we could. And then we dedicated the building. We broke ground in February, and we dedicated the building in August and moved into our new quarters.

BB: So somewhere in there that vision that in ten years we'll be gone totally...

CE: It didn't happen.

BB: ...totally turned over.

CE: Yeah, it turned over.

BB: Can you describe more what happened in that visioning retreat? I'm fascinated by your description of that visioning retreat where people began to see a real future rather than simply a close down when the Issei were gone.

CE: Well, it became, it gave, you know, lots more ownership for people. They were in on the decision making. They were in on saying, "This was what we'd really like to see. We would like an intergenerational church; and if we do that, we sure would like to have some Sunday school rooms," because we just had... the dining room was curtains, you know, cordoning off spots, and so we tried to incorporate that all. But of course, the more people's ideas began to come to fruition, the more interested they became, and we just put it together. How do I put that?

BB: You talked about Ikoi no Kai. Can you tell us about the beginning? I think you were here for the very start of Ikoi no Kai.

CE: It was the year after, it opened the year after I arrived, and we were delighted to be chosen as the site. And it had been, you know, been in the works, being talked about by the Nikkei community and by the official structures of the community. And it opened, and it's been a wonderful thing, just has made this building vibrate with activity every day of the week. We became sort of a community center in a way with numbers of groups meeting here. And that was a good service, I think, to the community.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.