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BB: Chet, it's great to be with you here at Epworth, and I'd like to just start asking you about where you were born and how you grew up and your personal background.

CE: I was born and raised in Spokane, Washington, went through high school there. I was raised in the Christian church. That was before there was a difference between the Christian church and the Disciples of Christ. Ours was the more fundamental, little corner on the church, church on the corner. And it was a conservative church but a loving church, and I enjoyed growing up there. When I graduated from high school at sixteen, I did what the church wanted me to do and what my parents hoped I would do, and that was to go to Eugene, Oregon, to Northwest Christian College. And I did that and got a degree there and was ordained and decided I didn't want to be a minister. That was my first major attempt to not be a minister, of which there were three in my life. And so I went to work for Seattle First National Bank that was then Seattle, the First National Bank in Washington State, and I was there five years doing quite well. I think I could have been a banker if I had stayed with it, but I had gotten involved in a local church where I was just as a member, and I got more involved and more involved. And in the middle of about the fifth year there, the nice manager there said, "Have you ever thought about going to work for the church?" And so I found myself pastoring a church in Northeast Washington and picking up some credits at Whitworth College in Spokane. And then I found myself in Northern Oregon, pastoring a church and picking up credits at University of Idaho. So that after about eight, nine years, I was all ready to not be a minister because I had another bachelor's degree and a master's degree, and I was going to be a public school teacher in music and education.

And as I was getting ready to graduate, some very strange and interesting things happened. And by some strange coincidences and so forth, I ended up at the First United Methodist Church in Corvallis, Oregon, and then I was sent to First Methodist Church in Portland, Oregon, and I spent eighteen years being a Methodist minister doing music and education in the church rather than in the public school. Then I had been at First Methodist Church in Portland for thirteen years, and I was sort of running dry and feeling like I was sort of burned out, and maybe I ought to get out of the ministry. That was what I was trying to do in 1960 and tried to do in 1947, but I was just not being very successful at it, but I thought this time I would be successful. Until one day, it was summer, and we had three ministers at First Methodist Church and I... the district superintendent said to me, "I need you to go across the river and preach for three or, three or four Sunday mornings at the Japanese church." And I assured him I didn't know how to do that, and he assured me that I would find a way to do it. And so I was supposed to drive across the river and preach for maybe during the months of July, ministers change in July, first of July, they change their appointments, and so I could be borrowed over here. And we did that, and I needed a translator. And so one of the members translated for me, and I struggled along and figured out a way to do it and, as the district superintendent had told me to do. And we got into early August, and I was taken out to lunch by three men of the church, and they took me out to lunch to ask me if I would stay for a year. And I was sort of shocked and I said, "Well, I don't know. I'd have to think about that." And then they said, "Well, think about it. But you know, we'd like to, you know, have you stay for a year." So I thought about it for about a week. And about that time, I got a phone call from the bishop who said, "What are you going to do? If you're going to stay over there, I have to appoint you over there." And you know, a word from that, like that helps you think from the, you know, when the bishop confronts you with that. And so I decided well, maybe that would be a good thing to try. So I went back and talked to the men. I said, "If you want me to do this, you need to understand that I don't know what I'm going to do, and I don't know what I will be doing, and you're going to have to help me do what I'm supposed to do." And we agreed on that, and they were wonderful, and it all became sort of a wonderful challenge to me. And I just sort of -- they just kind of drew me into them. And with their kindness, with the twinkle in the Isseis' eyes which I just value, by their wish and want for me to stay. And by six months after that, I was pretty convinced that they wanted me to stay because they doubled my salary, and that was a good thing to do, I think, I thought it was, and we just kind of evolved, I guess.

BB: And that was in what year that you came and what were your impressions of the past when you came here in that year and what was happening?

CE: That was in 1978. I had gone to First Church Portland in '65; and in '78, I'd been there thirteen years. I began to just love the people. I began to feel at home and like I wanted to be here, and they were just very kind people.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

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BB: And the nature of the group that you came to at that time?

CE: The Sunday morning service, the larger number of people were Issei. And they, the man who had retired in July 1st from here was an Issei minister. And there were a core of faithful strong Nisei families which at that time were young enough to have children. So we had some children, and they particularly wanted us to expand or me to help them expand their appeal and get more intergenerational rather than be at this being a, quote, an Issei church. I found it fascinating that it was thought of as an Issei church. Of course, it had begun that way, and it just kept, keeping that image somehow though younger people got involved, they were not the larger number. And there was a feeling not by all Nisei but especially by Nisei men, there was a sort of a cultural thing, and there's no judgment on that. I think it's a good thing that their cultural respect for elders and respect for their parents made them feel like, "This was my parents, this was my parent's church; therefore, I will support it," but there wasn't ownership. So I determined early on that one of the things that I wanted to work on was to try to give some ownership to Nisei and especially Nisei men. In fact, when it came time for me to think, to say we need to think about repairing this building because it was in pretty sad shape, the roof leaked, and I had to set pans around and so forth when it rained, and the plaster was falling off the wall, and the paint was coming off of the outside. And I said we need to think about doing some maintenance and repairs here. And one Nisei man said we shouldn't put a penny into that building, and I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because in ten years, there will be no church there." And I said, "Why?" and he said, "Because all the Issei will be gone." So it was an interesting thing to get in touch with, to respect out of a cultural setting, but a challenge for me was to give ownership. Some years later, I got a nice compliment at a gathering of the Japanese clergy, and I think it was in Los Angeles in one of the Japanese churches where we met yearly, and they said to me, "You have more Nisei men in your church than any of us have." Well, I took that as a compliment.

BB: What other things did you find as impressions of the church and the history of the church here in Portland?

CE: Well, the history was a fascinating history. I could, I can read this better than I can say it, in the history of the church booklet. In the midst of western growth and development in the United States, the first immigrants from Japan moved into the vicinity of Portland, Oregon, in the 1880s. By 1887, about thirty Japanese lived in the area. The number grew to at least a hundred by 1892. In the presence of these Japanese, mostly men, in Portland, was recognized by the Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church in San Francisco now known as the Pine Church, and that church commissioned a missionary journey to study the need for ministry in the Northwest. In October of 1892, the Reverend Takichi Kawabe, an ordained deacon at the San Francisco church, was appointed a circuit preacher and journeyed for three months throughout the Northwest meeting with Japanese persons in different communities. He visited Portland three times and became convinced that a mission in Portland was necessary and would serve as a center for evangelism in the Greater Northwest region. Upon returning to San Francisco church, his plans were accepted, and in February of 1893, he returned to Portland and rented a small house at 54 Southwest First Avenue between Burnside and Ankeny and opened the Japanese Methodist Mission. From that small beginning came the Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church of Portland known fondly as the M.E. Church, and the general population talked about the Methodist Episcopal Church as the Emi Church because it was shorter. But the Japanese people called it Mikyoukai, which I thought was wonderful and so affectionate, Mikyoukai, and that church is presently known as Epworth United Methodist Church.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

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.

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<Begin Segment 4>

BB: And the total number of years that you were here, and if you could describe some of the other of those first five years. You talked about somewhat the '78 to '83 and the building. So those were the first five years or so, but you were here a number of more years.

CE: Well, seven more. I retired in 1990 because I had become sixty-five, and I was ready to retire. They had asked me if I would stay three more years until the 100th anniversary. And I said, "How about if I return for your 100th anniversary?" and so I retired in '90. And during those years, we had exciting things happened. One of the things we did was we had opportunities. We added cultural touches to what we had built in the building. We had our tokonoma at the entrance way from the beginning, and we had other touches. One of our members made the chandelier that's in the entryway of the church with his own hands. In the sanctuary, we had, and this is probably one of the most obvious touches that we did. We had schoolroom globes hanging from the four lights in the sanctuary body, the nape of the sanctuary. And we talked about, there was a good bit of koden from Minnow Hara's funeral. And talking with the family, we thought, well, maybe we could get some better looking light fixtures. And I found a company, a lighting company, that also did design, and I had forgotten the name of it. It was in Northwest Portland, and I went to them and talked to them about it, and they designed fixtures, and we paid for them in memory of Minnow Hara. And the light fixtures went up, and they are a cultural touch. And we did that sort of thing along the way.

BB: And were things in the chancel added at that time, the shoji and some of the other things or had they been here before?

CE: Well, all of our plans didn't include the chancel. And in the process, actually in the midst of the construction, people began to say, "We can't have a whole new sanctuary and then have a chancel looking like that. What are we going to do?" It had water stained tiles and cellulose tiles on the ceiling, and it really was looking pretty sad. So we sat down and did some sketching, and I proposed that we open the thing up. It was very tight and with a very large pulpit which still, pulpit but an equally large lectern, and they were both pushed into the space of a chapel. There were two pews for choir, and we didn't have a choir. The organ was there. It was very crowded, and so we decided to open it up. And in numbers of Japanese churches at that time, the communion rails were not a straight line. They were in a circle or a square or a rectangle, that sort of thing. So we sort of decided we would try that idea. And the communion rails were actually designed by Jim Onchi, the contractor, and then built professionally, but he designed them and told how they should be done and so forth. And that was a cultural touch added also. We had these shoji style like doors in the space because those used to be doors that came into the chancel. There were four or five doors that came into the chancel area, and we didn't need all those doors, so we filled two of them with the cultural touch there. And redid the back, the wall where the cross is, we did that in a way so that the cross would stand out. We did decide to do the altar differently. We had a very typical traditional church communion table that was large and didn't fit anywhere, so we put it in the entryway and made a memorial table out of it. Underneath the bill booths that, and the bill booth was donated in memory of a family also, family's memory.

[Interruption]

CE: In my second year here, I discovered that Mrs. Chiyo Endo had a history up of this church up until 1948 or actually up until the internment time. And we had a young man named Yoshimi Kamano who was a student at Western Evangelical Seminary that we hired as our translator. And I asked him if he would sit down with Mrs. Endo and translate that into English so that we can see what was in that history. And that's where a big portion of our early history comes from. The next year -- Yoshimi was with us for one year -- and the next year and for the two years following, we had Shinya Maruya who was a student at Western Baptist College, and they were both excellent translators. They were both very helpful persons, and I asked Shinya if he would sit down with the Issei and start a conversation with tape recorder going, and we gleamed a lot of memories from the Issei. And then we asked the Niseis to start participating ideas and so forth, and we began to grow the history in that way. And the history is now up until I think '94 or at least up until the time, my time here, maybe up till '90, so it would be good history to add to.

The other thing that I want to comment on... when I was first here and wondering what this was all about, you know. I've always said if I ever had a call to ministry, I was sure pretty hard of hearing and, but when I was early here, I began to remember clear back to grade school, some forty-five or more years before, and my two best friends in grade school were two Japanese boys who had been sent from Japan to live with their grandparents here, and the grandparents had a truck farm in Spokane, Washington, and those two boys and I always hung around together. They didn't speak a lot of English, but we did, our process was really what we did. We'd eat lunch together. We were all poor. We would bring a bag lunch and peanut butter sandwich or something, and then there was always maybe a couple cookies or some little dessert. And they always ate their dessert first before their sandwich or whatever they had. And I tried to question them about it, but they didn't really I don't think understand why, what I was curious about and so forth. So I just grew up thinking that was Japanese tradition to always eat your dessert first.

I remember also thirty years before when the Japanese people were coming back from the camps and reading in the newspaper the incredibly terrible discrimination that was happening to them as they came back to their communities, and I knew nothing about the Japanese people or the community or anything at that time. I was just barely out of college. But when I would read it, I would think, "How can people be that way?" I mean how can humans treat other humans that way and just being appalled to all those memories came back in those weeks where I was struggling to, trying to decide what I, whether I would stay here or what I would do. So I had kind of wanted to be sure I mentioned those.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

CE: One of the first things that I discovered that I was going to be here, I was going to have a congregation in Hood River also, and that's a whole story in itself. The Methodist church had what it called the Japanese Provisional Conference which was not a geographical conference over the states. It was a U.S. total nation. And it was the governing body, the overseeing body for the Japanese churches, most of which were on the West Coast, but the appointments were made through that. So when the people came back from the camps in Hood River, they were depending upon the Japanese Provisional Conference for a minister. It was not long after... well, I'm not sure how long after they, suffering through that discrimination that they decided that their church, which incidentally was started by the Portland church in 1926, I think, and the Salem church was started in 1925. If I need to look I will, but that's pretty close. And they decided that in order to overcome that kind of discrimination, they needed to integrate into the Caucasian church, and they could do that except for the Issei who needed a language ministry. So the Nisei and everyone lower than, younger than Issei went to the local Methodist church in Hood River or to a church of their choosing. They didn't have to go to the Methodist church. There was a congregation made up of Issei only that began to be ministered to from the Japanese Provisional Conference. That was a difficult thing to do because the Japanese Provisional Conference was so widespread. They had for a while somebody coming from Tacoma to hold a service for them and so forth. But when the Japanese Provisional Conference was discontinued in 1964, Epworth was asked to be responsible for that Hood River Issei congregation. And the pattern was sort of established that on the first Sunday of the month, they would have a worship service in the sanctuary of the Asbury United Methodist Church in Hood River, and that the minister from Epworth would go and take care of that worship service. On a Wednesday in the middle of the month, as the Wednesdays fell, they would choose which one, they would have a bible study and meet in somebody's home to do that. But there was still quite a group. It may be that early on, they met in the church on Wednesday for that bible study also in a room. I think that's right. But at any rate, I suddenly had this responsibility, so I had to take my translator with me. And at the beginning, we would go to the church on Sunday, and I couldn't do anything language wise, but I would play the piano, and we had quite a group of thirty, thirty-five people. And we'd meet in the church sanctuary and holding a full worship service. And then what I did was I asked my translator -- because these fellows were religious college students doing Christian studies -- if they could work up a bible study and do that middle of the month Wednesday bible study. And I didn't go to that, then they began to do that. And so all of the translators that I had did that ministry in Hood River which was, I think, a very significant thing, very wonderful.

Of course, time passed and we kept losing people. The time came when we decided that we were a small enough group. We needed to meet in the homes, and so we moved around to different homes. And then the group got small enough that we met at Mr. Tomita's only, Mr. Tomita's house. Everybody called him Bishop Tomita. It was a wonderful designation for him because he was such a, he was just naturally a person in charge. Didn't try to be, he didn't try to have power; he was naturally the person in charge, and we met in his house until we were down to one person. It's hard to hold a group meeting with one person. So 1988, we discontinued that ministry at the annual gathering of the Methodist conference in Salem and did a whole discontinuing of that with message and with history and with singing. And by the time we got to that, the bishop could hardly get through his prayer, he was so choked up. But it was a marvelous experience, and I'll do some more commenting on that later.

BB: So for a full ten years of your ministry here, you were also engaged --

CE: In Hood River.

BB: In the Hood River ministry.

CE: Because that was a part of the appointment to this church, and that was a surprise. There was lots of surprises in the beginning when I discovered what I was going to be doing, and I just kept remembering the district superintendent's words: "Find a way to do it." [Laughs]

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

BB: You mentioned some of your translators and interpreters. Can you say more about that process of working with translation and interpretation in your time here?

CE: Well, we had in my time four translators. First was Spring Ibaru who was a member of the church, and then we had Yoshimi Kamano for a year, and we had Shinya Maruya for two years. And that was wonderful to have one, two years, you know. When he returned to Japan, I had heard that George Uemura had retired out of the Pacific Northwest Conference, and he had been living in Seattle and had been at the church in Seattle, moved to Oregon to be closer to his family, and he was going to just be retired. And I decided I'd better go out and talk to him because he was an ordained Methodist minister. And he hesitated at first, but finally I said, "You know, I'm not going to demand too much work of you. And if you would like to do a little work on your time, your time, we'll make it worth your while," and so forth, and so he agreed. So actually, he was my translator for the last eight years then. And when we were meeting in the homes, and we would go, and he would do the sermon, and I would play the piano, and we'd all sing, and then we'd have eats, and it was just fun. We had great times together.

BB: You probably had different --

CE: I made the commitment to always give the translator my sermon one week ahead of time, and then they would have a week to translate it and get prepared to preach it. I made the decision early on that the best thing I probably could think of to do was to preach a ten-minute sermon in English and then have a ten-minute translation of it in Japanese, and that was twenty minutes. And that was long enough for anybody, and I just loved to tell this story. One day, and this is, you know, far into my ministry here, this wonderful Nisei man said to me, "Chet, do you think it would be okay if I went out to the car during the Japanese sermon and read the funny papers? I don't understand Japanese." And I said, "I think that would be perfectly acceptable. In fact, it would be okay with me if you brought the funnies into the church and read them in the pew during the Japanese sermon." I didn't, he never did that and probably because he thought that would be disrespectful. I didn't keep track of him to see if he went out to the car to read the funny papers or not.

BB: So during all the time that you were here, there was an English sermon and a Japanese sermon?

CE: Right. And I searched the hymn notes for all of the hymns that were both in the English and [inaudible] and we sang English and Japanese together all at the same time. The only thing I had to be sure if they had the same number of verses and be sure and adjust that if I needed to. But we had numbers of Issei yet singing Japanese back in those days.

BB: By the time you retired in 1990, how many Issei were still here, about?

CE: Oh, about maybe, this is just pure guess, maybe seven or nine, something like that.

BB: So that was a very significant change during your pastorant?

CE: I'll comment on that at the end because I really would like to comment on that, but we kept losing our Issei along the way. One of my, another of my favorite stories to tell is about Saya Kuroda. Saya Kuroda was a very quiet person. She didn't speak any English, but she was just a jewel of a presence. She always worked very hard at the annual bazaars and so forth, and the day came when she couldn't do that anymore. She wanted to, she just was not physical -- physically able, only barely able to get, to even walk and get around. Every fall, fall bazaar time on Sunday morning and we would begin early Sunday morning at six o'clock preparing for the bazaar and everything; she would arrive. She would get a chair. She would sit it right in the middle of the dining room where all the activity was, and that was her way of participating in the bazaar. She couldn't do anything, but she wasn't going to miss the action. And I just, and everybody had to go around her, and they didn't object at all, and I got so amused by it. And when Saya died, there was no family, and there was a pretty good koden for her service. And one day, somebody was talking about what we should do with that money that was koden for Saya. And I said, well, you know, every Sunday we have to bring up chairs from downstairs because most every Sunday, we were setting up two rows of chairs behind the pews because we kept growing and so forth, and I said that's a lot of work to bring them up and have to take them back down, and we never know until the last minute whether we're going to need them or not. And maybe it would be good to have some chairs close by in the back of the sanctuary that we can just put out in a hurry if we need them. And I thought that was a great idea. So we have the Saya Kuroda memorial chairs. [Laughs] And I just think that was a wonderful thing to do with the money because we needed chairs to sit on, and she needed a chair to sit on back in those days.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

BB: The transition really strikes me in those years that you were here.

CE: Well, it was, it was very different when I left from when I came. And I'm glad for that, but I won't take all the credit for that. I had ideas, but it was always the people's choice. I... one of my fondest memories is one week in the Oregonian, a full page ad was printed, anti... racist -- as I remember anti-Jewish, a horrendous message, and I immediately got a letter from Ecumenical Ministries because Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon had decided that this could not go unanswered, and so they immediately appointed a little committee of people to write a response. And the letter included the response they had written and asked each church in the Portland area if they would support this response, if they wanted to support it by attaching their names to it, and if they would, we would all send in a contribution to help cover for the cost of the thing because it, again, was a full page ad. And of course, I had not the slightest clue. And then the Sunday morning service, I had a pattern a little ways into the beginning of the service, I'd walk down right into the center aisle right in the middle of all the people and stood there, and we had a little conversation. People had a chance to express joys and concerns, ask questions and so forth, and I said, "You know, this morning, I need to bring you something that's really serious and really, you know, I would not speak for you, and I want you to know." And I read, referred to the first ad. I read the letter and the response that was written, and I said would you like to do this. And the proposal was that the church and the minister's name be together on the page if we wanted to do it. Well, the first thing that happened was a young man stood up, a young Japanese family that had started attending here but hadn't joined yet, but I had talked to them about joining. And he stood up, and he said, "I am not a member of this church yet. But if I were a member, I would want my church to support this reply, this response." And everybody sort of said yes and nodded and a couple of claps. And then someone said, "Does the church name and the minister's name have to be together? Can they be separate?" I said, "I don't know, I'll find out." So I called the Ecumenical Ministry's office. I asked for the director and said this was the question that was raised, and I can't answer it, you know. What do you think? He said, "Let me talk to the committee. We're going to meet this afternoon." I'd called Monday morning, and he called me back late afternoon and said the committee thought that was a remarkable idea for all the churches and all the ministers. Put all the, the churches would be listed separately as the church and all the ministers would be listed separately. I thought it was a remarkable contribution to the whole thing. And it was a very moving time, I thought, and great stand up against discrimination, move in active.

BB: And that represented, the separate listing represented the strength of the church itself?

CE: That's right. They weren't doing it because I said they should. They were doing it on their own. They were speaking for themselves.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

BB: You have some other stories or memories of particular people or events during that time?

CE: Can I tell just a couple little illustrations of what fun it was that I had because to me the Japanese people know how to have fun. They know how to laugh, and I just love that. We were at Shizue Iwatsuki's home in Hood River, and I'll preface that with I became aware of the lives that take place in the Japanese language, Iwatsuki which is "I-wa-tsu-ki." It was Iwatsuki. She was a wonderful lady. One time when we were still meeting in the church, I got so amused because, and all that became very plain to me when Bishop Tomita was trying to get the service started, and he couldn't find Mrs. Iwatsuki, and he couldn't, he needed her for something, I don't know what. I was just sitting there waiting. And he came down the aisle, and he said "I-wa-tsu-ki." And with each syllable, a foot came down on the floor. [Laughs] At any rate, we were at her house for our little worship, and we were a pretty small group then. And then afterwards, she had some refreshments for us, and she came along with I forgotten what. We each took something and put it on our paper plate and put it on our lap, and then she came along with a huge bowl of potato chips. And she came to me, and I took out a handful of potato chips which I thought was about the appropriate amount to take and said thank you. She looked at me, two more handfuls piled onto my plate just as quick as that, and she went down, and I was just laughing. It was a wonderful experience. Five years later, she died -- five days later, she was dead, just gone that quick, and I was devastated to have that wonderful experience and so much fun, and then she was just gone.

But that's some of the joy of, let me look and see if I... oh, I wanted to mention the Fujinkai ladies. They were wonderful, and they were always, you know, wanting to be so helpful. Etsuya Minamoto, early in my time here, would be a knock on the door, and I'd go to the door, and she'd be standing there with this pile of food, and she would say, "Here, you eat." [Laughs] They took care of me like crazy. And before Ikoi no Kai came to being, Ikoi no Kai came into being, and the church was pretty much empty all week long. But once a month, the Fujinkai group would have a bible study, and then they would all bring something to eat for themselves and have lunch afterward. And they kept wanting me to know if I would join them for lunch or something. They would even bring me something to eat and so forth. And I said, "I will come, but I will, I'll bring a sack lunch." I'll bring something for myself and so forth. So I did, and I joined with them, and we conversed a bit and so forth, and then they got down to some of their own things and so forth. And pretty soon one lady was speaking pretty loud, and the lady across the table from her spoke pretty loud. And then pretty soon, the lady across -- first one across the table, you know, spoke louder and started shaking her fist, and the other one started shaking her finger. Then they stood up, and they just went at it, and I thought, well my goodness, they are having some kind of a [inaudible]. I'll bet if I understood Japanese, they'd ask me to leave. [Laughs] And they were very upfront and very forthright with each other and very, you know, stern and yet very close, very supportive, very happy with each other, and they could do all that emotion just marvelously.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

CE: I should mention about the funds for doing this building. When we began to think about maybe what we did want to have a building project, and our building fund needed to be worked on and so forth, we made some pretty important decisions. And one of them was that we would have a campaign. Incidentally, I insisted on a written mailed vote for going into this big building project, and we mailed out ballots to every household. We got back one hundred percent of them, and there were only three votes no, and those were, three were from individuals. They weren't from families. We made some decisions about there was a Jim Mizote fund, and it has been given in memory, built up in memory of Jim Mizote and had a considerable amount of money in it. And then we had a Masao Yasui fund. It had a considerable amount of money in it, and we, with the permission of the families, we asked them rather than letting those funds just sit if we could put them into the building fund, and they agreed. And I think -- but I'm not really sure -- I think we did the same with the Rose Yada fund. But those people are remembered by, you know, significant contribution to this building. The old parsonage across the street had been arsoned. Actually, the garage was arsoned, but it was so well done that it caught the house on fire too. And so we ended up selling that property to a pair of Caucasian sisters who wanted to build a duplex so that they could live side by side but each have their own house, and that's the duplex that sits there now. So that property went into the building fund; that property sale went into that building fund. We were in a period in that time when the Methodist church was doing what it called ethnic minority/priority. And we were right in the midst of that, and there was a brochure that said that an ethnic church could apply for, could apply for a grant, and it said you could apply for a grant up to fifty thousand dollars. I thought nothing wrong with that. I think I'll give it a try. So I sent off my application, and one day this nice man from New York City arrived, wanted to know what in the world I was doing here, that I would apply for that amount of money. And I said, "Well, we have a big project and not a very big church to do it, you know, and we need all the help that we can get, and you had a brochure that said we could do this." He said, "We don't even have fifty thousand dollars," and I said, "I'm sorry? That's your figure not mine. I took it out of your brochure." He said, "Well, you're right." So he went back to New York, and he returned; he came back from New York. He said, "We have twenty thousand dollars to give you from the ethnic minority priority fund, but we went across the hall and got another fifteen thousand for you," from the, I think it was the Division of the Discipleship or something. And then I found another brochure about handicap, and so I got another five thousand dollars, and we put that chair lift on the stairs, and we put together everything we could. And I want to say even the Buddhists helped us with our building fund. So we were a very inclusive community.

BB: That was a huge project.

CE: Yes, it was. And the figure that shows what it actually was bid for was not the final figure because we kept doing, adding things like this chancel. He said we can't sit it out here in this renewed nave and not a chancel that's renewed too. So I think it was, you know, more like two hundred fifty-three thousand dollars and something that we had to raise. We got a loan. And if I remember, it was either twenty-five or thirty-five thousand dollars from the Metro District, Metropolitan District Church Extension Society. And we paid down on that often, burned the mortgage in four years.

BB: Well, that must have given the church really great sense of accomplishment, ownership. Can you describe that process, people really thought about it and worked hard on it.

CE: There's a group called, in those days called SYMCO, Senior Youth Ministry's Council of the conference with representatives on that youth council from all over the conference. And one time they came here for a meeting, and they did their planning session here, and they stayed overnight sleeping on the basement floor and so forth, and I wasn't involved in it. I had been involved in that youth work years before, but I wasn't involved in it anymore, but I was here to be sure everything was okay and see that they got started all right and so forth. And one of their members wasn't there. He had been there, but he wasn't there. His name was Mike, I won't say anymore than that, and they said well, you know, can't start without Mike. What are we going to do? And I said well, I'll go see if I can find him, see if he's outside anywhere or what he's doing and so forth. I found him in a fetal position in the chancel. And I came in, and I said, "Mike, what are you doing?" And he said, "I'm coveting your chancel." [Laughs] It was wonderful, and it was a beautiful chancel compared to, certainly compared to what it was before.

BB: It allows so much possibility.

CE: It's multiple use space.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

BB: You mentioned a little before about music, and I know that's a great gift of yours. Can you say more about music. And the years that you were here? I know that people sang simultaneously in Japanese and in English, but you haven't mention the fact that you also compose music. And I know when you were here recently, you brought a wonderful benediction to us. I'm guessing that you shared in musically in the years that you were here.

CE: I shared musically mostly by singing loud. [Laughs] I felt sort of limited, but I figured if I would sing loud, they would sing a little bit because they were very hesitant in those years. They didn't really, were almost afraid of their own voice sort of thing. But I tried hard to get them to sing out a little bit. The person who came after me in the music area after I had retired did much better with them than I did. She, Sue Lundig got them really going on being willing to sing. I wasn't as successful about that. But I did, you know, share... don't know whether I should tell this story. I went on vacation from here, and I, on vacation one year, it was 1980 actually. I read the book Shogun, and I became enamored with the word wa, the deep inner peace, when in the book Mariko says to Anjin, "I'm sorry I disturbed your wa." And I became just fascinated with that concept, and I tried to relate it to some biblical things. And I wrote a song, Wa of the Soul, but it was not a group song. It was a sort of soul song. So I decided I would sing it for them one morning. But before I was going to sing it, I wanted to talk about it. And so I went out in the middle of the congregation, and I was talking about wa, peace, deep peace, and there's probably no English equivalent to really express the depth of what wa means and so forth and wa and peace. All of a sudden one of the members looked to me and kind of raised her finger and said, she said, Reverend, I think you need to start over. You're talking about wa and peace, and Shinya's talking about "war and peace." And Shinya, I thought there was no reason in the world that he would have read Shogun and what there was that he picked up, and how I was saying it and probably a good part my fault. But whatever it was, he got the impression that I was talking about war and peace, and he was trying to talk about that book War and Peace. [Laughs] And we all had a good laugh, and then we started over. It's like the time I... I was sort of an independent person. The communion was so easy to fix; I just always did it myself. And rather than having people have to come down to the church and prepare it and so forth, and this is all we're going to do. And I was going on sabbatical, and it was the first Sunday in September, and I said, "One of my great wishes is to have communion with you before I go away for three months on this study leave." We are supposed to do studies every eight years, and I had been nine years and hadn't. So I was very sentimental about old habits, so I wanted to do this and so forth. And I got to the communion table, and I lifted the bread, and then I lifted the cup, and I looked at the cup, and there wasn't anything in it. And I set the cup down, and I thought there's no way I can get out of this. I can't bluff anything here. There is just nothing in that cup. So I went down into the middle of the congregation, and I said, "I am so grateful that I can be vulnerable with you people. I got to tell you the cup is empty. The grape juice is still in the refrigerator down in the kitchen." At that, one lady jumped up real fast, ran down, and brought up the bottle of grape juice. And I was pouring it in the cup, and it was going glug, glug, glug, and I looked out at the congregation and said, "I sure don't feel very holy right now." [Laughs]

BB: Home, this was really home.

CE: It was fun, and they were so patient with me. One other wonderful memory. The emperor had died, and I was informed that it would be appropriate for me to go to the consul general's home and pay my respects and a good share of the days I had lunch Ikoi no Kai. I paid my way because it was a good way to get lunch and be with the people and you know. So we were having lunch at Ikoi no Kai, and I was going to go up to pay my respects to the emperor after the lunch. And Elmer Nishimoto decided that he'd better check if I knew how to bow right before I left. So before everybody, here I was standing up in the middle of the crowd with Elmer telling me whether I was bowing right, little bit lower you know, a little slower, and you know. He wanted to be sure I had it exactly right. And I got there, and there was nobody in the room. Nobody would have seen me bow anyway, but perhaps the emperor would, and so it was all right. And I cherish that memory, and Elmer was trying to do his best and being sure I was proper. Properness protocol, I depended hugely upon Mrs. Chiyo Endo for when I didn't, wasn't sure about something, I would go to her and talk to her about it. She gave me good guidance.

BB: And during the time you were here, the Northwest Nikkei Conference met here.

CE: In its turn.

BB: In its turn and the youth conference also would meet here. So the connections with the rest of the United Methodist Northwest.

CE: I switched between United Methodist and Methodist. And we were Methodist Episcopal until 1939, and then we were Methodist until 1968 and then we were United Methodist. And so I get a little mixed up on the Methodist terminologies.

BB: We have been many things. Well, what else or is there anything else of that twelve year period that you were here that you'd like to share, any stories or... I know, I think you said at the end, there was something you wanted to read before we --

CE: I wanted to share this, and I think we, you know, pretty much covered a lot of the history and the... I wanted to say that after I made the decision to stay in that sort of uncertain fall time, you know, I don't think I said that in late September, that same three men took me out lunch again and said, and wanted to ask if I would stay two years. And I said, "You know, we're hardly started into the first year yet, and we're just getting into the fall stuff, and I don't know what to say." They said, "Well, would it be an absolute no?" And I said, "Well, I can't say that it would be an absolute no." I'll think about it and so forth. And after I made that decision to stay, some of my colleagues in ministry chided me a bit. Gently, but they said, "That's no way to treat your profession." And I knew they meant, "You're going backward, not forward, and certainly not up to bigger and better things." And I simply said to them, "Perhaps we have a different measure of success. What is success except to be doing something that needs to be done and enjoying doing it?" So I felt like I was successful at Epworth Church, and I just loved being with my people because they were my parish, my flock, and I loved being with my people. In those twelve years, I officiated at the funerals or memorial services of twenty-four Issei and twenty-two Nisei, and that's almost four a year average. And I wanted to say that I think on the, back on the names of those persons with joy and with an inner warmth, and I think of those who still carry the torch, and I am grateful. I still experience a kind of warm smiling sadness that those days are gone, and I certainly would live them again if I could.

BB: Amen.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.