Ken Nagao Oral History Interview, August 16, 2007



EU: This is an oral history with Ken Nagao. Today is April 16, 2007. We're at Ken's home in Eugene, Oregon. My name is Elizabeth Uhlig and I'll be interviewing Ken. Ken, you said you were a Sansei. So your grandparents then came over from Japan?

KN: Yes, that's right, um, the grandparents from both sides of the family moved to Hawaii. They're from Hiroshima-ken as well as Yamaguchi-ken. They're the prefectures in Japan, and I believe that they came over mainly for work, uh, although let's see. I don't know where in the family tier my grandparents came from whether they're the youngest or the middle or whatever. I suspect they were in the middle or younger of their brothers and sisters because, you know, 00:01:00normally in Japan it's only the oldest boy who inherits everything.

EU: Uh-huh

KN: My grandmother though said that, uh, that they moved to Hawaii in addition to looking for work, they were on the losing side, I think, they were Tokugawa side of the battle when the lords ruled you see, in the Mage Era and so, uh, because their side had lost, I believe they supported Tokugawa, and then they were forced to leave pretty much, besides looking for work, because they couldn't get work in Japan.

EU: What kind of work did their families do, do you know?

KN: Farming probably, the Nagao side actually had a, um, merchant shipping business in Japan.

EU: Uh-huh

KN: I'm sure small ships -- little merchants probably, moving things back and forth. My mother's side, Shikada (sp?) side, I don't know what they really did, 00:02:00but you know their family crest shows two spools of thread, so I believe they were tailors, seamstresses, things like that. Whereas the Nagao side has the, they call it the "ken katabami" which are the wood sorrel family crest: between each leaf there is a long sword that shows some ranking in the Samurai order. When they got to Hawaii though, they did a lot of coffee picking, sugar cane work, I believe, on the big island.

EU: Uh hm. Were they married before they came to Hawaii or after?

KN: No, actually my parents were born in Hawaii.

EU: Oh, I'm sorry.

KN: Because we're Sansei

EU: Oh and your grandparents

KN: My grandparents moved over. I don't know what -- they both settled on the 00:03:00big island of Hawaii. The Shikadas, which is my mother's side, eventually built and ran a store near Kona somewhere and I've never found out where the store really was; I've seen photographs of it, but all those photographs were destroyed when-- all of our archives were stored in a bay window storage area underneath the seats of the bay window. During a storm, it got all wet and ants, like carpenter ants or termites, got into them and created nothing but mush. So all the great photographs we had, you know, and we had tons of photographs and all that memorabilia is all gone. But then the Nagao side of the family, I remember, my father saying that they were settled in one of the camps, probably the camp near Aimee Yogi lives, Camp 13, he said. And he said it was on the top 00:04:00of the road in really poor soil. So because they couldn't do anything with the soil, they eventually decided to move elsewhere. That's when they moved to Honolulu.

EU: And so your grandparents met in Hawaii?

KN: I don't know if they met. It was just my parents that met in Hawaii -- somewhere-- oh and it was a fixed marriage, arranged marriage

EU: Okay

KN: My mother said she didn't really want to get married to my dad. He was about ten years older than she was.

EU: Was she a picture bride?

KN: No, no. But that's the way that Japanese families in Hawaii did things back then.

EU: So they were married and moved to Honolulu?

KN: Honolulu. They may have been married in Honolulu, I'm not sure.

EU: And what did they then do in Honolulu?

KN: My father worked for a dairy, as an ice cream packer and driver and did menial work really. My mother started her own business as a seamstress and she worked many many many years, long hours actually just doing aloha shirts. In her early years of working I'm sure she did dresses and other stuff, but then she got tied into aloha shirt manufacturing companies, a person who was actually the go-between between a lot of the big names, the very expensive aloha shirts in Hawaii. She, I think, sold them on a piece-by-piece basis.

EU: And what did your grandparents do then?

KN: The Shikada side grandparents are the ones that opened store in Kona. It was a little grocery store. I saw pictures of it and it was a nice country store. I 00:06:00don't know what my father's side grandparents did.

EU: So did they stay in Kona?

KN: Well, I never met my grandfather on my father's side; he passed away before I was born I'm sure. I knew my grandmother and she stayed with us. So that's how I learned a lot of Japanese because she spoke nothing but Japanese. My grandfather on my mother's side continued to run store in Kona and he visited us in Honolulu once in a great while.

EU: Did you also speak Japanese with him? Or was it English?

KN: I just -- He spoke English, I spoke English to him. My parents really didn't, my mother especially didn't really want us to learn Japanese much originally because as we grew up she wanted us to learn to speak English very 00:07:00well and kind of be assimilated into society and so when we had a chance she actually got me and my sister just above me to transfer into what they call an English standard school system, which was a publically supported college prep school system. And the initial school that you went to, the elementary school, was a block away from our house so she transferred me from where I attended kindergarten when that other school opened up, and I remember taking an oral exam just to get into that school.

EU: And that was for--.

KN: For first grade, right. And luckily, I got in because I could say "Yes" and "No" rather than "Yeaaah" and "Naaah" because the other kids spoke Pidgin. My mom wanted us to not speak Pidgin. And for those that don't know, Pidgin is the 00:08:00language that's pretty common throughout Hawaii; it's a mixture of all the different ethnic languages, pulled together into something that everyone could understand.

EU: Did you live in a Japanese community?

KN: No we didn't. I know that some my relatives lived in communities where they're all ethnic related. I remember my uncle, the other Nagao and my dad, pooled their resources to have our home built. For a while, there were two families living there and then we eventually stayed there and the other Nagao family moved out and they built their own house too. The Nagao who was my uncle, 00:09:00younger than my dad, I guess my dad was the oldest, was a great auto mechanic and so he did really well financially. So he probably provided most of the money to build our home and they hired a Japanese carpenter, bought a piece of property, and built our home for $4000 dollars, I remember that price way back when, you know 1930s.

EU: So did you have, uh, many cousins and aunts and uncles living nearby?

KN: Uh, I know I had 54 first cousins on my mother's side and about three or about ten or so on my father's side-- pretty big families. One of my aunts on my mother's side had fifteen children, thirteen survived. So I didn't know many of my cousins actually. A couple of the families stayed on the big island, and I 00:10:00really knew all those that were in Hawaii and Oahu where I grew up. And we got together every Sunday and it was fun.

EU: Huh-huh. How many brothers and sisters did you have?

KN: I have one brother and three sisters. I'm the youngest of five.

KN: My brother passed away just recently. But the three sisters are still doing well in Hawaii.

EU: Are they all in Honolulu?

KN: They're all in Honolulu. So when we go back there next week, we always have a huge immediate family reunion, which sometimes fifty people or so into the house you see [laugh]

EU: Was it, uh, did your brothers and sisters, did they go to university also? I mean were they in this special school?

KN: No, my sister just above me, who was three years older than I, attended the same school system. She started in the fourth grade, that's when the school opened. She was in the fourth grade; I was in the first grade. And the other siblings, uh, were too old to get into that system, so they had to go the neighborhood schools. My brother, though, uh, is the one who kind of inspired me to get into architecture in a way, because when he was in the ninth grade, I was in the third grade and I would read all of his architecture books. He was taking mechanical drawings, architecture drawings in the ninth grade and I learned how to do a lot of the perspective drawings by reading his book back in the third grade. My favorite teacher, who was my third grade instructor, who was a "Miss" at that point, it was her first year in teaching, I just found that out; I 00:12:00always wanted to thank her for prodding all of us to do research on different careers. I did my first career study on architecture when I was in her class.

Uh, we found her again, so we're going to get together with her next week when I go back for my high school reunion because several of the classmates that I had in that grade school, knew that I had been looking for her, this Miss Tan, and I got a call from them last week saying "let's go visit her." Imagine these kids from grade school, first grade even [laughs]. They're all on this reunion committee. I had never gone back for a real high school reunion; I went back for the fiftieth birthday party, but that's it because those that were organizing it 00:13:00weren't my immediate friends. But this time all my friends are there organizing this fiftieth reunion [laughs] so it's gonna be a lot of fun.

EU: So you've kept in touch with so many of the, your schoolmates and family?

KN: Yeah, we don't like to drop friendships.

EU: How old were you, um, at Pearl Harbor, when the war broke out?

KN: Oh, I was old enough to remember. I was one year eleven months and about a week old. My birthday's on December 23rd and it happened December 7th so I actually remember that day because my brothers and sisters went to Sunday School that morning, it was a Sunday morning. They walked to Sunday School and at about 00:14:00eleven clock or so, when Sunday School should've been in session, they came running home because of the war breaking out.

EU: How did they learn about it at church then?

KN: They must've made an announcement at church that it happened. We were fairly close to Pearl Harbor. I don't remember the sirens though really and you know, homes in Hawaii weren't insulated, so we should've heard some of the sounds. I suppose we could've heard things that sounded like thunder. There was one bomb that fell a quarter mile above our house and I don't remember that. I only found that out on the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing when the newspaper had this big full edition, the entire paper was dedicated to Pearl Harbor, and they 00:15:00showed all the sites where bombs had fallen and I found one just up the hill from our house.

EU: Did your parents talk about that?

KN: They never talked about that. You know, they were really tight lipped about the war because here, when you're of the ethnicity of the folks that attack, you're in shock and they never wanted to really be Japanese, I don't think, during the war. I remember going to a May Day celebration at our elementary school and I was in about the first grade at the time when my mom was accosted by this other lady saying, "You're a Jap" and stuff, you know, so. That really opened my eyes. So that created some of the attitudes that I've had about being 00:16:00more American than others and this and that.

EU: Okay, so even in Hawaii, where there were so many Japanese Americans, there was still this prejudice?

KN: Oh yeah, sure, there was. A deep prejudice because you know I actually felt sorry for this lady because I suspected that maybe one of her sons probably maybe got killed on one of the ships perhaps.

EU: Growing up, were you aware of the camps, the fact that some of the Japanese Americans on the West coast were put into camps?

KN: Oh, it wasn't talked about very much. We knew that some of the folks in Hawaii were being sent to camps.

EU: From Hawaii?

KN: From Hawaii, only the very influential ones. Because over thirty percent of the population of Hawaii was Japanese at that time so they couldn't send all of 00:17:00us away. And I remember my grandmother burying stuff that she shouldn't have had, I think or something, or was afraid that things would get taken away from her. I don't think we ever dug those up again. Those things are probably still under the house somewhere.

EU: Umm, did any of your relatives volunteer for the army?

KN: Yeah, some of my cousins did.

EU: And for the hundredth battalion?

KN: For the 42nd

EU: For the 42nd okay. Did you hear stories from them about their war experiences?

KN: No, they never talked about it afterwards. You know it was shocking for them, traumatic, for losing so much of the group.

EU: So, your parents then put a lot of emphasis on education?

KN: They did, yeah. And um not really that much on education, but they wanted us to succeed in all aspects of life, more so my mother. She and I always had talks about things like that but hardly ever with my father. With my father it was outdoor activities, you know, just fishing and stuff like that so. We kids wanted to go swimming, he wanted us to go fishing with him instead. So we always talked him into going fishing places where we could actually swim while he fished.

EU: Is that how you developed your interest in hunting and outdoor?

KN: Well, I never supported hunting, okay. I actually love all kinds of animals, 00:19:00all right. So I really cringed at going hunting. And in Hawaii, I never did. It was only when I came to Oregon that one of our roommates in the house--there were five of us Hawaiians living in a house right on campus, on Agate and Franklin Blvd, two houses away from the Smith's [laughs]

EU: From Smith's Family Bookstore?

KN: And um, at times we had seven people there. One of our roommates, who actually had a family that lives here in Eugene, he had dropped out of Oregon State and he liked to pals around with the Hawaiian folks at Oregon State so we all met him so he came down with other Oregon State students to our luau. And 00:20:00later when he dropped out of school, he always hung around with us and convinced us to go duck hunting with him. The first couple of experiences, I would pretend that I was shooting at the ducks, but missing on purpose, you know [laughs]

EU: Did you ever go hunting for deer or other animals?

KN: I did too, yes, and after gun toting duck hunting, I thought, you know, maybe I should do stuff that the pioneers did so I got involved in deer hunting and became too successful at it actually. And I knew that my mom never wanted me to hunt deer because her last name is actually Shikada -- Deer Village- "da" means actually rice paddy [laughs].

KN: I wonder if that's the reason why these deer come to me when I talk to them. And they do come and I've had many experiences talking to deer and have them come to me and I feed them. When I'm hiking out there on Skyline trail or wherever. One time, Irene and I had, was entertaining our accountant's family. The accountant's wife is another neighbor of Irene's from Kukuihaele, Hawaii and this is another neighbor so like family, we use them as our accountants. We took them to Diamond Lake and did little sun, and Irene and I were were riding in the car, I wanted to show them where the fish actually was. I saw two deer along the road, so I stopped, rolled the window down, and started talking to them and they came up to the window and we fed them potato chips. Pretty soon, we had a jam of 00:22:00cars, you know the gravel road, they were three or four cars going each direction stopped there watching me feed a deer. So finally, I had to get out off the car and chase the deer off the road so that the cars could go by [laughs]. And it was that same spot that a few weeks before, that I started talking to a deer and it came up to me until somebody else came up from behind me so the dear ran away. So I thought maybe that it was the same deer perhaps

EU: Does that happen with other animals or mainly deer because?

KN: Deer come to me on the Skyline Trail also birds, although I shoot and ducks and such, when I sit in the backyard here and whistle and listen to ukulele, 00:23:00I've had crows spiral in and fly on these tree around me and all these little birds would come and sit right on the plants along the deck, so there must be something [laughs]

EU: Did your mother, did other family talk to deer or had that?

KN: They may have perhaps, I don't know. She like the deer, when she went to Japan--

KN: Mysterious.

EU: Why, how did you decided to come to Oregon?

KN: Oh when I got into architecture school in Hawaii, the University of Hawaii, it was only a pre-architecture program, two years, so I knew that I had to transfer out. We couldn't afford, you know, to pay for my education and I never 00:24:00applied for scholarships, and so I kind of worked my way through. I didn't know if I would continue on, but I was accepted to Oregon. And I chose Oregon, for cost, for one thing, because they were giving Hawaii students reciprocity in terms of only paying in-state tuition. And that was only $75 a term. Hawaii, reciprocated in that too, and for Oregon Students, and for Alaskan Students too, because we were just becoming states, they could go to Hawaii for in-state tuition too. So luckily, both Irene and I were able to take advantage of that.

EU: And you knew then that since you were in third grade that you were going to go into architecture.

KN: That's right. I didn't know for sure, but I really wanted it.

EU: So you came to Oregon when you were a Junior?

KN: Yeah, Junior, Senior, and fifth year; it was a five year program.

EU: Where did you live again? You said you had a house?

KN: Oh see what's it called, the business administration building, right on the corner of Agate and Franklin blvd , the red brick building,

EU: Okay, Oregon Hall.

KN: That's right Oregon Hall, our house is right there, right next to the driveway into the University's parking lot, so we could sleep in and run to class.

EU: Who were your roommates then? Did you room with other people from Hawaii?

KN: Howard Ashiro (sp?), is from Hilo, he was a music major, that's what got me 00:26:00more into music here. Thomas Orion (sp?), he became a partner of mine for a while in architecture.

EU: Is he the -- works out at LCC?

KN: Yeah. So he was a classmate of mine at the University of Hawaii and we talked about becoming partners back then. And then, he kind of flunked out of architecture, and got into something else and transferred over here and couldn't get into architecture, went into interiors, because he couldn't pass physics and some other things you know. But eventually with enough experience in an architect's office he was able to take the test, you can't do it today, you need an accredited degree in architecture. But, there was a guy from Winchester bay, 00:27:00Jerry/Gary Shin (sp?), that had a service station in Winchester bay, and he loved to hunt too. He was one of the guys that hunted the best, and hunted with us also, Tom did too, only because this friend of mine, Larry Gangle, who started us all on hunting, put up this score sheet in the back of the house keeping track of the different ducks and the different species that each person shot you see, so he made it into a competition. And Gary Kogimora (sp?) another roommate and let's see--that was it.

EU: Did you live together? I mean, does the affinity with other people from Hawaii?

KN: Well, the first year I moved out of the dorm, I stayed by myself by an 00:28:00apartment where Sacred Heart's Parking structure is right now. Then these guys found a house, started renting it, and so they invited me there.

EU: And you lived next door, a couple of doors down from the Smith's.

KN: Uh huh, another Hawaii students, Harvey Yashi (sp?), lived between the two of us. So we always had big parties, every weekend.

EU: So you knew Nancy Smith?

[KN She was little, was a little girl when we lived there, so I knew Lisa Smith [laughs]

EU: I'm going to stop here, okay.

EU: This is part two of the interview with Ken Nagao. You were telling me a 00:29:00story about the birds.

KN: Yeah, we never really believed in feeding the birds around the house because they would make a mess about here. But one day when I was working in the yard, last year sometime, um, this crow came up to me with a broken leg, and so I knew he was begging, or she, and so I said "wait a while" - I talk to these birds even though they don't understand. So I came in and picked up, got some bread and threw it out for the crow and stayed out there and it came up to get the bread. So I wanted to be sure the crow survived so I kept feeding it every day and eventually it brought all of its friends. So nowadays, I have to put out four slices of bread chopped up in bits and a handful of birdseed. But the crow survived and his leg is healed now.

But for a while when it was limping, it could only hop on one leg and I knew that I was trying to have it eat, so the other crows would take its food away, so I put big chunks of bread out there so it would and had a bowl of water out there, it would dip the bread in the water, and then while it was still eating down, carrying it off and he would hide it. And he hid it in so many different locations here. The neighbors, if they went up on their roofs, would wonder where these globs of bread came from because it'd stick the bread up into little cervices and all these toweled roofs around here [laughs]. But besides the crow now all these sparrows come over here and our neighbor across the street has kind of an open attic in there and the tiled roof is set up on spaced wood 00:31:00sheeting which means there's gaps and I see these birds flying in and out of his roof all the time, so since I was putting up bird feed and bread, all these birds start coming around here. So now every time when I come home, the birds gather round, and when I leave for my early morning meeting, it's too dark to feed the birds. So when I come back home, I'll pull the car up in my drive way and the birds will gather around there and wait.

EU: I know.

KN: But I also feed the squirrels and I started feeding the squirrels first. Several years now, in spring, while I was, begin working in the yard. It's this yard work I think, they think that it's safe if they see a person's out there working in the yard. This squirrel brought her little baby up to me, which is 00:32:00unheard of, and she brought him right up to me, just to have baby see who was feeding them I think [laughs] which is amazing, you know.

EU: Yeah.

KN: Who was it, Doctor Doolittle?

EU: Maybe, this is a time to ask you then about Irene. How did you meet your wife?

KN: Well I met her actually, the very first time, I still remember. Tom and I, when we were both living in different apartments off campus, the first year he came up, we would actually, rather than cooking our meals, we paid the university to eat at the dorms. So we ate at-- hmm let's see where was that 00:33:00at?--I think it was--oh no it was the dormitory just east of Agate St., forgot the name, like where McClain Hall is and Tinker or something, can't remember. But the students of the dorms ate there too, so we use to get together, in there at the times after dinner and sing songs and stuff. Tom's future wife would play the piano and we'd see several of the girls from Hawaii, although then I met a girl from Portland, who I dated all the way through college actually, she was a good friend of Irene's, and even after getting married to Irene, they still communicated, we haven't talked to them for a long time now.

EU: And where was Irene from?

KN: Irene's from on Hawaii, the big island, from a little town I didn't even know existed, till I met her. I keep telling her this, that it's not even on a map. She's from Kukuihaele, Hawaii.

EU: What was her family name?

KN: Her family name was Masumoto -- [spells] M-A-S-U-M-O-T-O which is kind of an unusual last name, most people are Matsumoto.

EU: Do you know their family history? When and why they came over?

KN: Probably similar to ours and by coincidence they came from the two provenances, prefectures, that my grandparents came from.

EU: Why did Irene come to Oregon? What was she studying?

KN: Teaching

EU: Ah teaching. Yeah, she was interested in that and became a teacher and taught for five years.

EU: Here in Eugene?

KN: In Reedsport first; we weren't going together then. But while she was teaching there, I called her up and got her to go on some dates. So she would drive to and from Reedsport every weekend looking for me I think, and I was out hunting most of the time or fishing [laugh].

EU: So when did you get married? This was after you'd finish university?

KN: Quite a few years after, when I was about 28, so we've been married since 1969.

EU: And, after you graduated then with your degree in Architecture, where did 00:36:00you work then?

KN: Well, before I graduated, I worked for the U.S. Air Force. It was during the Korean, not the Korean, the Vietnamese War and when I was starting to work on my terminal project, this was after the fifth year, it should've been the fifth year, but I took too much time working on my terminal project. At that time the terminal project was a thesis; we actually had to write a big book. I took a special sociology course just to do research, to do my project, which we each selected and had a committee of three professors working with each person on the terminal. It was a big thing because the University of Oregon only graduated from five to eight people for year in their architecture school back then out of 00:37:00four hundred some odd students [laughs] it was very tough to get out of the school.

EU: What was your topic, your thesis project?

KN: The professor who was the head of my committee was a person I'd pick; I wanted to do a cultural center, like I still do right now. But he says, "Ken, that's too easy for you, why don't you do something that would take lots of research, something for a like a corrective institutional for juvenile delinquents?" So I took him up on that subject and I took a lot of time doing research on that subject, found an interesting sight on Oahu to put this on. Between doing research and taking just a few hours of classes, the draft got after me. I was only taking twelve hours that year and so I had a real low draft 00:38:00number, you know they assigned numbers to everybody, so I had a 187 or something. So I knew I was going to get drafted, so I enlisted in the Air Force Reserves. And when my orders finally came to me to report, where I was, I can't remember, I was assigned to a Squadron in Portland, and I had to report to San Antonio Lackland Air Force Base for basic training, December 6 of 1963. I remember that day, but the day after I got that in the mail, my draft notice arrived. So I was so lucky to have gotten in the Air Force when I did.

EU: So you were in the reserves then and not the-

KN: [cuts off] Yeah. But during the end of my career in the Air Force, you know it was a six year thing, doing reserves once a month, going up to Portland first and then to Seattle, our unit got transferred to McChord Air Force Base up by Seattle. So about five of us from Eugene area, Springfield, carpooled every month to get up there. But during my last year, our unit was called up and we were going to be shipped to Vietnam, so just a few months before I got out of the Air Force, I had to take all my shots: 17 different shots I think it was, just to get to Vietnam, and then they decided, no, it's better for our unit to stay in the McChord because we were a troop carrier group. And when we got promoted to McChord, we went from C-119 flying boxcars, which was an old WWII type plane, to a C-141 jet, it's called Starlifter. We became the hospital that 00:40:00flew people back and forth to Vietnam. That was such a high tech piece of equipment that it was real tough for us, working on the C-119s going up to this really high tech jet, to do much on that plane. But they kept our squadron down, since I was in airframe repair. If any damaged airplanes happened over there, they'd fly them back to Seattle and we would repair them there.

KN: So luckily, I just served about three more months I think it was and then got out of the Air Force. Meantime, I was in the Reserves, you know, just once a month, so I was working for an engineering firm here in Eugene. It was called Western Engineering and I actually got hired there before I got into the Air 00:41:00Force and then I worked for them for a couple of months and then I got shipped off to Texas, and when I came back after six months, they hired me back again and worked for that firm and actually that firm split apart into two engineering firms. I went with the New York Firm and there were five of us that formed this other corporation and worked there until I got my license and then they asked me to be their corporate treasurer so I was a treasurer of an engineering firm, there were 28 people working there. We tried to do a multi-discipline firm: engineers, surveyors, architects, and planners; the state law wouldn't allow that at that time. There was a really antiquated state law and I was determined 00:42:00to get that law changed and I eventually did.

Because I worked so closely with governmental agencies doing school work and things, as well as with codes, the State Board of Architects Executive Director and the State Head of the Building Department both recommended me to the governor to be on the State Board of Architects, so I accepted. Even though they said, you know it'll only take eight meetings per year, but I got so involved with other things. I got into the legislative review committees, liaison with the engineers board, their attorneys and our attorneys and eventually we crafted 00:43:00the state law and we had to change the state corporation laws which didn't allow architects to be general corporations; it allowed engineers to be general corporations. And engineers were being general corporations and architects couldn't be general corporations, couldn't get together, besides the architects law that forbade that from happening. To not allow architects and engineers to associate was unbelievable, because we always worked together. So when I got on the State Board, we got this liaison committee to go and two years after that, we got the laws changed, finally. It took many years though; the law finally got changed, just as I got off the board. We had got the paperwork and all that stuff going so the legislature finally got to a point where it was approved.

EU: How long were you on that board?

KN: Nine years, three terms. And I believe in term limits and we decided to recommend a three term limit, so even though they said I could go for one more term, I said "No, I've served my three terms."

EU: What kind of architecture were you most interested in? Or did you specialize in one certain kind?

KN: Actually, my goal was, years ago, was to not be the greatest architect in the world, but to be the most influential and so just by being on the State Board and having a lot to do with how architects are tested for licensing. Actually got me to a point where I felt that "wow, I'm on this, we call ourselves the best of the best committee" [laughs]. There are hundreds of 00:45:00architects that have come through being involved with the licensing exams, the writing exams for licensing, and eventually converting for these exams for being taken on a computer and being graded by a computer. So we have nine different sections of this exam that I've been involved with, first, in terms of being a grader. We use to grade ten thousand exams in one sitting. Because once a year, you were allowed to take the entire exam, six months later, they're allowed to take parts that they've failed and then again for the next year.

So every six months we'd get together to grade these exams and I believe it's the summer exam that has the greatest number of people. I remember when 00:46:00California had abdicated from the whole system to begin with, created their own exam, and none of us other states would grant them reciprocity [laughs] and so we forced them to come back in. That first year that they came back in was when I was really involved with grading and I was being a grading coordinator, they were teaching architects how to grade the exam, and we graded over ten thousand. But now, we transitioned to the computerized exam to create, design exams that are graded by the computer was unheard of. The system is so sophisticated, that we always test the system. There's about five of us in this international committee in the US that will get together every once in a few years to look at 00:47:00the exams and make sure it's going in the right direction. We got together two years ago for the last time and made some recommendations for the next ten years of the exam and they've already started implementing it now. I just heard some of the kids in our office, you know, the exam's changing.

KN: Before we went to Hawaii we went to open Tom's boxes to be sure we thanked them--thanks for the goodies but I didn't know what they were [laughs]

EU: I'm sure you see a lot of changes in architecture. I mean, within the profession, with the computerization--

KN: Dramatic changes and luckily we got involved with the computers in our office early on. One of the early firms in '88 converted to computerized drafting and it was a little cumbersome then. Every time we entered too much 00:48:00into the computer, we would have to regenerate and you have to go on a coffee break. Because even the highest part computers back then would take twenty minutes just to regenerate the drawing. So that was so time consuming eventually we got to a point where computerized drafting was faster. Now it's so much faster. But the problem is now that our clients think it's instantaneous, see. That's the problem. You got to enter so much information in first before it can become instantaneous, you know.

EU: Did you have to through a lot of retraining then? To learn the computers?

KN: I went to LCC to take a class on AutoCAD Version 6, back then in '88. But I really don't do computerized drafting in our office. My time is more valuable 00:49:00sketching things out for the guys, making sure the design that I want to see and let them do all the technical stuff. I'll do the technical writing though to make sure that the projects are done properly, meeting the codes as well as meeting the governmental requirements for bidding and all that stuff. Then I'll monitor the construction during the construction period, I'll have to write all that information down in the stents, to be sure it gets done properly during construction. There's so much paperwork; our sketch book is about three hundred pages long for the public projects, you know.

EU: Can you talk about some of the projects you've worked on? Some of the different buildings and houses you've designed?

KN: Hmm. Let's see. Right now, a big project is underway, it's under construction now. We just designed a brand new highschool. It's a boarding 00:50:00highschool. It's up in a very rural community, up in Jasper, and it's a private, church run high school. You know it's many many millions of dollars there that's going take to finish that; it's a ten year project. So it's something that the firm can work on for a long time, I think. But it's under construction. It's very tough to get the plans in the first place, to get the zone changed to allow a school up there. Luckily, there's a planning company that did that. Now the construction part is the easy part.

EU: Have most of the projects you've worked on been in this area - the Eugene/Springfield/Lane County?

KN: Oh no, actually I'm licensed in eight states. There's only one state I haven't worked in, the eighth. The eighth state was Utah and we're supposed to 00:51:00be working on a big trucking facility there, but the trucking company got bought out just as we were going to get going on it. Luckily, we hadn't started it though. That was Utah. But we've done lots of things. Huge trucking facilities for the Redwood Company in Colorado and Montana, I think it was? Washington, California and here.

EU: Washington--

KN: Some as big as a hundred and twenty trucks parked up against the building, restructuring the contents or the drivers. And we also did huge truck repair garages in those facilities. I mean acres and acres, and they were big projects. The first one we worked on was in Salem, and the guy liked us so much, we went to the rest of the places. So we got licenses in all those places, I 00:52:00did--wherever they wanted these facilities. And Taco Time was the same thing; you know, they wanted buildings here, there, wherever, so we did stuff in Northern Montana, all of those places too for them. Getting to understand different kinds of climate conditions where, up in Montana we had to put our foundations three and a half feet underground to prevent a freezing, you know. We don't do things in Alaska though because there is so tough to deal with, because of permafrost. Whenever you compress ice, if you had any physics? No? What it does is the compression will thaw out the ice. So when you put a building on ice, even if it's solid for twenty, fifty feet all the way down. 00:53:00It'll eventually thaw the ice out and it'll start sinking, you know. I've taken courses in arctic construction too, but I decided no it's not worth it. They have to drill pierce through the ice, put refrigerant coils around the pierce to keep it cold and if the fire goes out, you're out of luck [laughs].

EU: In this oral history project, we interviewed Hiroshi Ogawa and I know when his pottery studio burned, you designed his new studio?

KN: Yeah, we did and we did it at no cost because we really wanted him to get back into that. And everyone contributed time and money for that.

EU: The building looks very Japanese.

KN: It is intentionally done that way. And I like to have that platform look 00:54:00where the whole building is raised up on "piloti" P-I-L-O-T-I [spells], Le Corbusier word, building on posts so that the environment falls through. He kind of wanted that also, you know, I spoke with him as far as what type of design he wanted. The main thing was to be sure that the floor was designed to accommodate huge loads, because I know heavy clay is so you can use any part of that building for storage.

EU: Have you designed other buildings with a Japanese theme?

KN: Oh, Rosie [last name] (sp?) home has a Japanese order to it, but it's not 00:55:00really a Japanese house. It was a very expensive home. I think she's trying to sell it for almost a million now. It should be a little less than that, but she's been advertising it for some huge amounts. It wasn't designed to be resold really. It was a designed for a particular kind, her way of living. She wanted a two story house, but didn't want it to look like a two story house, so we had to camouflage it in a one story shell, basically, so it was difficult, and I don't like the way that some of the roof overhangs. It's a matter of communication between me and the person who did the joints probably and lack of cooperation there in office [laughs].

KN: In the Emerald Valley, the Forest Inn, right on the golf course in Emerald Valley, there's a 54,000 square foot building there, sort of a Japanese order to 00:56:00it too and that was a fun project to do because at that the time the owner was a timber company, had millions of dollars that they needed a tax write off for, and even when my process meter/reader said it was going to cost four and a half million for that building, including the water systems and the sewer systems that we had to put in, it was unincorporated, he said I could build it for less and I said, it's going to cost that much, as it's sure not going to get exactly four and a half million dollars [laughs] for all the infrastructure and the building. That was a real fun project because we only had one year from when, less than a year, from when I had a sketch on a napkin, to when the building was to be finished. And actually, it was on a napkin, and I have that napkin filed 00:57:00somewhere [laughs]. He says, "That looks great. Let's build it!"And that's when he signed up the National Ladies PGA Tournament for the golf course, September 14th, 1979. I remember that date, because then when I found it out, I got all the governmental agencies together. It was nice that LCOG, the main council of governance, had Gary Darnell, who was most recently a hearings officer. And I worked together on that.

I asked him to bring together all the agencies that had to make decisions on this project and we all sat around this huge table and I says, "we need to be open at this state how soon can you review it, and what do you need?" So the 00:58:00state building office, who had jurisdiction there, and from he county building department and the city building department, all three had jurisdiction there, because it was in an unincorporated area across the highway. We convinced city council to annex a ten foot strip all around the buildable elevations of the property, around the flood zone, and to agree to annexing officially any portions that were fully developed. As soon as it got developed, then they would annex it, so it wouldn't be a tax strain on them too. We convinced them to extend a ten inch water line from east side of the freeway, under the freeway, over to our site, so we would have fire protection. And they allowed us to create our own drinking water system, so we would have a 42,000 gallon tank 00:59:00there, on the side that we hid behind a berm. Then we got them to approve a municipal system of sewers and sewage treatment, so we have the lagoons on our side and to agree to take them over after we got them completed, even the water system.

So that's all happened. And that's really been snowballing. But to do that, I had to spend every day, from seven in the morning to two o'clock in the afternoon, sketching to keep ahead of the contractors, who worked 24 hours a day. They had three crews--Mazama Timber Company which owned that, had three crews working on that project. So I can remember sketching the stairway, but I couldn't get our draftsman to fully comprehend how that stair would be put together, so I hand draw at the site and the next morning, it was there. But to 01:00:00do this, the building departments, all three of them that had jurisdiction, had to agree with us, to allow us to build, without a full set of drawings. I actually was on site drawing and I take it back to the office and things would get drafted. Sometimes I was out there with a shovel, describing lines on the site where they wanted things to get poured. And so our "as-builds" are really not accurate. It was just the most fun project an architect could have.

KN: Just to get the heights of the concrete columns that held up the street lights in there, the project manager from the mill took his fork lift and took our light fixture and raised and lowered and said, "Where do you want this to be?" We says, "Stop!" He says "Measure that height" and that's how we poured all those concrete columns, the heights and then the light fixtures could hang from them, things like that, you know, that was so much fun. We created the first 01:01:00permeable paving anywhere to actually save some big Douglas firs, because we have this circular drive, so people could drop their guests off at the front door, and then go out and park and we had these big Douglas firs in there and we wanted to save those. As so, we did some research on what Douglas firs really need. They need air as well as water. A lot of folks would pipe water in, but without air, you can't get them to survive, you see? This is shooting from hip, okay? [laughs] Excavated the lowest turn around driveway. I said, well, we could put not raw sand, but sharp sand I called it, to prevent silt from coming up and 01:02:00then some pea gravel and stuff on top and then just set some official pavers on top of that, so that the air would go down through it. But besides that, the perforated pipe, underneath the street, so that air and water could get down into it. So the trees have stayed from '79 til now, so.

EU: Do you have your own architectural firm now?

KN: Yes.

EU: How long have you had that?

KN: Since 1972, actually. Because of the architect engineers' law that didn't allow us to be multi-disciplined, that was to my advantage, actually, at that time, because although I could own my share of that engineering company, and I 01:03:00had a small share, about ten percent, now that I was a corporate treasure, they couldn't list me in the name of the firm, which was Choud (sp?), Steminen (sp?), Walter, Engineers, Surveyors, and Planners and Ken Nagao Architect, it was a separate firm, but listed together. When we had to do public projects, their firm name, and my firm name would be on the sheet, and I would have to handle all the architecture parts and have stamp their engineer sheets so that worked out really nicely for name recognition. So when I left the firm in '79 to start completely separate from the engineering firm, I had lots of school work, and all kinds of work besides that that came along.

EU: How many people work for you now? Irene works at your company.

KN: Sure, Irene does. We have six, including us, four others, plus a student.

EU: There are four other architects, then?

KN: One other architect, who's now going to be owning 20 percent of the firm, when we sign our papers and he'll eventually take over.

EU: So you're looking for retirement? Is that what you're planning for?

KN: We never retire, but yeah. Just wanted someone to keep that firm going so we're writing tons of proposals too on different projects. We just want to be sure the firm has lots to do later.

EU: We're going to stop here.

KN: Okay.

EU: This is part three of the interview with Ken Nagao. Ken you wanted to talk a little bit about your engineering background.

KN: Although I'm not an engineer, I've always wanted to have both architects and engineers licenses. I was originally planning until I got married to get two 01:05:00degrees. After getting my architecture degree, I was thinking of getting a Masters in Engineering perhaps and one of the very few architects, who, when the University of Oregon offered a structural option as well as a design option - you picked and chose between the two- when you entered the school of architecture, I actually took all the courses in both options. So I actually had three years of engineering, plus all the pre-engineering courses I took at the University of Hawaii, which the architecture school there was an engineering school as well as in the fine arts school, so I got a really good background in fine arts as well as in engineering and engineering physics and calculus and all the stuff like that based on engineering you see. So when I came up to school here and started working for the engineering company, they saw that I had done all this structural work in school, so I did most of the structural calculations 01:06:00that most of the engineering firm did, way back then, even for stuff like ski lifts, bridge cranes, stuff that architects don't even get involved with. And even after starting my own firm, after leaving that company, our clients, the folks from Manzama Timber, hired me to even design their barkers and stuff like that architects wouldn't even think of doing, with scrap, material that they had laying around in their yard, I would try to use all that stuff to create a structural system that would withstand dropping 42 inch diameter Douglas fir logs from ten feet up, to make sure it didn't buckle, and then find some way of getting those logs down to where the barker was and strip off the bark and stuff and it's kind of fun doing all that stuff. I actually even designed mills, as an 01:07:00architectural firm, we did when I was with the engineering company, we did some saw mills, some big mills and projects and stuff.

One of our major clients is another lumber company, Jackson Wood Products, the McDougal Brothers, all that, and they're the ones that, their foundation is funding that school. Yeah and Imaho (sp?) Valley Golf Course was another lumber company. So the word just gets passed on from company to company. Previous to Manzama, because we work really closely with the Lane County Building Department, and [unintelligible] when we designed Fernwood Middle School and Veneta Grade School and Pier Point Inn at the Coast, all these code issues, they discuss with the building departments. Their recommendations got spread all 01:08:00over, although they can't recommend a firm directly, but it was because of them that we got into the Manzama Lumber Company's thing, where another architect raised his hands and couldn't deal with finishing the design of that lumber mill in Creswell, we were hired to take over that and to take of the structural problems -- it had some big structural problems with it, that they were building over a log pond, so we had to deal with stuff like that. After dealing with those successfully, that lumber company hired us to do lots more projects besides the golf course.

EU: So it's been a real advantage in your career, these two, engineering and architecture?

KN: Sure, and it should continue to go in hand in hand. But mostly of the architecture schools today are allowing their students to get by, in some schools, with less than one year of structure design, which is so dangerous. 01:09:00These kids cannot design any structural system. They're all going to have to rely on an engineer, or if they do it themselves, they could get into deep trouble. It's amazing, and they're not getting enough art, in my book. They should all be required to take sculpture, because architecture is a three dimensional product, in which we sculpt from the inside out, as well as from the outside in. It's fun because sculptors don't normally have the opportunity to design from the inside out. You've got to create a sculpture piece that looks good from the inside, as well as the outside, so it's really different method of sculpture, that's what makes it fun.

KN: We should probably go on with the other things though.

EU: You talked before about some of your other interests, for example, hunting, 01:10:00you talked about that before and I know art. Haven't you done pottery at different times as well?

KN: I've done pottery, painting, never basket weaving--

EU: Kites?

KN: Yes kites, sure. I like to do art that isn't time consuming. I got started in sculpture. I chose to sculpt rock [laughs]. It took me a whole term on that project, but Jan [name] (sp?), who was my sculpture prof., liked my work so much that, although I just signed up for two credits in sculpture, for every term, I actually have twelve credits of sculpture, taking just one year of sculpture 01:11:00from Jan [name]. But because of that, I don't have any of my work, because he kept all of it. I really enjoyed that and I felt good that he kept these pieces.

EU: What kind of pottery did you make?

KN: Well I do weird things [laughs]. I'm not a great potter. But I like to look at the medium and see what things could happen with it. I don't throw very large parts. The term throwing is actually to lift up a bowl by putting it on the wheel, you know. I might be able to do a 12 inch pot and that's about it before it starts globing on me. But because of that, using the excuse, "it adds character," do these pots and change the form. I never got to throw on an 01:12:00electric wheel when I was taking pottery in school, and I spent two years there on pottery. Then, after getting out of school, there was a Valley Potters Guild, which was right at the office building that we built at 4th and Hyde, and it was a barnlike structure out there. I had fun taking ceramics there too, real down to earth ceramics. In fact, we even had a ceramics lab every year up in the top of Dillard Road, where one year, they built a geodesic dome and it was big three dollars for weekend, ceramics party. Built a kiln, we actually did a wood fire ceramics kiln there, and we made pots out of native clay that we dug up right 01:13:00there on site. That was really earthy, very hippy [laughs].

That was so much fun being able to drop with tongs your pot in through the chimney and then watching it to see how it developed, and then after it got to a certain temperature, we pulled it out and did raku. Raku firing, where we put it into a metal barrel, filled it with either hay or manure or other stuff and closed. When the manure and other stuff started burning, we closed the lid and starve the fire out of oxygen, which changes the glazes into some really interesting colors. That's what raku's all about. But when I was taking ceramics at the university too, I was taking it from Bob James. He was not the typical instructor. He allowed you to do stuff on your own. And then he would come in 01:14:00and advise you. He never taught technique, actually, and even with kiln, the class kiln was just to experiment with different types of chemicals that I didn't know anything about, just to see what happened to them [laughs]

KN: Well, that was so loose and I like loose art, even with kites, that's a one night project. I like to do fast stuff, even in my sketching in my architectural firm. I like to do sketches in about two, three hours that look like you spent a whole week on them. Now that we're going to computers, I told the guys today, that our computers did really nice, three dimensional drawings now, to get the 01:15:00background rendering and stuff like that, we could probably send it over to India and get them to put their background on it, rather than to have us trying to spend too much time developing something that looks like a finished product. Sketches, to me, should not be a finished product, because we don't want buildings or building sketches, to look like finished buildings, we want them to look like sketches, so clients feel comfortable asking for changes. It's a moving piece, it's an art work, you know.

EU: Is this a time to ask you about your gingerbread houses?

KN: That's artwork too and architecture too at the same time and sculpture. Again, I don't like to take too much time, even on the gingerbread. It looks like it took lots of hours and stuff--it didn't take that much time. As long as you get the gestalt image and the shapes, so it has a lot of character that's 01:16:00the main thing.

EU: How did you get interested in gingerbread houses?

KN: Let's see, when was it? I went to the festival of trees one year, at Valley River, and saw some nice gingerbread. I thought that they could do better [laughs]. Then, when I got onto the state board, another woman, Candace Robertson, from Portland, Robertson, Merrymond (sp?), and another firm, three ladies. She knew that I was interested in gingerbread, so she brought a photograph one day of a gingerbread that their firm made of the Portland skyline. It was really nicely done, huge, and she said that the architects of 01:17:00Portland always have a competition each year, they do this. So I said I'm going to do something like that. And so she sent me the recipe on structural gingerbread, because I told her the first one that I did, the Notre Dame, Paris, just a stylized version of it, collapsed after a year. I had it in the garage, of course, which pulled in moisture. She said that if you use this structural gingerbread, it'll hold up better. It won't swell up and rise on your when you're baking it; like the Notre Dame, I really had to reshape a bunch of pieces after I baked it. So using this new recipe, I could pre-cut everything, and everything ended up the same size after baking. So it was much easier to deal with.

EU: Besides the Notre Dame, what other buildings have you made?

KN: Let's see, I've done the Black Castle, it's called the Matsumoto Castle in Japan. When we were on a Kyoki (sp?) tour in Japan, we visited that castle, and I was really impressed with it. I was able to walk the entire grounds, go into every nook and corner of that castle, including the attic. Irene never went into the castle because the stairs were too tall; she couldn't get up those tall stairs. So she waited for me outside in the gift shop. She found a little brochure that showed a drawing of the castle, and architectural drawing of the castle, with the elevation, and a sight line. So when I came back, I decided to do a gingerbread of the castle, to scale this time. I still have that upstairs. 01:19:00And then Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig's Castle. One time the computer graphic's magazine had on its cover a computer generated, three dimensional drawing of that castle. So I took that and photographs I've seen of the castle, made a stylized version of the castle, which I've had for about five years now. Last year, I added, on the second mountain top, a little chapel, with a bridge across, a little gingerbread bridge across to finish Neuschwanstein Castle, so I could do a smaller gingerbread that year. But even the small one is two feet high [laughs]

EU: So you bring these out every year then?

KN: The one's that last I do, and I'll touch up sometimes, change the color scheme. The Neuschwanstein's changed color schemes three times now, I think.

EU: Didn't you make the newspaper too about, I'm trying to remember, Christmas tree?

KN: Oh, yeah, I put vodka, that went all over the country, and if you look on Google's website and look under my name it still lists the vodka under my gingerbread, because the newspaper did an article about all the gingerbread I've done, over the years. They also did an article about my narcissus bulb carving, and then the Christmas tree. And the Christmas tree, it went across the country, on some TV stations too. I think it was KOTR that came over to the house and featured the tree. KOTR also featured the gingerbread. They came over when I did 01:21:00a gingerbread party for the birth of three kids and because they're on this network, it lasts all the way through the country. Stations across the country picked up on both of those items. I think it was even Jay Leno, who talked about this guy in Oregon, and this vodka.

EU: So what's your recipe, what's your secret?

KN: It's not a secret. Because growing up in Hawaii, where these ships sit for five weeks or longer, we always had to do special things to try to revive them. My dad would always cut off two or three inches off the bottom. He would actually burn the bottoms, and I didn't put two and two together there. We would do things to get the water up, aspirin, sugar, weird things. I was cleaning the 01:22:00class on some of these doors here, after we moved in here, and when I sprayed it with Windex, I noticed that some of the lacquer was being dissolved, by the Windex. So I quit using Windex, and I thought, oh, maybe if I use alcohol on the bottom of the trees, because what's keeping the tree from sucking up more water, it's the fact that the sap's congealed into lacquer at the bottom of the trees. So if I could dissolve that lacquer, and the gooey junk that partially congealed, then the tree's going to drink water. Sure enough, it worked. But I tried rum and gin, and some other stuff, but the thing that works the best is vodka. So there must be some relationship between tree and sap and some 01:23:00vegetation that's related that might create the vodka. What is vodka made from?

EU: Potatoes?

KN: Oh yeah potatoes, I think it is potatoes. But I use a pretty strong mixture of vodka to begin with, to get it to work fast, then I tone down with a lot more hot water. The hot water actually keeps the sap liquefied too. And, really, the tree will start expiring vodka into the air, you can actually smell it, the first day or so, you can tell when it's really drinking up a whole bunch, like two gallons of water and vodka per day [laughs]. That was fun.

EU: Should we move over into a topic about the Japanese American community in Eugene?

KN: There was none to begin with. I've been here since 1959, and there was no community, no restaurants; a few Chinese restaurants that didn't serve Chinese food. You know, there was none of the good food that we had in Hawaii, there was a pretty good ethnic mix there, and we had pretty good food there. None of the festivals, none of the cultural events. So when I was working for the first engineering firm I mentioned and we had just broke apart and created a new engineering firm. A few of us moved and started off in the shopping center at 40th and McDonald there, I met, I believe, he was a highschool or middle school 01:25:00teacher, from Hawaii, Jerry Mutsui (sp?), because he would run by the office jogging after teaching school, we were still working of course. We finally got to meet them, got into conversation, got to know them pretty well, he and his wife. That was way back in 1960--1970, 71. We started to talking to them. Their kids were just getting into high school, they were pretty active in orchestra or something like that. They said to us, although we don't have any kids, you know, our kids are going to grow up not knowing anything about Japanese culture. So we had a long conversation with them and one of the families, I can't remember who 01:26:00the other family was, and so we decided, why don't we start getting together? So us three couples look through the phone book and found Japanese names in it. And we would invite people to pot lucks -- that's where we finally met Nisa (sp?) Joe, Carrie we hadn't met. We knew Carrie's cousin, who was from Hawaii, and she, what is there names? Otoglass (sp?), Joyce Olson Otoglass (sp?). Joyce was meeting with us periodically. And the first potluck we had was at one of the schools, I can't remember which school it was, then we started talking about an organization then, of course nothing formal ever happened.

So we thought that we would get together every couple of months and try to expand this group. And finally, we found Carrie. We had invited David Koyamuka (sp?) because his name came up several times, but he lives near Milkshoot (sp?), and we thought that Milkshoot was too close to campus, he must be a student. So we didn't invite him until later. Then Bern Hall (sp?) was found. He found us after we started our architecture program, that was in '79, that was a quite a few years after that. He had talked to Ada Lee and also Bruce Dean's wife, Angie Dean, Filipino, about starting some sort of an Asian business club. That's how 01:28:00the Asian Counsel started first of all, Bern wanted to start this business network group, because he was into more marketing and stuff like that so. We were already having some Japanese community potlucks and stuff so. The Filipino group was already strong in this community then. My partner, at 79, Tom Orion joined me. He was active in the Filipino community, and so we got meet a lot of Filipino groups at their Christmas parties. And so that started forming a nucleus, Angie and Tom and several other Filipinos. One worked for Bi-Mart. And Bern Hall mostly with the leadership was thinking about some sort of a Chinese New Year when I said, you know we shouldn't make it that ethnic, we need to make 01:29:00it more general, you know [laughs]. So the first Asian celebration started in '86. So it took quite a few years to get it that far. We had already started this Asian business network, we even had a phone directory listing the Asian businesses.

EU: Before you had mentioned "Asian's Together." Is that or was that something else?

KN: That was something else. We found out about them through Misa (sp?), when we got Misa. We didn't know what ethnicity Misa was. Jo doesn't sound Japanese or whatever, but someone suggested her, so we finally got her involved. But that's the way she was talking about "Asians Together." It was this political group to get the Japanese Americans who were interned paid off, things like that-- Peggy Nagai was really into that. We said, "No we want to keep out of that kind of 01:30:00stuff, so we wanted something completely cultural" [laughs]. Although Bern had other business ideas. We got in trouble to begin with, we tried to start a 501 C3, text exempt charter organization. But because of the business directory, the IRS wouldn't allow us to do it. But until today, we were still a 501 C4, the Asian Council. They're the ones that put on the Asian celebration.

EU: Was David Toyama involved?

KN: Not yet, no, not yet. David got it involved--maybe after we found Harry Yonquist? No, David brought Harry Yonquist in and Howard Yamamoto. David was actually able to get the big nucleus of the group that continued on, you know, together. Once he got involved and knew what we were all about. He didn't want 01:31:00to join to begin with [laughs]; that was a split. Didn't like what Misa was doing either, I don't think. Misa was a little bit from the cultural end, although political too, you see. There was that kind of a split.

EU: So you said that the Asian celebration started in '86, okay. Where did you hold that?

KN: At the Fairgrounds. At the Quonset hut. The building that attached to the office, right by the front gate. It's 6,000 square feet, we had 500 people the first year, our budget was 2,500 dollars. The city public works administrator, Christine, asked me about what kind of budget did you have? I said $2,500. "How could you put an event on like that with only 2,500 dollars? Even at that, we 01:32:00were able to keep that money and seed the [unintelligible] event. We made quite a bit of money the following year. Then people like Misa, and Tony Lam was involved then, said, "We should make it free" [laughs] I said, "you can't keep events like this going if you think that way." So we reduced the admission by a dollar and it didn't do well. We broke even, but there wasn't enough to keep going really. We struggled and the following year, raised the price up a little more and eventually got so bring we needed the performance hall, which is 12,000 square feet. We did that for about three years, and then we got big enough to do the exhibit hall which is 24,000 square feet--We were doing it step by step. We were there for about two years, and then now we have the whole thing.

EU: Was your vision always like it is now? You have the food, and you have vendors and you have a craft section and with martial arts. Was it always that mixed?

KN: It was always that mixed plus some. We still want to expand deeper into the community to have more venues do the same type of thing that we're doing, the same week. We're trying to, we use Junction City's Scandinavian festival as an example. We also got information on what they do on Vancouver, B.C. They have an Asian Celebration up there, where all the different venues take part. So, you know we get the University's museum to help. BSU theater did it for a year. We tried to get the health center, but then they've never been good about doing it, you know. More recently they did, but that's our goal to get quite a few other venues to take part in this Asian Celebration. Then, I think, two years after we 01:34:00started the Asian Celebration, we did the Asian Kite Festival. When I was president of the Kiwanis club, one of the ideas for presidents was to start a kite's festival in towns. So I decided to use Kiwanis and the Asian Counsel as the resource, and with Carrie being in the city, we always got the city support and that helped a lot. Carrie was really the catalyst to keep this thing going, you know, with the city. Although she's not there anymore, but at least that's continued on.

EU: So the kite festival still continues in the fall? In September?

KN: Yes, I'm trying to make sure it continues. Last year was a real failure. David Tan tried doing it all by himself and it didn't go very far and there was no ads, and nothing, you know so. I got Jacq Ein's (sp?) wife to take over and 01:35:00hopefully she's working on it. I give all my kites we display in the kite museum every year. She's promised to do it, but there's lots of others to do it. To start it, I should convince about six or seven others in the community, Ada being one of them, Angie Dean, Tony. We took carloads of people from the Asian Counsel to the coast, I wanted them to see a kite festival down there, to get them all excited about doing a kite festival here. And they did get excited, so we started this kite festival in Eugene and it kept on going, for I think this is the 20th year.

The Oblong festival is another event. When we started the Taiko group in '89, and it was Misa's doing, she had brought a drum from a drum maker in California. 01:36:00And her excuse was, he told me that he was going to take this drum back, if I don't play it. So we helped out and [laughs]. She said "we have a university student in law school, whose is willing to come teach us. She's a member of the Seattle Taiko." Shari Nakashima was there and she was really good teaching us how to play Taiko. So she brought in three ladies from Seattle Taiko down one weekend and she asked us all to bring tires and they brought their three drums down and we all learned how to play Taiko on tires. And that was the start of Eugene Taiko and that was, I think, fall of '89.

EU: Who was in that first Taiko group?

KN: None of the folks are in there now. Debbie, who now lives in Colorado, I 01:37:00think, Svajko Hessling (sp?), who died a couple of years ago. I'm trying to remember faces. I have a picture somewhere up of the group on that first thing.

EU: So you continued learning in Taiko? I mean, did you have teachers from Japan?

KN: Oh yeah, Sensei Tanaka, Sensei Yamamoto from Gion Matsuri, which is a festival in Japan, he was a prefectural master. You know they really worshipped 01:38:00their artists in Japan and he was one of those artists so. Then, he was so generous that he paid for one of our highschool students to go to Japan with him and learn some stuff there. He brought his Taiko group over to teach us stuff here too. They played for Orbone (sp?) twice. He passed away, so that all disappeared. It was really great when that happened; it was a great exchange of stuff, mostly one way from him. I mean he gave us all different kinds of gifts, kimonos and stuff. Taught us a lot about what they do on their cultural parade. It was called Gion Matsuri and all over Japan they have this festival you know, where they parade Taikos throughout the town. I went to see all the floats in 01:39:00Kyoto just before, just a few days too soon, just before the parade. But they were building all these huge floats with their Taikos on it.

When we went to Japan, I think Takuyama (sp?) is the historic village, and there's a big cave in the mountain, where they store all the floats, for their Gion Matsuri parade. And we were able to go into the mountain and see these floats and a lot of them are mechanized, so these mannequins play Taiko on these floats. There's the world's largest Taiko there, and everybody's allowed to play on that, so it was really interesting to do that and to see one the historic villages. The whole village is preserved and they have artisans, crafts-folk there demonstrating, making [inaudible], those things on a wood fired stove and 01:40:00stuff. We went to a grass village that's been rebuilt; grass shacks, all the roofs are made out of thatch, and there are all those different stations with different artisans there demonstrating their crafts. It was really nice to see something like that. That's our goal here is to eventually build a cultural center or to help fund partially. I'm sure we can't fund and maintain a big cultural center. None of our local groups can afford to do that. So we have to have cooperation from somebody with deep pockets [laughs].

EU: I think I'll stop here for a minute.

EU: This is part four of the interview with Ken Nagao. Before we leave the topic 01:41:00of Taiko, could you talk about some of the people who joined you, like Harry Youngquist (sp?) and some of the other people that you drew into that group?

KN: Sure. The core group was originally Cathy Cunningham and her husband Tim, who's a member of the core group today, spent a whole year sitting in the auditorium watching us practice every night that we played. Harry Yonquist is one of the core group people of course, Carol, his wife, definitely. Harry was hard to train, you know because he had a deferent way, he can't bend his wrists, so he was a very different technique. But it was great to have him there, because you see it was a multicultural group. I really wanted this group to be multicultural, you know, mutli-ethnic.

EU: And Harry is Norwegian.

KN: Norwegian, yes [laughs] and Carol is Okinawan, Aimee Yogi is Okinawan. Let's see--Tim and Cathy. Cathy Cunningham is David Toyama's daughter and she's the person with the best form of all, you know. I always like to see her play because she always has great form. Then, after that, we have Lois Kishigii (sp?), who is also Okinawan, and my wife plays, Irene Masumoto Nagao. See, Carol and Irene are good hula dancers, so some of the motions come natural to them and the fluidity. Cathy looks like she's had some martial arts perhaps in her moves 01:43:00and she's a musician as well, her moves are timed correctly with the rhythm, you see. Some folks in the group really had to be taught rhythm [laughs].

EU: Could you talk a little about the hula dancing, because I know that that's become an integral part of the Taiko performance.

KN: It was really our idea to introduce it. We wanted to show that a large number of our group were from Hawaii or at least had Hawaiian roots. The Toyamas are from Hawaii, but then I think Cathy was born in Japan or perhaps on the mainland. I'm not sure where she was born.

EU: Maybe Japan.

KN: Japan, hmm. So we wanted to do some things that were Okinawan also. We sing. 01:44:00Harry and I do the singing -- we sung an Okinawan song called Shima Uta. "Shima" referring to the island of Okinawa, I believe; "Uta" is "song." We talk about this maiden with long black hair dancing and stuff, but we even sang at Lois Ushigii's (sp?) wedding. And then, since Harry's got such a good voice, I mean he sings for the sons of Norway, we always like to have him sing, you know, I've been working on the railroad. We also do another Japanese song, I can't remember what it was.

EU: Did you do one about the Samurai or the Warrior?

KN: You know the Warrior is a song that we learned from Keynato (sp?) Taiko in LA. Because we don't have a sensei or a teacher for Taiko, we rely on pieces 01:45:00that other Taiko groups perform and get their permission to do it. We were really fortunate a few years ago where we actually had an original composition from the composer in Japan, who composed this piece to honor the community for standing up against pirates who always raided their town every year. It was a piece written for an orchestra. So we learned the Taiko part of it and then fortunately, the band instructor at Churchill High School asked us to play a piece in conjunction with the band. So we got permission to do that from the composer at Churchill, so we shared the music for all the different arrangements, you know, which a symphony is done that way, which the Churchill 01:46:00high school band, and they performed it really well with Eugene Taiko, so that was a really nice high point in our Taiko careers.

KN: Unfortunately, we didn't get the recording of it. They promised to video and record it for us, but we were never able to get that. Hopefully, someone did videotape the entire piece, but we never even got a piece of it. But let's see, going to other stuff. Harry and I sometimes incorporate guitar and ukulele into Taiko, because we are again, trying to show the multicultural thing, where we do Hawaiian, Okinawan, Japanese. We've done a song about Queen Liliuokalani, it's 01:47:00called Lilioae (sp?), and at first we were just chanting it, because it's easy to chant, but then eventually, to educate the public, to show them two different kinds of hula, the authentic hula that was done to chanting, originally. So we would do the chant and the women in our Taiko group, mostly being from Hawaii, those who weren't from Hawaii learned to do the hula. And they were able to show both kinds of dancing. Dancing to chants, and on that same song, they would change and do the Hula 'Auana type of song, it's the same words, done more modern style. After the missionaries got to Hawaii, they added the melodic pieces. So then, that same song done in the auana style, the touristy style, and 01:48:00the more fluid type of dancing. All done to Taiko as well as to Harry and my singing and ukulele playing.

EU: This is something unique to your group, that you do Taiko and hula together?

KN: Yes, I believe that we were the only ones; there might be some groups in Hawaii that are doing that, I don't know, but we decided to do that ourselves, just to bridge that gap.

EU: I think that you have a group of friends that meet and you do, you play the ukulele?

KN: Yes, that really snowballed. Maggie Mutova (sp?) is really the originator of this group. She called me up one day and said, "Hey Ken, I heard you play ukulele." And I says, "a little." She says, "Would you come over to the house and jam with me and one other person?" So she and Elizabeth, another Elizabeth, who works over at Home Depot, and I, for several months in a row, would get 01:49:00together around once a month and would play along with CDs, Hawaiian CDs. We tried to play along and learn those songs. Eventually, we thought, why don't we start inviting some other folks? So we had about seven or eight at Maggie's house, and then it moved to our house here, and we decided to invite lots more folks, so we had thirty people show up [laughs]. And that was a lot of fun. Since that time, it turned into summer, so Maggie had a big back yard, so we were able to continue on, that summer in her back yard as the group started to grow, and then came winter and the group was too large for anybody's homes. So we had them renting Our Savior Lutheran Church, once a month, the first Friday 01:50:00of every month now. Used to be from seven to ten, now it goes to from seven to about ten thirty, eleven. It's developed into a real fun fest and a food fest because people are from Hawaii, and even those who aren't from Hawaii are so use to being with us Hawaiians, they know that we like to eat, even after dinner, you know. So it's almost like having a second dinner.

So we gather and arrange our chairs in a huge circle, all facing each other. We start at one point of the circle -- each person picks a song to play and we all bought a book called Haemale (sp?) Aloha, Songs of Hawaii, basically. There are about two hundred and fifty songs, all authentic Hawaiian songs, with the chords are published, written out as well as diagrammed in terms of fingering on the 01:51:00ukulele. So it's easy to follow along with that. So we just go around the circle and pick songs and whenever we get to the half way point, we break for a snack, and then continue on the rest of the circle until we get done at ten thirty. And just the other day, last Friday was the first Friday of the month; we had about fifty people there. And now people from the other group, called the Ukulenies (sp?), that don't play Hawaiian music, are coming into our group. And I've been going into the Ukulenies and some of our group is going there too so it's become a great cultural exchange.

EU: Did your group have a name?

KN: We call it the kanikapila. "Kanikapila" in Hawaii means to get together and sing, socialize basically. So we just called it kanikapila. Maggie has other great ideas for our group. She wants to call us the "Iron Mangos" or something 01:52:00like that and have our big group perform at events in town.

EU: Maybe you could perform at the Asian Celebration?

KN: That's what she'd like us to do. She, herself now is part of a musical group called Sweet Aloha, and they've been performing now for a lot of gigs out of town even. And they've actually invited Irene's hula group to dance along, Irene and Aimee Yogi, and Carol MacIntire (sp?) is a teacher and Aimee knows most of the dances, so when Carol's gone, Aimee teaches also.

EU: When you lived in Hawaii growing up, did you sing Hawaiian songs?

KN: No. [laughs] it was like listening to -- I wouldn't listen to Hawaiian songs or western songs, country western songs. I wanted to listen to rock and roll, 01:53:00whatever was popular for kids then. The only songs I knew in Hawaiian was the song of the kingdom, basically, "Hawai'i Pono'i" and "Aloha oe" were the only two songs I knew in Hawaiian. When I came up to Oregon, because one of my roommates was a music major, his friend Rodney Lao, from Hilo too, was also a music major. They've both been in the music instruction sector of Hawaii. They come back to play for Oregon's bands and reunions every year. They instigated Kanikapilas at our house on campus, you know the one on Agate Street and 01:54:00Franklin Blvd house. We were notorious for having parties every weekend, all year long. And it was a party with all kinds of musical instruments: electric guitars, tenor ukes, baritone ukes, guitars, all kinds of stuff, drums. It was fun. That's where I learned my Hawaiian songs.

EU: It seems that there's quite a community of people from Hawaii here.

KN: We think so [laughs].

EU: And I think you played a role in keeping people together with your dinners and your potlucks.

KN: Well if we hadn't gotten together with the Matsuis (sp?) and those other families looking up Asian names and Japanese names to begin with, I don't think it would have ever happened. We started that when we were over in 40th and Donald. Yes, because Jerry Matsui, we met there. He was always running by our office, every day, and that's how I met Jerry.

EU: Yeah, Jerry's from Hawaii, but his wife's from Eastern Oregon.

KN: Yeah.

KN: But when we got together with them to look up names, to start a Japanese group, that's what started this whole thing, way back when. It started in around 1971, 1972, before we moved into our new building in '74.

IO: [Irene, Ken's wife] But we really didn't start until '84. I mean, because 01:56:00then we had a meeting here, in this house.

KN: That was the Asian Counsel we started here in '84.

IO: No. Japanese Group.

KN:Yes, did we start the Japanese Group here too? Oh that's right.

IO: Yeah, because that's when we had Frank Kimomoto (sp?).

KN: That's right, we met several people after inviting people to the house here.

IO: Frank and Joyce.

KN: Yeah, when did we start the Japanese Potlucks? Before then?

IO: I don't know. I'm not sure. But I know that we really didn't get going until after--

KN: Yeah it took a long time.

IO: Because we're in this house when --

KN: And it took a long time to get David to participate [laughs].

IO: I think we met them by approaching them in the grocery store.

KN: And Genie Ma. She was working in the basement of the Bon Marche and we'd 01:57:00always talked to her about stuff we were doing in the Asian community and she finally got interested. And then she got her two boys interested, the two boys play Taiko with us. They played in the first Obon, I remember. The second Obon, maybe, that's right, it was the second. They're Chinese, right, so they had no idea what the rhythm was for Japanese music [laughs]. And here they were, playing this drum, while the ladies were trying to dances and got everybody off beat. That was at Lambcote (sp?) when we first started that.

EU: Where is Lambcote?

KN: Right on the river, by Skinner's Butte. We did that for three years there before we moved it all to Baker Park. That was Misa Jo's idea. She said, "Ken, 01:58:00do you think we could do an Obon here sometime?" I said, "Sure. If we can get Carrie involved, we'll have the Obon", and that's what happened.

EU: Getting back to the more formal organization, is, you had just begun to start talking about your ideas for a cultural center. I don't think we pursued that.

KN: Oh yeah. I've always wanted to do a cultural center, as you know, even from my selection from my university project, way back, in the 60s. That was before I went into the Air Force. And after I came back, I didn't get back into school until 1968 or '67 and went back and completely changed my project because I just 01:59:00wanted to graduate then. I didn't want to do any research. They'd change the format on how to do terminal projects. Then I was deeply involved with being a judge for skating at that time, so I said I want to do a regional skating center, where I wouldn't have to do any research at all, although I pretended to do tons of research because I was a competitive judge, I was a competitive skater, and all that stuff. Wrote a whole bunch about skating at that time just to make it seem like it was research.

So Irene typed up most of my written material, she could read my chicken scratch and she and I typed up my book. I was working for Western Engineering at that time, two story office building with these circular stairs, so you could see 02:00:00upstairs and downstairs, so I would type on the downstairs typewriter, she would type up there, we would communicate back and forth. So I think we got my terminal project done in two weeks. That was sort of a cultural center all ready. There's a different kind of culture that goes along with skating. But I really wanted to do an ethnic type cultural center, sometime in my life, and I was actually involved with the Hawaiian Cultural Center, to do a Hawaiian Paniolo Cultural Center, the period of Hawaiian cultural around the time the cowboys were introduced from Spain, Mexico, to help control the cattle in Hawaii and how that influenced Hawaiian culture. We're designing in [unintelligible] 02:01:00where's there's a riding academy over there, right in the midst of Hawaiian ethnic community there.

KN: We had actually designed a site for the cultural center. It was appropriated $500,000 from the legislature to start the design work, but then the governor vetoed it. It was an ethnic thing because the governor then funded his own Pilipino Cultural Center. So it's never come back to life again. They say it could. We're just waiting to see. But it would be really nice to do that. And I'd like to do a multicultural center here because we know that the Asians just can't support its own so if we, all the different cultural groups, and not just the ethnic cultural groups. Eugene has so many different kinds of cultural groups. Everyone should be proud of what they stand for and have a place that 02:02:00they could display something of their own cultural within the center and hosts all kinds of events. It doesn't have to be really large to get it to work nicely.

Right now, we have a very generous person who inherited a huge fortune from one of the networks, like ABC or NBC. They sold to ABC or NBC years ago and amassed this huge fortune and he's a sole heir, and he has this huge property up by Cheshire and he wants to develop it into a cultural center. We have lots of folks in our foundation who are resisting it, because it's so far out but Cheshire isn't that far away. And here we have a willing participant. There's a 02:03:00couple of nice creeks running through it, we already set the area for a big amphitheater, musical things, whatever, just as a start. The neighbor, you've met her, Lida, who is a hundred and two years old. She was at the Christmas party. She's the one who died recently. And she's willed her property to help fund this cultural center. Because she got to meet us and we talked about this cultural center. So some of the resources are all ready there, waiting for things to happen. The person who wants to donate this has had cancer this past year, so he couldn't do anything this whole year. He's finally recovered now. So he's already talking about rejuvenating this whole plan again. So we'll see. A little at a time, that's what it takes. It's takes lots of money one time to do 02:04:00these things, but I guess he's willing to do some of that. And with the other property and the earnings from that earmarked to support this thing in perpetuity. The other plan for that is to create housing to take care of elderly.

EU: Would that be at the same area in Cheshire?

KN: Two different things -- setting up two 501(c)(3) tax organizations, one for this cultural center, one for this Hanimalani (sp?).

EU: And who would that be for? Anyone?

KN: Anyone. It's earmarked for the Kanikapila (sp?) group, basically and another group that they befriended. They come to our Kanikapila's every month too. And 02:05:00then the Hanimalani is for the group after one of the guys who does the hula. You know who they are?

EU: Yeah. Are there other groups that you've been involved with that we should be talking about?

KN: Lots of groups [laughs]. Kiwanis is my charitable organization too. We do lots of kid friendly projects there. So we're involved with the [unintelligible] option. We donate every year, which is the gingerbread party. This year they raised three thousand dollars for our gingerbread party, so that was pretty nice. I've been involved with the Boy Scouts career education thing. Use to be a scout in Hawaii. I've never been officially a Scouter here, but whenever the Boy Scouts ask, I'll do stuff. So Rod Hansen, my other partner at the office and I 02:06:00help with career education, going to different high schools. We have high school students at different times doing internships and mentorships. We've had middle school students also doing whole terms of mentorships, it's surprising. We've actually done some great projects too, fun projects with them. Last year we had a high school student from South Eugene. The other year we had one from Junction City even. You know, we can't pay them. We just allow them to do some work and expose them to what we do in the office and meeting clients, getting involved with some gingerbread parties too. Our high school student this year helped design two of the big houses that we did at the gingerbread party. Our university intern did the others [laughs]. So every term, we have a university 02:07:00intern. And if the high school asks, we'll allow them to come in too. We had a Sheldon student here too, besides the South Eugene one. And tomorrow, I'll be doing lunch at Sheldon for the kids who are interested in architecture.

You know, being on the board, I'm kind of obligated. I'm not on the board anymore, but I'm still obligated to make sure that schools tell their students what they need to know about how to get prepared for a career in architecture or interior or landscape architecture, I do all those three. I even do engineering if they want to. Too many kids don't know what accredited schools are. They think that they can go to any school to become an architect. Portland State always advertises on TV that they have a great architecture program, but they're 02:08:00not even accredited. If students waste their money going up there, they will never get license in Oregon. You have to graduate through an accredited school and an accredited program, see? Oregon is the only one in Oregon. We have a list of about fifty odd schools across the country with degrees that are accredited too--one counselor at Willamette High School, a few years ago, when I did a career education there, told this really bright student to go to a drafting school in Arizona to become an architect; you cannot do that. It's unbelievable what the kids learn [laughs].

EU: Is there anything else I should be asking you or you'd like to add to the 02:09:00oral history?

KN: Well, I believe that I'd like to see students who have some music background too. Because that I think also helped lead me to architecture and makes you well rounded. I really like to see schools to require some music, some art to get people mellower [laughs]. Really! On my own, because we could never afford to take lessons by the way, I started with the harmonica in third grade and ukulele also then. My two older sisters' boyfriends started me on the harmonica and ukulele and my oldest sister's boyfriend left his ukulele with us so that I could play it. He taught me three chords. In the third grade, I knew three chords. And when my cousins moved from the big island over to Honolulu, we 02:10:00always go together, almost every weekend, to sing along. I played ukulele as we played "Old Black Joe" and "Swanee", you know. But never Hawaiian songs [laughs]. Then I took orchestra in the seventh grade. I was telling Irene just the other day, it's amazing what those teachers did for us kids because some of us probably listened, but I didn't. To be able to teach me how to play the violin. It's just one instrument, and in an orchestra situation, there are so many different instruments, you have to teach everybody how to play these things. I was really happy - there was a competition to determine who was the concert master, and I won that competition and I was the only one there who 02:11:00never took lessons.

EU: This was on the violin?

KN: The violin, yeah. I started with the viola and I didn't like it because they didn't play the melody. I play by ear, I pretended to read music really well. But if I knew what the piece sounded like, I could play it any time. I play the ukulele that way too [laughs].

EU: That's it?

KN: That's it.

EU: Good. Well Ken, thank you very much.

KN: Well, thanks for doing this.

EU: Ken, one thing we were just talking about during the break, this is part five of the Ken Nagao interview, talk a little about skating, your ice skating.

KN: It wasn't ice skating, it was roller skating. If we had had an ice rink in 02:12:00Eugene when I came to school, I would've taken ice skating, because I really wanted to be an ice skater. I never learned how to roller skate when I was a kid. I went to one skating party in the ninth grade or so and couldn't stand up. So when I came up here, when I first came up here, I wanted to stay away from the Hawaiian kids because I wanted to get into doing what other folks up here do. Then, the second term that I was here, someone twisted my arm to come and join the Hawaiian Club at the University. As soon as I joined, they made me the social chairman, and the vice president, and the kids wanted to go skating, and I didn't know how to skate. So before the skating party, I went over to the skating rink and took lessons, just to learn how to stand up. Of course, they don't want to just teach you how to stand up, they teach you dances to begin 02:13:00with, and spins, and jumps, and things like that. So I really got into skating. When I was in the fourth year of architecture, when everyone frowned on all my social activities, like skating at least once or twice a week, playing basketball once a week, going swimming another time, fishing another time, wondering what I was doing and being able to finish my projects, so I was actually secretly taking lessons and skating too. And I learned how to dance. After the first year, they said, "You know, you should enter a competition" [laughs]. Set me up with a partner, skated some dances. We failed miserably, we never placed or anything, finally, after I came back from the Air Force, the first year I was back, someone saw--I had taken lessons in Texas when I was in Air Force and really advanced quite a bit taking lessons there. And when I came 02:14:00back, somebody forty miles away, up at Oak Ridge, saw my skating and decided that I needed a partner from up there. And that was Kate Jaspers. You know Kate? She's a little taller than I am, so she always had to wear her hair short when I skated with her. So then that meant driving up to Oakridge at least once a week, for a dance skating lessons and practice. That eventually got to be five times a week, when we were skating really heavily and placing in competitions.

Finally, in '67, it's been a long time ago, you know, we actually won an Oregon State meet. We won the Northwest Regional Meet and Dance. And because we won 02:15:00that meet, we had to go back to nationals, in Lincoln, Nebraska, to skate. Of course, we didn't place in the top ten there, but we still thought we did really well by winning the state and regional meet and going there. Meantime, both of us were trained as judges and we were invited to almost every meet in Oregon to judge. Then it became every meet in Washington and every meet in California. It took tons of time, away from work and everything, to travel to these meets and judge. We had to be at the meet at about 5:30 in the morning because the even started about six or six thirty. Some of them went to almost midnight for three days or for a whole week; Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or sometimes just Saturday and Sunday. We even went to Reno to judge a Tri-State meet there with tons of skaters. I could even remember one event where we had to judge sixty dance teams in one event [laughs]. But judging was a lot of fun and I even went to the 02:16:00National Academy in Colorado Springs, the Olympic Training Center, paid our way there. Once there, they picked you up and trained you at the center. So I stayed there for several days, got more training, came back, and advanced even further in judging and stuff like that. That all ended when I got appointed to the State Board of Architectures because what was supposed to be eight meetings year, ended up being really time consuming, so I couldn't continue the skating judging. So that's when I quit judging, retired from judging [laughs].

EU: Do you still do skating?

KN: I haven't put on a pair of skates for many years. Actually it's probably been about--well Kate and I skated in about 1970, and then she moved away. 02:17:00Seventeen years later, she came back and we were entered in a meet, just for fun, and we won that meet. And she continued skating for another couple of years when she became pregnant with Elizabeth, her last daughter, who just got married this year. But she couldn't fit into her skating outfit; I didn't even know she was pregnant. I refused to skate anymore. But I continued to judge until I got onto the State Board, like I said. That was really enjoyable and I even helped train judges after going to the national training center. That still actually helps evaluating things today. You know, when you're a judge, you can evaluate something, and put a score down, evaluate building systems it's so simple to do 02:18:00because of that kind of training. So now, I'm evaluating scholarship applications, I'm the State Scholarship Chairman for the National Wild Turkey Federation also, that's another hat [laughs]. And then the Asian American Organization of Oregon, we do scholarships every year too. Luckily, I have a committee to evaluate both of those.

EU: What do you judge with the, Turkey, the Wild Turkey?

KN: These are academic scholarships for high school seniors. And the organization gives out about $350,000 worth of scholarships, every year, to high school seniors.

EU: This is a hunting group?

KN: This is a hunting and conservation group. We help develop habitat for wildlife. The habitat we develop for turkeys are also great for other animals, elk especially, and butterflies and things like that. Thousands, millions of 02:19:00dollars goes into habitat restoration from the funds we generate from our auctions. And if you read Mike Stalberg's article in the paper last week, he listed the top organizations for donations to be given to, for the least amount given to the administrators, most coming back to the states, from the National Federation of Turkey, the federation is the second highest ranked. We complain that not enough comes back to the state, but still we're amongst the top. But I was really surprised when I found out that they gave out $350,000 almost every year in scholarships. And this year, our scholarship winner for the state, had a 4.18 GPA; A pluses in all his advance placement courses, a kid from Bend. Last year, our student here from Churchill won it and he had a 4.0 plus average plus 02:20:00also. But they have to write essays about how hunting and being outdoors with family really affected their life, you know. That's really nice. They have to have a valid hunting license to make sure it doesn't go to the wrong people who can BS their way through. And so, it's nice to see that.

EU: Any other organizations? Any other activities we should cover?

KN: Oh, I've been supporting the State Youth Outdoor Day for the last three years. It's about four years old, we didn't know about it the first year. Then I met someone who was involved with that organization at an event for the Ducks and an event that I belong to. They said, "Why didn't the Turkey Federation show up?" I said, "We didn't know about it." So ever since then, we've been doing 02:21:00this event that attracts six hundred youngsters every year now. At first it was a hundred and fifty and when we got involved, we spread the world throughout the southern part of the state here, we got a lot more kids up there. You know, it's not about hunting or anything. They learn how to fish, they learn how to tie flies, they learn how to make bird houses, duck houses. We teach them safety aspects of turkey hunting. We teach them how to make turkey calls. We actually make them for them. And then there's a turkey pen down around the corner from where we have our booth and we test the turkey calls of those turkeys there. So the kids are able to use the calls and get turkeys to gobble. It's really fun. But you know, I think we're going to lose what we call hunting heritage here, if 02:22:00kids aren't taught to enjoy the outdoors. Because there are probably too many teachers that teach kids not to hunt. That's been a really big thing that I think is happening here. And those same teachers don't even teach the kids to fish, or teach them to use the outdoors in a good way. That's why I think society is going the wrong way. It's not the hunting, but I like kids to be able to go outdoors and learn how to enjoy the outdoors, you know? Besides the art and music, outdoors is really something else too.