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Contents
Tanbara
| tanbara-1 |
Joan Hua: This is Joan Hua with the UW Tacoma Oral History project. And today I'm interviewing Greg Tanbara. It's January 9, 2020, and we are in the Snoqualmie library building. So Greg, can you first introduce yourself and state your name?
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00:00:00 |
| tanbara-2 |
Greg Tanbara: Yes. I'm Greg or Gregory Tanbara. I currently work for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department here in Tacoma. I have lived in Tacoma most of my life. I was actually born in Seattle in 1953. And my parents moved here in about 1955. So, I've lived here a long time, worked most of my life in the Tacoma-Pierce County area, primarily in human services.
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00:00:21 |
| tanbara-3 |
Joan Hua: Okay. And do you have any relationship with UW Tacoma today?
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00:01:02 |
| tanbara-4 |
Greg Tanbara: Actually, I have been serving on Ali Modarres's Urban Studies advisory board. And I have had the opportunity to do some things with Joe Lawless when he was on faculty working on a leadership program. And I had a chance to work with your development department on a very interesting art installation called Maru on the north end of the campus that is a memorial for the Tacoma Japanese Language School. So those are the things that I've been involved in with regard to the University of Washington.
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00:01:08 |
| tanbara-5 |
Joan Hua: And then, can you talk a bit more about your family background and the community you lived in growing up?
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00:01:57 family |
| tanbara-6 |
Greg Tanbara: Okay. My mother grew up in Tacoma, lived at her family home at 1710 Fawcett Avenue. It's across the street from the Japanese Language School. Her father, Masataka Fujimoto, immigrated here, I am guessing, probably in the early 1900s, probably around 1916. My grandmother, Mitsu Fujimoto, came to join him and was married here, somewhere around probably 1920. Somewhere around there. Maybe ... no, it would've been sooner than that because her eldest daughter was born in 1919. So they had three daughters: Yoshiko, Tadaye, and Kimiko. And they lived at that house across the street from Tacoma Buddhist Temple, that happened to be half a block from the Japanese Language School. And both of those buildings are within the footprint of the University of Washington. So they lived there until they were interned during World War II at Heart Mountain. It was during that time that my mother met my father, George Tanbara. And my father was a California boy. And so they met there. I think they went on a date, is what she told me. And then he left to serve some time in the U.S. Army. He was in the Central Intelligence Agency and assigned to Nagasaki at the time. He returned and on the GI Bill, and--because he had had some training as a pharmacist--ended up going to medical school. And he finished medical school, and the agreement was that he could propose to my mother once he was done with medical school, and if he promised he was going to live in Tacoma. So through a series of circumstances, he was fortunate enough to be able to get here, worked as a physician for, I think, public health for just a short period of time, started his private practice up on the Hilltop of Tacoma. And during those early days, that after he got done with his residency in Seattle, they came to Tacoma, did not have a place to live. Didn't have any money. And as it turns out, they were able to stay at the Japanese Language School at about 17th and Tacoma Avenue, not too far from downtown. So they stayed there for two years. I was two years old when we moved there.
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00:02:05 family internment |
| tanbara-7 |
So I spent a couple years actually as a downtown urban dweller there. Things were very different in those days. But it was a half a block to the church. It was even a shorter distance, just across the alley, to where my grandmother was living with her daughter Tadaye, and Tadaye's husband, Leo Kawasaki. And so, growing up, we would see our cousins, at least twice a week. Go to church every Sunday. And I started school at Central School, what they called Central School, which is the Central Administration Building for Tacoma Public Schools now. So I was there during kindergarten.
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family buddhistTemple |
| tanbara-8 |
And I remember in that kindergarten class, I think there was one other Asian person, one other Japanese person in that class with me. And there were some African American kids. And it was the first time I really had interaction with Caucasians and African Americans. I knew the girl who was from the Japanese community, from church, of course. So that was kind of interesting to me. And the last couple weeks of my kindergarten career at Central School, my parents ended up moving to their home that they built on North Yakima Avenue. And, so then I ended up shifting to Lowell Elementary School. And I was the only minority person at that time at Lowell Elementary, that I remember. Everybody else was white. So that was a change for me also.
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family ethnicity |
| tanbara-9 |
So that was kind of the early days of growing up. My father had a medical practice. He was in pediatrics. Started as a, what they called a solo practitioner. He was on his own and had an office up in, on the Hilltop. In the early days, what I understand is, they would have the phone for the office ring down at the Japanese Language School, and my mother would answer that phone like she was working at an office. Then my dad would go, "Oh good, a patient is coming in." So he'd run up to the office and see the patient, and then he'd come back down and wait for the next one. So it's pretty low tech in those days. Eventually in, I think it was, 1956, after my second sister was born, my mother said, "I've had enough of this. You better go hire somebody." And so, my father ended up establishing that office up on the Hilltop and saw a lot of patients there. Practiced for about 53 years. My mother and father moved into the house in 1958. That's the only house that my father ever built. It's also the only house that he ever owned. And they stayed there for almost 60 years before they passed away.
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family |
| tanbara-10 |
Joan Hua: I want to hear more about the building of the Japanese Language School. And also, it was interesting to me that you said before kindergarten, you hadn't interacted with anybody who was white, which, to me, meant most of your community was Japanese American in addition to your own family. Is that true?
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00:09:11 family jls |
| tanbara-11 |
Greg Tanbara: Yeah, I would say that, I think about, as we're talking here, I think about Tacoma Avenue in those days. And the Japanese Language School was probably about three buildings down from the intersection of South 17th and Tacoma Avenue. Right next door, just to the north, was an apartment building. There was one fellow there, a gentleman named Lyman, that I would see as a result. And he was a Caucasian fellow. I don't know what Mr. Lyman did. You know, I was very young. This is pre-kindergarten years for me. But he used to come over every once in a while if there was something that needed to be fixed. And so my memory of Mr. Lyman was, he lived in this apartment. It was one of those buildings that I think was probably two stories from Tacoma Avenue going up, and then there was another story going down, because the geography there dips quite a bit. So there were actually three apartments I think, at least, there. It was a wooden building. And Mr. Lyman--my memories of him is, I was impressed by the fact that he wore overalls. And I thought that was pretty cool. And he also had a flashlight That probably had four batteries in it. So it was very long. So I had never seen the flashlight that long. But he used to come in and every so often, if there was something that needed to be fixed, he would do that, because my dad was always up at his office. That's the only Caucasian person I remember coming in contact with.
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family jls |
| tanbara-12 |
There was one other person that I remember. There was a woman named Sunya Pratt, who, through a series of circumstances, ended up being one of the, I guess quasi-ministers of the Tacoma Buddhist Temple. So Sunya, I think was, Ms. Pratt, Reverend Pratt was ... she spent some of her youth in India, and her father--I'm not sure what he did--but she had this deep interest in Buddhism. And it was fortunate for us, because Buddhism at the Tacoma Buddhist Temple, if you went there every Sunday, you would just expect to hear a sermon that was in Japanese that you would not understand. I was not bilingual at all. And so we would sit through sermons from, you know, great, great minister. He was really a good guy, but he didn't speak English. And then Reverend Pratt would--not doing a translation--but she would put together a little program for those of us who did not speak Japanese. And that's how I got a lot of my Buddhism, was through her. So it was very interesting. And probably a big challenge for her because we would be in the church. Everybody is of Japanese heritage except for her. And she's basically communicating with those of us who are sanseis, or third-generation Japanese, that don't speak Japanese in a very important way.
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family buddhistTemple |
| tanbara-13 |
Joan Hua: When you said going to church, you meant the Buddhist--
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00:13:19 |
| tanbara-14 |
Greg Tanbara: The Buddhist temple. Yes.
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00:13:22 |
| tanbara-15 |
Joan Hua: Not the Methodist congregation.
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00:13:25 |
| tanbara-16 |
Greg Tanbara: Yes. You know, the Methodist congregation was, my expectation, every time I went over there, was that they were going to be all Japanese, because it was the Japanese community's Methodist church. But we did a lot of things together with those folks. A lot of those folks from the Methodist group would come over and help at the annual Buddhist temple bazaars, and then we'd do the same thing and go over there and wait tables or do dishes during their bazaar also. Boy Scout, my experiences as a Boy Scout was through the Tacoma Buddhist Temple, but that was a troop that was sponsored by that temple, but there were lots of kids from the Methodist church there. But everybody in that troop was Japanese.
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00:13:28 family buddhistTemple |
| tanbara-17 |
Joan Hua: And in your generation?
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00:14:24 |
| tanbara-18 |
Greg Tanbara: In my generation, yes. So they were all sanseis. In my generation, all the parents were pretty much the same age, too. All the niseis were within a pretty tight straight of age groups. And pretty much, you know, many of them were in the same kind of economic situation too. They were second generation. Many of them were working for ... they were professional people at Boeing, or they were working for city government or local government or state government, or they had businesses, or, like in my father's case, they were professionals—attorneys or whatever. Their parents—of course, my grandparents' generation—they were all immigrants. So they were working in probably very low-level jobs. My grandparents on my mother's side owned a dry cleaning establishment that was downtown also. So my memories of growing up were very much this ... you had this Japanese time and this non-Japanese time as I was growing up.
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00:14:26 |
| tanbara-19 |
Joan Hua: It was interesting to me also how you said, about your parents' history, how the condition of their marriage was that they would come back to Tacoma. And why do you think that was, even though so many people didn't come back to Tacoma?
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00:15:52 family postwar |
| tanbara-20 |
Greg Tanbara: I think there were two things. One was my mother's family was fortunate in that my grandfather immigrated here under very much different conditions than many other people. He originally came here through Hawaii to get an education. So he was a young man in Japan, and his family decided that he should come to the United States and get an education. So he got an education here, and he was bilingual. So while his name was, was Masataka Fujimoto, the American society called him Frank. And so he was very much well skilled in working in both parts of society that way--the Japanese as well as the majority society. And then owning the business, they had something to come back to. Many people did not have anything to come back to. They had lost their property, or they had, you know, if they were farming, the property had been leased to them, and then those leases were yanked when they were interned during World War II. That's one reason that I think my mother was interested in being here--because she worked with her mother at the dry cleaners.
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family postwar |
| tanbara-21 |
I think the second was that, it was very important to my grandmother, Mitsu Fujimoto, that family stayed together. And that's something that translated over to my mother in many ways. As I think about it now, my mother ends up marrying my father. They end up ... yeah, they end up initially living across the alley from where my grandmother and my grandmother's second daughter, Tadaye, and her husband were living. That's, well, it's within four blocks of where the dry cleaners was on 13th and Court C. She ended up moving with my father--seems like a long ways away, but it's actually only about 15 minutes by car--across town.
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family postwar |
| tanbara-22 |
And as we .. as things turn out, both of her sisters end up living in Tacoma eventually. And, yeah, I think it's because she had just this strong tie to family that made that a condition of getting married. And my father, you know, my father had moved around more--originally born in Portland, spent, after his mother and father separated, spent a year in Japan, came back and lived in Los Angeles. And then he ended up going to USC. World War II starts, which interrupts his education at USC. He finishes his education at the University of Idaho, which met the criteria of, you know, being away from the coast and not having to be interned. If you were outside the, I think it was, 50 miles or something of the coast, or actually the three states along the coast. He finishes his degree in pharmacy there. Can't get a job because he graduates in 1943. Heads back to the internment camp where his family's at. That's where he meets my mother, and then ends up getting drafted. And so he ends up being in lots of different places. And by the time he's getting done with his medical school training, he finds out that, you know, he's not getting any offers for internships and figures he's going to focus on the Northwest here, because that's closer to where my mother has said that she'll think about marrying him after he gets back to Tacoma. So that's kind of how it worked, at least from what I understand. And my grandmother was a pretty strong-willed person too. So she probably made it real clear to my dad, "This is what the deal is."
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family postwar internment |
| tanbara-23 |
Joan Hua: And can you describe the Japanese Language School building when you were living there as a kid?
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00:21:43 |
| tanbara-24 |
Greg Tanbara: Okay. The entrance was on ... the main entrance was on Tacoma Avenue South. If you were facing the building there, on the left-hand side would be some large doors that took you into the assembly--what I called the assembly hall. We called that the Great Hall. If you went in that way, it was street level going in, I kind of recall two sets of double doors going in there. It's a wood structure, clapboard. Kind of a whitewashed building. You go in there, and it opens up into kind of like an auditorium. It's more of like an assembly hall. So you're headed in, into the building on the west side, west side of the building. You would see straight, looking straight down, two or three windows above a stage, and that stage, you know, of course, a wooden structure. But you could imagine people sitting, you know, entering the building, sitting in rows, and seeing some kind of performance up on the stage. Stage was interesting because underneath the stage ... I mean, there were a couple of doors, or a couple of hatches, that would open, and underneath the stage, I remember going under there once when I was a little kid. We weren't supposed to go in the Big Hall. But I remember we'd go in there a couple times. And there were all sorts of theatrical masks and costumes and props underneath there. I saw papier-mâché; masks that, you know, kind of like Noh theater masks; depictions of Samurai and women dressed, you know, kind of painted up. I also remember seeing lots of banners underneath there. There was also a box of ... they were silk flags mounted on little pieces of bamboo. And they were, I think, I think the Japanese flag used to be a round red circle with red rays radiating out, more like the Imperial flag. There was a whole box of those. And I think those are probably used when they would get the student body to welcome dignitaries from Japan early on. So I remember that. Also, just off from the hall was, I think, a couple of classrooms, a couple of classrooms. To the south, or the right side of the building as you're facing from Tacoma Avenue, was a little picket fence, and that enclosed a very small kind of front yard. And it was a, I think, two steps up to a little porch, kind of an open porch. And you had a door that would take you into the teachers quarters, and that's where we lived. You enter that side of the building, and it basically ran along the side of the, of this Great Hall. See, you enter that, and you're in a little living room. And as you're continuing to face east, there would be a doorway. And that doorway took you down a hall that basically all of the rooms in the teachers apartment were arranged on the right side of this little hall. Left side would have been the common hall with the Great Hall. So I think the first little opening there was a closet. And beyond that was a room that my folks used as their bedroom. And then I think there was ... I think the next thing was the kitchen. And in the kitchen, there was a little kitchen table. There were some cabinets, kind of on the right side, or on the east side, east wall of the kitchen. That was where there was a gas stove also. I always remember that was my first experience with the gas stove because that was another one of those "you don't touch this" type of things. And so it was fun because I would watch my mom light the stove with a match. There was a large cast iron porcelain sink on the left-hand side of the room. And yeah, so that's kind of what I remember of the kitchen area. And then the last little room that I recall was where my sister and I, Diane and I, slept. That was our bedroom. And so I recall that kind of configuration to the building. All of it's wood; all of it's lath and plaster, lath and plaster.
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00:21:50 family jls |
| tanbara-25 |
And it was just, it was just home for a couple years. There was a window--oddly enough, there was a window between the kitchen and our bedroom. So I could kind of hear what was going on in the kitchen. That was kind of fun. And then there was another window that looked out to the south. And I remember at night being able to look out there and, you know, at the lot just to the south of the Japanese Language School. In the old days, my mom said that they had little baseball diamond there. By the time we got there it was all overgrown with brambles and blackberry bushes. And so there was that that we used to look out over. And I always think that that was a pretty scary-looking, empty lot. There was, at the very east end of our bedroom, there was a door. I have no idea where that went because that was always locked and closed up. I don't know whether it went to some of those classrooms or what the deal was.
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family jls |
| tanbara-26 |
But there was one door that opened to the north. And so there was access to the Great Hall from the teachers' quarters also. So when we were there, much of the teachers' quarters was being used for storage. I remember vaguely office furniture, you know, steel case stuff, stashed there. So I think that it was being rented out for storage. We used to do a little roller skating in the Great Hall. That was a lot of fun. Because you could make a lot of noise, and there were a lot of echoes in that hall. So that's kind of what I remember. At the time that we were staying there, my grandmother owned the building. She had purchased the building before World War II, just after, I think, Pearl Harbor. She had the ability to do that, and she wanted to preserve it for folks after World War II if they needed to use it. And a lot of people were stashing their stuff there during internment. So I remember, in later years, I would go in there. Once in a while, my uncle Leo, because he really, you know, kind of looked after the building after they returned from, after he got married and they returned from internment camp. So, because people were breaking in every once in a while into the building because it wasn't being used that much. But we'd go in, and there were rooms, classrooms, on the alley level, that were just chock-full of things. Just people's stuff. Steamer trunks. I remember seeing kimonos down there. Lots of personal things.
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family jls internment |
| tanbara-27 |
Joan Hua: Was the assembly hall still being used? Or were there still language classes?
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00:31:14 family jls |
| tanbara-28 |
Greg Tanbara: When I was growing up, probably about the time I got into first or second grade, they re-started the Japanese Language School. There were just a very few of us. And in the early days of that, they were holding some classes at the school. They were just, I mean, there were just a handful of us there. And so a fella named Yamasaki was teaching there. And so I remember the classrooms very much like, they looked like old classrooms that you'd see from the 50s. So we'd go in there. It would, you know, the ... I would go in there, at the time, when I was going to grade school at Lowell Elementary School. And Lowell seemed like such a new and modern place compared to this place that we were going to on Saturdays for Japanese Language School. Big blackboards, really heavy blackboards. You had oak desks that were mounted on runners with the inkwells in them, and everybody had their name carved in these things. So that's kind of what I remember there.
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00:31:19 family jls |
| tanbara-29 |
And there were some books still there also, at the time. Yeah. So it was an interesting place to live because it was, I didn't appreciate it at the time. I mean, it was just a place as a little kid to go and try and play in that, play in the front yard. There was, my dad mounted a little swing from the cherry tree. I think the cherry tree is still there. So my sister and I would goof around there. That's the place where I first watched television. So I remember it was black-and-white television. And one story that my sister and I end up enjoying--get a big laugh out of all the time--is, you know, I was telling you how that hall is all set up and in kind of a there. So in order for us to get to the television, we had to get past my parents' room. We had to basically sneak through our parents' room. So Saturdays, they used to have cartoons on television. These were black-and-white cartoons. And so we would get on our stomachs, and we would scoot ourselves along on the wooden fir floors to get past my mom and dad, who were still asleep, and then we'd go in and turn the television on really low and and watch cartoons.
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family jls |
| tanbara-30 |
Joan Hua: Now, the TV was in the assembly hall?
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00:34:19 family jls |
| tanbara-31 |
Greg Tanbara: Well, no, the TV was in the living room. Yeah. So, we had to get past the kitchen and all the squeaking boards--we knew where all the squeaking boards were in the floor--get past the kitchen, and then we'd lay down, and we'd scoot ourselves along, past our folks, who were sleeping in the main room, and then we'd get out to the living room and watch the television there.
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00:34:22 family jls |
| tanbara-32 |
So anyway, that's some of the things that I remember from that building. We also took, there were some judo lessons that I took them the In the building also. So that was in one of the larger classrooms, and a fellow named Iwakiri, who was a very accomplished judo master would throw us around, Wednesday nights, up at the Japanese Language School also.
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family jls |
| tanbara-33 |
Joan Hua: And you mentioned your grandparents' dry cleaner, and I heard from Tamiko that there's a story about you and maybe your siblings going around looking for some chemicals? Or do you know what she's talking about? She said to ask.
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00:35:24 family postwar |
| tanbara-34 |
Greg Tanbara: Oh, let's see. I don't know if it was chemicals. The thing that I remember about the ... You know, the dry cleaners really is an awful lot about what my memories of the downtown area were like. We would walk down to the dry cleaners, we'd head off to the local YMCA as kids, which was located on 7th and St. Helens. We'd wander the downtown in a way that I would never let my daughters wander around downtown. And we were, I don't know, six, seven, eight years of age. Go to the movies in the afternoon by ourselves on Saturdays; run around the alleys. And one of those alleys, of course, was Court C, where the dry cleaner was. And, you know, I could kind of tell from that building that it used to be a much larger operation than what it was. I mean, before World War II, they were primarily doing wholesale dry cleaning. So dry clean would come in from lots of different places, and they employed quite a few people. They had drivers and vehicles that they would deliver dry cleaning to these different places, and it was much smaller after World War II. It was primarily a retail outlet. But you could smell the perc. That's one of the things that I remember--that's that, I can't remember exactly what the full name is, but the acronym is perc, and that's a cleaning solvent that was used--some sort of derivative of a de-icing and cleaning chemical that was developed by the Air Force, I think.
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00:35:41 family postwar |
| tanbara-35 |
So you had that sweet smell of the perc down at the dry cleaners. And yeah, you know, we really weren't looking for chemicals. I think what we were looking for was, there were funny things that over the years had accumulated at that cleaners--things like old costume jewelry that would fall off of people's clothing or out of pockets, and there's no way of figuring out who it belonged to. So there were shoe boxes full of costume jewelry, shoe boxes full of pocket knives, shoe boxes full of cigarette lighters, you know, fraternal pins. So there was lots of stuff to goof around with down there. People would bring in, in later years, bring in their army uniforms or or their service uniforms, and they'd have emblems or patches changed out, and so suddenly there were those laying around also. And so that's ... and then there was a lot of clothing that was just left. People didn't didn't claim them. So it's probably a great collection of vintage clothes down there too. So we used to goof around with that stuff. But chemicals, I don't remember looking for them.
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family postwar |
| tanbara-36 |
Joan Hua: She wasn't sure what, she couldn't really describe the story. But I knew I wanted to ask you about the dry cleaner.
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00:39:19 family postwar |
| tanbara-37 |
Greg Tanbara: The story that my mother used to tell about the dry cleaners. She said it was very difficult. It was a lot of work. There were a lot of people working there before World War II. And during the internment, they had made an agreement with someone to continue the business on while they were gone, and they came back, and I don't think things were as they had hoped they would be. There was equipment that was gone, and that sort of thing. So they started up again. And it was tough because there were pickets outside of the dry cleaners. Really, telling people they shouldn't go to the dry cleaners. But one story my mother shares is, she says that one day she looked out onto Court C, and there was a fellow in a dress--Navy uniform. And he was just standing out there. And his presence seemed to calm down the people that were protesting the Japanese business. And she said he never came in. But she said that she really appreciated what he did--just stood there in uniform. So that's what, those are some of the memories I remember from the dry cleaners.
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00:39:29 family postwar internment |
| tanbara-38 |
Joan Hua: And then, later, you said you would never let your daughters wander around downtown Tacoma. Was that because Tacoma was different?
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00:41:03 |
| tanbara-39 |
Greg Tanbara: Yeah, during the '80s and '90s, especially the '90s, it was pretty rough downtown.
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00:41:13 |
| tanbara-40 |
Joan Hua: It wasn't like that before.
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00:41:20 |
| tanbara-41 |
Greg Tanbara: No, before, that was the main retail center for the area. I mean, you had department stores like Peoples and Rhodes Brothers department stores. You had the Beaumarchais, was downtown. You had Kress drugstore downtown. You had Market Street, which was not too far from ... my mother's home, was lined with Japanese businesses that were selling produce and meat and that sort of thing. The Italians were selling meat.
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downtownTacoma |
| tanbara-42 |
Joan Hua: In the '50s and the '60s?
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downtownTacoma |
| tanbara-43 |
Greg Tanbara: Yeah, yeah. In, well, primarily in the '50s. Started waning in the '60s, and then come 1971, the Tacoma Mall opened. And things really start shifting down there. You also had in the late '60s urban renewal, which took down some of the buildings that were the, you know, the grocery stores ... or the, not grocery stores, but more meat markets, vegetable markets, barber shops--those types of things were along Market Street. The Market Street was named Market Street because there were lots of markets down that way at one time.
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00:42:09 downtownTacoma |
| tanbara-44 |
So, there were a lot of people down there, and I don't know, maybe, I don't know. I think maybe, you know, with the way things change, it may or may not have been more or less safe down there for kids to be running around. But I just can't imagine my daughters at six, seven, eight years of age running around downtown, you know, heading into alleys and looking at what people have dumped and just goofing around down there.
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downtownTacoma |
| tanbara-45 |
Joan Hua: So, but in the '80s, that was kind of--what I'm hearing--when the conversation about having a university campus, a public university there [started]. Do you remember first hearing about that, and what was your reaction?
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00:43:40 uwtCampus |
| tanbara-46 |
Greg Tanbara: I remember a conversation about two universities looking at downtown Tacoma: University of Washington and WSU. And WSU was pretty aggressive because I think that they had an extension out in Puyallup already. And we're kind of trying to build off of that.
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00:43:58 uwtCampus helicopter |
| tanbara-47 |
And then something happened. It was a plane, or something about a plane ride. Yeah, that's how the lore goes. And then the University of Washington said, "Yep, we need to do this." But, you know, I think the other thing that was happening at that time--that was an important thing, although it wasn't directly related--was, in 1985, I think it was. They were going to take the Union Station down. They were going to take that down. There were going to demolish it, because it, just, something about it being built on, you know, pretty sandy soil or something like that. And that wasn't a big deal, because trains are not that big a deal anymore. And there was a bunch of people that got together and said, "No, you shouldn't do that. Let's do something different." And of course, representative Norm Dicks got involved also and had this idea that, you know, maybe, you know, even though it's not a train station, it could be a federal courthouse.
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downtownTacoma uwtCampus helicopter |
| tanbara-48 |
That was a big deal, not just because the project was getting done, but I think this whole thinking about downtown started shifting, because when I was a kid, kind of going back to my memories of downtown, one of the things I used to love doing was coming in, and we used to come in from Seattle or wherever if we're visiting the Seattle Buddhist Temple. Coming in on old 99. And the first thing that you'd see as you're getting ready to go over the Puyallup River is a big neon sign that said, "Welcome to Tacoma." And it had, I think, a neon depiction of the mountain or something. So that was like, "Oh, we're getting near home." You go across there, you take a right on Pacific Avenue, about 26th or 27th, or whatever it was. And I always thought this is really cool: you go down Pacific Avenue, and there are all these neon lights. And of course, they were all of the adult entertainment facilities. So it was like, I remember, Elmo's Bookstore and, you know, the Fun Circus. And then there was another sign that was so funny. It was--I can't remember which bar it was--but there was a bar that had a big neon sign, and above the neon sign they had this animated neon sign that said, "With Karen enter a harem." And they had this depiction of a lady rocking back and forth. And I thought that that, you know, that was very interesting. And, but that was what was there. I mean, it was kind of a seedy part of town. You had the Greyhound bus station that unloaded people. You had the port not too far away. Bremerton's not too far away. And we used to see a lot of probably single guys walking around the street, and that sort of thing. So that's kind of how it was. And then urban renewal knocked down a bunch of a bunch of buildings. And I think people were kind of wondering, you know, "Is it going to always be that way?" And it was about '85. Also that the EPA declared Commencement Bay a Superfund site. So it's like, uh-oh, got to figure out something. So there were a bunch of things that came together at that time.
|
downtownTacoma |
| tanbara-49 |
And I think the decision by the university to come here was ... initially people were going, "Oh, what's that mean?" I mean, is it going to be like a UW campus, you know, brick and Ivy, down here? Or maybe they should move into some vacant land up by Tacoma Community College or, you know, maybe it's over ... it ought to be someplace else. And I think about that time--also the Tacoma Dome comes up and is built.
|
downtownTacoma uwtCampus |
| tanbara-50 |
So I think, you know, a lot of people--and I agree with them--the university deciding to come here was a very pivotal point in the city's downtown development. I mean, it is like, I don't know if the direction was headed in that way, but it gave it the kind of nudge that got people thinking about things like, "Oh, well, what about museums? Or what about, maybe, you know, we figure out how to purchase all that property around a Foss waterway and turn it into something else. And I think to a certain extent, places like Point Ruston, and all those other things leverage off of some of that change in perception in the downtown area. And, you know, we had other things that were real assets that maybe were underutilized, like Point Defiance and that sort of thing, too.
|
downtownTacoma uwtCampus |
| tanbara-51 |
Joan Hua: You knew more about the decision like UW vs. WSU than I would have guessed. So did you know about that through like news articles or from your work or something else?
|
00:49:52 |
| tanbara-52 |
Greg Tanbara: Just people I ran into. They say, "Oh, you know what? This is what Ryan Petty did. Isn't that pretty cool?" It's like, "Oh, yeah. Okay." So, you know, that's probably where I heard about it first, and then there probably were other articles that kind of filled in the blanks a little bit. But there are other folks like the Executive Council is getting up to speed. And so people like Ray Corpuz and Bill Philip and those folks were thinking about, How do we move things? You know. How can we push some things forward here? And so that's happening about the same time also.
|
00:50:10 uwtCampus |
| tanbara-53 |
Joan Hua: Was that that Puget Sound, South Puget Sound Executive [Higher Education] Council?
|
00:50:55 |
| tanbara-54 |
Greg Tanbara: No, it's the Executive Council [for A Greater Tacoma]. Early days, not very many people knew about it, but they would get together every once in a while, and they'd say ... It was business and power brokers in the community.
|
00:51:00 communityAdvocates |
| tanbara-55 |
Joan Hua: And they were just called the Executive Council?
|
00:51:18 |
| tanbara-56 |
Greg Tanbara: Executive Council. Yeah. So they're kind of, you know, not that many people--I think it was when the museums came up. And Bill Philip says, "We're we've got to do this. Let's just do it." And they did it.
|
00:51:20 communityAdvocates |
| tanbara-57 |
So I don't know whether they get a lot of public input. I don't think there was a lot of public input. It was just, "We're gonna do this." And so they coordinated some--I think that the museums, especially the ... well, art museum was already pretty much established, but like the glass museum. There was no glass museum. Yeah, there was no Chihuly Bridge. There was none of that stuff. And I think it was foresight and tenaciousness of some of those people to get something going. They were also very much involved in the Theater District. I mean, the Theater District was there; the bones were there. But it's like, you know, when I was growing up, I had no idea that the Pantages was a vaudeville. I just figured that it was someplace you went to go see movies on Saturday--cartoons and a double feature, and eat as much popcorn as you could. I mean, you know. I had no idea. I had no idea.
|
downtownTacoma historicPreservation communityAdvocates |
| tanbara-58 |
Were you involved in any of that? I know there was, like, Union Station, there was the Save Our Station group. Were you involved in that?
|
|
| tanbara-59 |
Greg Tanbara: I knew the people. I just was not ... I, you know, at that time I was working for the state and just real busy, just doing stuff, but I was working downtown. And through a series of circumstances, I ended up being part of the Rotary Club and some other place. So I ended up coming in touch with people that were working on these sorts of things. And so I feel really fortunate that way. And it was like an accident that I ended up in that Rotary Club through a series of circumstances.
|
00:52:58 communityAdvocates |
| tanbara-60 |
Joan Hua: What were you doing for the state?
|
00:53:02 |
| tanbara-61 |
Greg Tanbara: I was working for the Employment Security Department when so much of this was going on. Let's see ... between 1978 and about 1985 I worked on a youth employment program. And it was a program that was being funded with federal funds, Department of Labor Funds, but they decided that they wanted to bring the employment service in. And they wanted to find a really cheap place to put us to help kids find jobs. And so they stuck us in the, at that time it was called the Medical Arts Building; it became the municipal building. So we were in kind of a bombed-out section that they hadn't rehabilitated yet. And so I was downtown.
|
00:53:42 workforce |
| tanbara-62 |
Joan Hua: So does that crossover with any conversations about ... because the idea of having a public higher education institutions in Tacoma had something to do with building a workforce and--
|
00:54:49 workforce |
| tanbara-63 |
Greg Tanbara: That's right. So the employment service was very interested in this also. I mean, you know, Booth Gardner, was he governor at that time? Yeah, about that time. He was coming up. He was county, I think, at least county exec at that time. You know, he's a Tacoma person and is connected I think through his family to Weyerhaeuser family and that sort of thing. And so those things are ... so, people say this is a small town. This is a teeny town in some ways. And so, you know, I'm working downtown, and one of the parts of that youth employment program had to do with the Rotary Club. Rotary Club was looking for a big project and we pitched them on, "Why don't you invest in this combined effort of helping young people find work?" And they said okay. And that's how I ended up joining the Rotary Club. And so it was just, it was, I mean, I was not my idea. The president of the Rotary ended up talking to somebody in the governor's office, and they connected them to the employment service. At that time, Dr. Eugene Wiegman, who was the past president at PLU, at the time was Commissioner of Employment Security Department. He's a Tacoma person also. And he said, "Yeah, that's a great idea." So they pitch their membership to contribute a certain amount of money and hire a staff person that would link young people looking for work with Rotarians. And Dr. Wiegman said, "Maybe we ought to put Greg in that Rotary Club." So they paid my dues for a little while. And yeah, so I was the first person from the employment service to be in that Rotary Club. And so they made up a designation for me and stuck me in there.
|
00:55:04 workforce |
| tanbara-64 |
Joan Hua: I've also heard that maybe the Executive Council or some of those people, they were trying to bring businesses to Tacoma, and when they decided to go elsewhere to a similar sized city, they kind of would ask them, "How come?" And one answer they got was that they chose cities that had a university so that they could hire locally.
|
00:57:16 workforce |
| tanbara-65 |
Greg Tanbara: Yeah. So you know, you have people sitting on the Executive Council. Ryan Petty, who is director of Economic Development [Board] for City of Tacoma, later on for for Pierce County. You have Ray Corpuz, who was the city manager. You have people like George Russell, who evaluates, you know, investment programs worldwide. You have Weyerhaeuser, who was involved in many, many things on an international basis. So you had people with very wide perspectives on community economics. And then they're all Tacoma people. So they are, have a good sense of what they hope would happen and at a community level also.
|
00:57:42 workforce communityAdvocates |
| tanbara-66 |
Joan Hua: You've mentioned some of them already. But what are some other key events in the Tacoma community that you think influenced that founding and development of the UW campus in downtown Tacoma?
|
00:58:38 |
| tanbara-67 |
Greg Tanbara: I think getting started in the Perkins Building was interesting. That's right downtown, not too far from from where we're at right now. I think those first ... what was it? Either eight or 15 people that graduated? I mean, that was a big deal.
|
00:58:52 |
| tanbara-68 |
Joan Hua: The first graduation had five people, but they attended for a year. And then--
|
00:59:12 |
| tanbara-69 |
Greg Tanbara: But that was a big deal. That was a really big deal.
|
00:59:18 |
| tanbara-70 |
Joan Hua: Were you there?
|
00:59:24 |
| tanbara-71 |
Greg Tanbara: No, I didn't make it there, but I read about that. And I was, you know, I did ... I went to the Perkins Building. What did I do at the Perkins Building? I was there a couple times to do something with the university. I can't remember what it was. It might have been just trying to figure out how I could get some of the young people I was working with into the university. That sort of thing.
|
00:59:25 |
| tanbara-72 |
But I do remember that first graduating group, and that was a big deal. That was a big deal downtown. I think that the interest from the university to reuse some of those buildings on Pacific Avenue was a big deal. I think some people were going, "What's the big deal about that?" But I think that's become a big deal because it, at least for me, from a personal standpoint, it helps me connect, like the before and after, and what's coming next. That was a big deal.
|
uwtCampus |
| tanbara-73 |
Another big deal for me personally was the university's interest and commitment to getting Maru installed. And that's another one of those--we lucked out. You know, there was a initial gift that got the thing rolling after kind of sitting there for 10 years. And that was through the creativity of, or receptiveness, on the part of the university and their patience, as well as their relationship with the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation. So those are big deals.
|
uwtCampus memorial |
| tanbara-74 |
Joan Hua: How do you think--you said, it redeveloping, like the warehouses, helped you connect the location with the past. How do you think it does that?
|
01:01:22 |
| tanbara-75 |
Greg Tanbara: It reminds me that things change and that there is this creative tension between preserving the past and looking to the future. It's not a thin line. It's a very gray area that I think gives people an appreciation for what's going to come by knowing something about what has happened in the past. So, example is, in fact, I was just describing this to somebody the other day: If you take a look at Maru, you get this big, round void in the middle. And the way I think about that is, I look through one way, and I see the Prairie Line Trail going up and kind of off into the distance, and I'm reminded that the Northern Pacific Railroad--that was one of the first lines into the city here. And one of the significant things is, it has, what is that, two-percent grade someplace, which was the steepest grade I guess as they came across the continent. So it's big deal there, and it's the terminus.
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01:01:36 uwtCampus memorial |
| tanbara-76 |
And you look through the other way, and you see the art museum and the Foss Waterway. So there's this thing about looking one way and then looking the other, maybe looking at the past and getting a glimpse of the future, that the university really represents to me. I mean it, you know, you get the old buildings, but they're repurposed, but they're not going to be the same thing that they are today forever, just like they aren't the same thing that they were yesterday today. That's I think an interesting thing. And an important thing for people here in Tacoma because ... I thought, you know, the other--you were asking about significant things--when the university came, it was about, you know, that the SOTA school opened about, you know, in that same kind of rough timeframe. And I think the combination of UW students and the SOTA students downtown, it made all the rest of us look forward and behave a little bit better than we were in the past. You know, we kind of say, "Oh, you know, Pacific Avenue is a bunch of strip clubs. It's always going to be a bunch of strip clubs." It didn't have to be that way. I think things evolve and change out of what was before. And then we also need to know that maybe what we think is good today is not going to be so good tomorrow. And that's what the university reminds me of.
|
uwtCampus memorial |
| tanbara-77 |
Joan Hua: So you mentioned how the university's preserving the warehouses. And some would point out the contradiction when you have a few buildings remaining from the old Japantown--including the Japanese Language School building that you were describing. And after the university purchased it, eventually it was demolished, and some would point out the contradiction. Can you describe some of those events and what your attitude towards that was?
|
01:05:02 uwtCampus jls |
| tanbara-78 |
Greg Tanbara: You know, the Japanese Language School--I know it was on the Historic Register, and I have many fond memories of growing up, you know, in that building, you know, horsing around with my sisters and my cousins and in that place, but also know things change. Nothing's permanent. I think that the, I would hope, that the lessons learned and some of the perspective drawn from, you know, the comings and goings of Japanese Language Schools could be preserved somehow. But I know that, you know, as I'm talking to you today, I have an interpretation of what the meaning was of that Japanese Language School. But it'll change over time. It'll change over time. I think the main thing is, for us, is to not maybe remember exactly how it was, but how things have changed. And looking forward that way. And maybe remembering that there are some things that ended up being more significant in different ways than what we realized at the time. If you take a look at that school song that they had in the Japanese language, you know, it's pretty amazing. That's a very forward thinking, you know, "I'm in this new land. I, you know, I need to make sure that I'm honoring my community and my family by being the best I can, but this is a new adventure." I mean, that's ... I was blown away after I saw the translation of that. So there's stuff like that that is there. You know, there might have been some neat things that would have happened if that building was still around. I don't know. I mean, that, you know, who knows what's gonna happen there. I think that the next opportunity will be the Tacoma Buddhist temple that's been there. And unlike the Japanese Language School, that's still alive. It's still being used. So I think that that provides another opportunity for all of the stakeholders, including the university and maybe the congregation there. What are we going to do with that? You know. How does--you have the building, you know--how does building, you know, provide us some way of thinking about the past and looking at the future? What about our relationships? I remember speaking to somebody at one point, and they said, "Well, you know, universities are prohibited from non-secular, supporting non-secular thing." What is that? I don't know. I don't know what that means. Maybe that's a question. What can be the role? And do things always have to be the same? Or do they change?
|
01:05:40 uwtCampus jls historicPreservation |
| tanbara-79 |
Joan Hua: The song you mentioned is--
|
01:09:15 |
| tanbara-80 |
Greg Tanbara: I don't remember the name of the song, but it is on a website that, it was a school song that was adapted. It's a song that is sung, I think in Japan also, but it was adapted for the Japanese Language School by Yamasaki Sensei. I look at the lyrics as they're translated, and it just blows me away that that was done in the 1920s, and It's like, oh, that's--
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01:09:18 jls memorial |
| tanbara-81 |
Joan Hua: But you weren't taught the song?
|
01:10:02 |
| tanbara-82 |
Greg Tanbara: No, because I, you know, I went to Japanese Language School for many years on Saturday. I was the worst student. I think you gotta be smarter than I am to understand and be able to speak Japanese. I think, you know, that's kind of how I see it. My sisters and my cousins were much better at it.
|
family jls |
| tanbara-83 |
Joan Hua: And I did want to ask you about your aunt and uncle. They own, they were taking care of the building after your grandmother. And can you talk a bit about what they were like?
|
family jls |
| tanbara-84 |
Greg Tanbara: My uncle Leo Kawasaki. He's from Fife, grew up there. Kawasaki family had a farm there. They knew my my grandmother, Mitsu Fujimoto, many years. And my uncle Leo and my aunt Tadaye were married shortly before my parents were married. And my uncle Leo is--there were eight in his family. His eldest brother ended up taking him with a farm in Fife. And so my uncle Leo ended up coming in and operating the dry cleaners here in Tacoma.
|
family jls |
| tanbara-85 |
I give those two folks a lot of credit. They had four children--Gary, Mark, Ann, and Joy. And as it turns out, their ages just dovetail pretty much with myself and my siblings. Gary is a year older than I am. Mark is a year younger. Mark is a year older than Diane, my sister. Diane is a year older than my cousin Ann, and then Joy is a little bit younger, and then my youngest sister, Merilee, is a year, though you haven't met. So our families were, I mean, age span. There were people right with us all along the way. But I give them a lot of credit because my grandmother stayed with them throughout the time that I knew her from 1953. When I was born, she was there in the house with my aunt and uncle, and throughout the time that they were raising their kids. So my cousins had their grandmother living in the same home with them. And we would see them every Friday also. My aunt and uncle were both very active in the Tacoma Buddhist Temple. And taking care of the Japanese Language School was a tough thing for them because it's a big building. They didn't have a lot of people using it hardly at all. So you have to, you know, take care of a building when people are trying to break in and take stuff out of it. That was tough. And then at the same time, you know, there were people across the country who had gone to the Japanese Language School. So there was that kind of pressure of obligation. If people came back to town, boy, they always wanted to go to Nihon Gakko and take a look at it. They would hope that it would be a look as they remembered it, but the building's getting older, and tons of deferred maintenance on it, and people trying to bust into it. It's ... that's a hard thing to do. So I think that ... and they're business owners, so they're busy doing that. And that building, you could see that building all the time, from my grandmother's house. I mean, it was just up the hill across the alley. So there were, I mean, the presence was always there, always there. When we were going over to my grandmother's place on Sundays or Saturdays, you just always knew that building was there. So that was ... I think that weighed pretty heavy on them in terms of an obligation.
|
family jls |
| tanbara-86 |
So I think they were very, very glad that the university eventually purchased that property. Because it just seemed like the right thing. You know, the educational institution. I don't know how they felt about the building coming down. You know, I think my my uncle probably had had enough of the building by the time the university had made this decision. I know that there were some people that were saying, "Oh, but it's on the Historic Register." But I think about a comment I remember Mike, and you know Mike Wark? You remember Mike?
|
family jls |
| tanbara-87 |
Joan Hua: I didn't meet him, but I know who you're talking about.
|
01:15:56 |
| tanbara-88 |
Greg Tanbara: One of the first times I met Mike was ... when was this? I bet it was early 2000s. So, I'm working for the City of Tacoma, and they said, "You know, Greg, they're a bunch of, there's contingency from Korea coming to visit the City of Tacoma. They want to take a look at this notion of restoration here. So why don't you show them around? Figure this out. Figure out what people ought to see." So I thought, "Okay, well, I better get a hold of the universities because they've been doing all this work downtown." So that's how I meet Mike Wark. And so he takes us on a wonderful tour through the building, the warehouse buildings, and talks about the reuse of lumber and how, you know, we've done this and that and so on and so forth. And we're working through a translator, and the folks from Korea, there's some developers, some construction people, and I think some real estate people. And we get down to the end of the tour. We're standing not too far from where Maru is now, getting ready to cross Pacific Avenue to get over to the Art Museum. And Mike stops, and he says, "Oh, thank you very much for coming. And does anybody have any questions?" And a hand goes up in the back. The first question were asked on the whole tour, because nobody has any questions until then. And I'm a little bit surprised because the person in the back speaks English very well. I just figured that everything was going through this interpreter, translator. And he says, "Why are you saving all of these old buildings? They're from the early 1900s. Why don't you just knock them all down? It'd be a lot more efficient to replace them with modern buildings." And Mike says, "Well, you know, because they're historic." They said, "Well, when were they built?" "Oh, 1900." "That's not that old." So, I said, "Thanks a lot, Mike. We'll see you later." So my point is this. Old's relative, okay. And 1929, or 1922, when that building was originally built, and then I think there was an addition a couple years later--that seems pretty old. I mean, it's older than I am. So it's old. But things change, you know, and that's kind of how I see it. I have fond memories of that building. But even if the building was restored, and I'd go in there, it'd be different. Because it's a different time. You know what I mean? So that's kind of how I see it. Buddhist Temple's different because I still go in there. And so I have this continuum thing. And I can imagine that being something else and, you know, maybe the university and the temple get together on something.
|
01:15:58 uwtCampus buddhistTemple historicPreservation |
| tanbara-89 |
Joan Hua: And so you said you still go to the Buddhist Temple. And you helped to organize the Bon Odori, too, or were you involved in other projects?
|
01:18:20 uwtCampus buddhistTemple |
| tanbara-90 |
Greg Tanbara: They oftentimes have a job for me. And it has something to do with serving food or something. So I have almost 50 years of food service experience I can put on my resume. One or two times a year I'm working at the bazaar at the sukiyaki there. So, no, I'm not--I was on the board at one time. I remember at that time, that was early on when I think the footprint had been just established. And so there were conversations about what's going to happen to the church. When eminent domain occurs and the university takes property.
|
uwtCampus buddhistTemple |
| tanbara-91 |
Joan Hua: And are you involved in any like Asian Pacific Islander communities or Japanese American communities in the Tacoma area?
|
|
| tanbara-92 |
Greg Tanbara: Not so much right now. I served on the board of the Tacoma Community House, couple terms ... can't even remember when that was. I think it was a long time ago. I have been a couple terms on the board of directors for a groups--they're gone now--a long time ago. Right now. There's kind of an informal network of Asia-Pacific Island folks--we will get together for lunch after this. Yeah, so, not so much. Not so much right now. But like I said, I've got 50 plus years of food service experience through my affiliation with the Buddhist Temple.
|
01:20:48 |
| tanbara-93 |
Joan Hua: Should come in handy someday.
|
01:21:43 |
| tanbara-94 |
Greg Tanbara: Yes, someday it'll come in handy, right?
|
|
| tanbara-95 |
Joan Hua: From your point of view, what role does the institution of UW Tacoma have to play--in terms of maybe preservation, education, or social responsibility--in its relationship with the neighborhood?
|
|
| tanbara-96 |
Greg Tanbara: I think the university can play a very important role, because you have business perspectives, you've got community perspectives, you've got special interest group perspectives that always come together on whether it's liquefied natural gas plants, whether it's Tacoma Creates, you know, sales tax increase, transportation, you know, public transportation issues like Link connections. All of those perspectives are, you know, some of them are more established than others, but I think the university brings a little bit of a different perspective. Of course, you know, there are always going to be folks who say, "Well, the university's interested in that because the live Link runs through the university. They've got a stake in this thing." But I think that the university has a role to ask sometimes those questions that nobody wants to ask because you're a different, different outfit that way.
|
01:22:20 uwtCampus |
| tanbara-97 |
Joan Hua: What are those questions?
|
01:23:45 |
| tanbara-98 |
Greg Tanbara: Will those questions might be, I mean, like one is, "Well, why the heck did you work on this Maru thing? Why is that? The building's gone; the Japanese community, they've dispersed all over the United States." A lot of the kids that grew up, you know, sanseis, we came up during the '70s. And unemployment was really high in Tacoma, and there were no jobs here. So that's when we made a home someplace else. And why don't they come back? Because, you know, you got to come all the way from Seattle or wherever to come to church every week. That doesn't make any sense. We've got other institutions we can get together with up there. So what's the deal? And nobody took, you know, the number of people ... Greg's like one of the last ones that sat in that Japanese Language School, so what's the big deal? I think the university did a great job. And to turn into, "Why is it a big deal?" You know, this is, this is, I mean--the big deal is not Greg or not the Japanese Language School, but it's this idea that things change and that we can learn from the past and looking toward the future. The future is not going to be the same as the past. I mean, that's really good stuff.
|
01:23:46 uwtCampus memorial |
| tanbara-99 |
Joan Hua: And you said you worked with the advancement office or the development office on the memorial or the Maru, right? What did you do?
|
01:25:08 uwtCampus memorial |
| tanbara-100 |
Greg Tanbara: I just gave them some input. I made sure my mom and dad got to the meetings. And then I just spoke to a bunch of people about making a contribution and gave the university ideas on maybe how they might approach some folks.
|
01:25:20 uwtCampus memorial |
| tanbara-101 |
That was a neat project because I think a lot of people that contribute to that, especially from the Japanese community, had not done something like that before. They've made their contributions to like the church or the bazaar or, you know, those organizations that might be working to make sure that the reparations to Japanese internees was made. I mean, they make contributions that way--to Japanese American Citizens League, that sort of thing. But I think Maru was interesting, at least to me, from a local standpoint because it brought people like the Williams, who provided that first contribution. It put them together in a project with people that, you know, wouldn't have thought about maybe making a art contribution, or contribution for a piece of art. So that's what the language, I mean, there were students, you know, ex-students, people making contributions in memory of students. And so it was a different mixed bag of people. It wasn't the usual gang that makes contributions. I think it pulled in a bunch of other people. So that was a neat thing.
|
uwtCampus memorial |
| tanbara-102 |
Joan Hua: Through that project, was there something that you learned about UW Tacoma that you didn't know before? Either about the students--
|
01:27:28 |
| tanbara-103 |
Greg Tanbara: I learned that if you work on a project like that, you're going to end up getting a chance to meet Ali Modarres and end up on his advisory board. The other thing I learned about the university is that there are people here, like Lisa Hoffman, okay. I didn't know Lisa that well before. She ends up being a neighbor of mine now. So it reminds me that even though sometimes you think, "Okay, University of Washington--that's Seattle, Huskies, you know, Apple Cup, all that kind of stuff is kind of way off someplace else. It's not so way off someplace else. It's like right here. And so that's been a neat thing for me. I feel much closer to the university than I did before, because, for me, it used to be just up in Seattle. And yeah, that's how it was.
|
01:27:37 |
| tanbara-104 |
Joan Hua: And do you have interactions with students at UW Tacoma?
|
01:28:41 |
| tanbara-105 |
Greg Tanbara: Only through all these projects. Matt Kelley has sent some people toward me. You know, with regard to my work at the Health Department, and mapping, that sort of thing. What else have I done?
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01:28:50 |
| tanbara-106 |
Joan Hua: Are you also on the board for Milgard's Center for Businesses [Leadership] and Social Responsibility?
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01:29:12 |
| tanbara-107 |
Greg Tanbara: I think I was doing some advising on projects. Yeah, that was Joel Lawless's group. Okay. And then, so they would have students do kind of internships at different places. So I was helping them just think about what places students might, what nonprofit places students might hit into. So I was more involved when Joe was involved in that project. Not as much now.
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01:29:19 |
| tanbara-108 |
Joan Hua: Okay, and we're getting to the end of the interview. I want to ask--so as UW Tacoma is moving toward developing its campus on land up the hill, how do you see it honoring the past and current identities and communities of the location?
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01:29:52 |
| tanbara-109 |
Greg Tanbara: Well, my perspective centers around, my stake is that Tacoma Buddhist Temple. I think that that, you know, with the university's help, can evolve into something that is more than we can even imagine right now. I think Jodo Shinshu Buddhism has a lot to offer folks. You don't have to become a member. I think it's more wide ranging than that.
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01:30:15 uwtCampus buddhistTemple |
| tanbara-110 |
The challenge for the temple of course is that much of what is there is from a Japanese and Japanese American perspective, so that needs to be tweaked somehow to find the sweet spot for the university and the congregation. But I think both are well positioned, because I would imagine at some point, just like me back in the late '70s, early '80s, I was thinking, "Okay, university comes here. You're going to have the usual brick and ivy-covered walls. And, you know, that kind of the usual thing. Well, we don't have the usual thing. I mean, it didn't end up being the usual thing. And I think that from the temple's standpoint--and I didn't learn this until later on--but Jodo Shinshu in Japan is very different than Jodo Shinshu here. They both are part of the same Buddhist tradition. But Buddhism has changed a lot and gone a lot of different ways since it was in India. I mean, you take a look at Thailand; Buddhism is different than it is in Cambodia, or in Korea, or in Japan. And then as you come over here to the United States, it's very different from Jodo Shinshu in Japan. And so kind of going back to that Japanese Language School. You're not maybe doing what has been the natural thing to do by trying to hang on to something forever. It evolves. And so, as the university grows, I would hope that it can find a way of blending, you know, that temple into who it is.
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uwtCampus buddhistTemple |
| tanbara-111 |
Joan Hua: Great. So before I end the recording, is there something like a story or something else that came to mind that you still wanted to include?
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01:33:26 |
| tanbara-112 |
Greg Tanbara: Oh, there are a ton of stories. I'll close by just saying that, you know, I mentioned the one time that the university has made a huge difference to the downtown. And yeah, from an employment standpoint and from job training standpoint, obviously very, very important. I think that the university is also--
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01:33:35 |
| tanbara-113 |
Joan Hua: And I'll remind you that your hand is kind of touching the mic.
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01:34:05 |
| tanbara-114 |
Greg Tanbara: I think that the other thing that the university is trying to do consciously and is becoming better and better at it--and I think the community has to get better and better at it, too--is thinking outside the box. I think the university's got a tradition of doing that--kind of a newer thing for them to do as a urban-serving institution. And then, Tacoma as a community has to maybe adjust how it perceives the university also. They're going to be parts of the city--and those of us that have spent a lot of time downtown like me; you know, I'm fortunate because I've had a chance to go to higher ed and that sort of thing; I'm very comfortable here. But I know there are parts of the city and the county where people have just never been here, even though this is the, you know, UW Tacoma. It's a strange place for them. So I think that's a challenge. That's a challenge for the university. We'll get there.
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01:34:08 |
| tanbara-115 |
Joan Hua: Okay.
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01:35:23 |
| tanbara-116 |
Greg Tanbara: Good? That's it.
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01:35:24 |