Oral history: Herb Nakata

A major project of WSU’s Emeritus Society, these oral histories provide absorbing recollections of WSU history from the early 1950s on. Conducted and transcribed by history graduate student, now instructor, Katy Fry ’06, ’11, the histories deliver unfiltered memories of WSU through five presidencies and rich insight into how we came to be where we are now.

In this history, WSU professor Herb Nakata (Molecular Biosciences, 1959–1993) talks about his childhood in a Japanese internment camp through his role as faculty member and researcher in bacteriology, and chair of his department.

Key: F is Katy Fry. HN is Herb Nakata.

F - All right, it is November 9, 2010, so why don’t we start with your name

HN - Ok, my name is Herb Nakata, N-a-k-a-t-a

F - And when were you born and where

HN - I was born in Pasadena in 1930, so quite some time ago

F - And we talked a little bit before we started recording about your parents, so if you could give us a little of their background

HN - (can’t understand) I don’t know too much about but its interesting. My father, uh, he came to Hawaii I think with an older sister when he was about 11 and

F - from

HN - from Japan and his dad ran a salt shipping business, I don’t know what all he did, but anyhow, uh, they did travel on a boat quite a bit and my mother came from a place maybe 100 miles from there, in a rice growing area and my; and interesting; my mother’s father was a Samari at Imperial Palace and when the major restoration started in 18, what is it 84 or something, um, he was retired and they gave him some rice land and uh, he was not a farmer, so he didn’t know, uh, how to grow crops or anything, so he sold bit by bit the land he had and uh, he spent it and so the family was destitute and so my mother, uh, she left Japan when she was 16 to find work to support the family, so she, uh, went to Hawaii and she didn’t have any relatives in Hawaii, but she went and said she would find something, so she worked as a maid, I guess, domestic help and then, um, her father became ill and died, so she had to go back to Japan, which she did, and uh, she stayed for the funeral and then her mother said there’s no future for you here, so go on back to Hawaii, so that’s what she did. So she went back to Hawaii and basically met my father there, um, oh I don’t know the dates escape me, I don’t remember, but anyhow, they got married

F - Now was he working in the fields in Hawaii

HN - No, uh, he was going to school, I think he was more privileged because he got training in photography and he came to the United States, he must have had some money and he spoke some English, so he was able to get jobs. He worked, uh, he said he came through Walla Walla, so he worked as a caddy in a country club and then in Illinois he told me he worked for a country club as a caddy and then, uh

F - How did he get to Illinois from

HN - Well he was

F - He was going all over

HN - objective was Niagara Falls and reason was that he had seen photographs of Niagara Falls and he wanted to photograph it so he did that and then he circled around and went back to Hawaii and then I guess he met my mother in Hawaii and realized that people go to Niagara Falls on their honeymoon, so he ought to take my mother, so he came back with her and uh, they went to New York afterwards and they sort of ran out of money and so they had to look for something to do and they got a job for a person that ran a pharmaceutical company and somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, um, and he worked as a butler in Maine and doing that they saved enough money to go back to Hawaii, so uh, they packed up and my brother, oldest brother was born there in Pennsylvania and then, uh, they got back to Los Angeles and he met up with a friend who was financially destitute and wanted to borrow some money, so my dad said all I’ve got is my money to go home with and he said ok I’ll loan it to you, but the man never paid back the amount that he borrowed and so my father was stuck with my mother in California, in Los Angeles, so he opened up a studio, a photography studio which didn’t do very well and my mother helped him with the studio, but they decided that they would leave Los Angeles and go to Pasadena and there, uh, first generation Japanese men many of them worked as gardeners and so he became a gardener and had clients mostly in south Pasadena where there were wealthy people and so he worked as a gardener from then on and uh my next brother was born there and my brother, next brother Ark was born there and I was born there, so there were 4 boys and basically that’s the way it was until 1942, uh, when we got, was notified that they were going to relocate all people of Japanese ancestry. We got a week’s notice and we had to take care of everything. They had bought a house there and so uh they had to pack up everything and fortunately we found a place to store the furniture, so we didn’t lose it all and we, uh, found a renter, Mexican family that rented the house and so that was taken care of and all we had to do was sell all the other stuff around my father’s gardening. He quit and then in the truck he had and stuff like that and so a week from the notice, uh, they told us to pack only what you can carry and meet them on the street in front of the house.

F - And so you were only 12 at the

HN - I was 12 and my brother was 15 at the time and so on that morning, the Army truck came, they loaded what we could carry on the truck and took us in the truck to the train station downtown, it was actually a railroad siding, um, which was kind of interesting when you look back at it because its very much like, but not disastrous, but very much like the Jews that were rounded up in Europe and basically when we got there, we had to line up and had a tag with a string and they put it through the buttonhole for identification and a train had been manned by soldiers and all the shades were down so when we went on the train you couldn’t see where we were going and the train left with all of the Japanese people from Pasadena and the train went this way and that way all day, even though our destination which we didn’t know at the time, was only about oh maybe 125 miles away, but it would, didn’t want anybody to see what was going on and that’s why the shades were down, the MPs were manning the train cars, so they get to our destination which was Tulare, uh, oh it was about 8 o’clock, it was dark by the time we got there and that’s what they were waiting for and then, uh, we didn’t know where we were. They had search lights there, Army had I mean an aisle soldiers on, made two lines with a path in-between to the camp which was only about I would say, seems to me it was about 4 blocks (can’t understand) and it was a Tulare Assembly Center as they called it, but it was a race track, so we were assigned to a horse, uh, what do you call those

F - stable?

HN - Horse stable and what they had done in a hurry was they whitewashed the inside of the stable and then they poured asphalt on the floor but they had no way of, uh, rolling it and so as you walked, it was very soft and the cots they brought in, they legs would go right into the asphalt. The outside was tar paper that was held by laths, uh, just ordinary laths and uh the space was very restricted. We got, the four of us, my mom and dad and my brother and I

F - because your older brothers were

HN - they had gone, oh, I could mention that but I will in a little while, uh, we got a space maybe 15 by 20 feet, so there were enough for 2 cots on each side with an aisle in the middle and then the minister and his wife had the space next to us and of course the only thing that could separate people from privacy was to hang a blanket on a string and there was no privacy at all anywhere in the barrack or in the stable, uh, but that’s the way it was and everybody uh, accepted it. They knew we were in a, they call it a concentration camp, but uh there was no, um, harm done; nobody was treated roughly or anything like that and of course we were the first people to get there so they had to start a mess hall, so they took one of the buildings and we built a kitchen and interestingly enough, there were a lot of Japanese people who ran restaurants and uh, other food places, so they all volunteered the services and they ran the kitchen, cooked the meals and everything and then, uh, they had a central shower facility and toilets and that was basically it, but in a very short time, they really, uh, improved the situation at the camp. They needed a school and teach the kids and so there were many Japanese people who were educated and uh, and were school teachers and so they volunteered to become school teachers and uh we needed books and the town, uh, there Tulare was the town in other close-by areas donated books and just came by the truckload and so the students had books and they put together a, uh, a school system and it was only about a week or so, it seemed to me, that they got this thing going and uh, amongst the people were doctors and nurses and so the doctors started a clinic and the nurses helped them and there were many farmers there, truck farmers and things like that, so they volunteered to farm the area if they were allowed outside the fence and they got permission and they got land outside the fence and they started growing their own vegetables and things for the camp to use, so it was pretty self-sufficient and people who were working for newspapers and things like that, they volunteered and printed a newsletter which came out every week so we knew what was going on and uh even though it was mostly volunteer work, the medial workers like in the mess hall, places like that, they got, they were paid $16 a month so they had some spending money and the doctors were the highest paid and they got $19 a month, so that’s how it went. While my dad was gardening in South Pasadena, he worked, one of his clients was a wealthy, well-known attorney so when he found out from my dad that we had to go to camp, he wrote to the, I think it was the 10th Corps Commander on the west coast, which was in charge of all of this evacuation and uh, wanting to know how we could get out of it. Well it turned out there was no way to get out of it, but my 2 older brothers, they told my 2 older brothers who were going to college that if they left that day and they got out of the California border by midnight, they were free to go if they had evidence that somebody would, um, be their mentor. Well at church, uh, Sunday School teacher says I know a Japanese man in Chicago and he runs a restaurant, so he contacted this man and the man says sure, have them come and I will be their mentor and they had no obligation to me at all, but he would look after them. Well he ran a restaurant on skid row, right in the middle of skid row in Chicago and when my brothers got there, they said you don’t have to work for us, my brothers felt obligated so one of them, uh, served as the night shift manager and the other one the day shift manager and the one that was on the day shift, he was, uh, the second oldest brother and he wanted to continue school, so he said he would work until he can get into a school, but all; there were no universities in the Midwest that would accept Japanese people. They were all of course American citizens

F - So had he left college; he had been in college, what ever happened

HN - Yeah, and my oldest brother um, graduated from Occidental just before he left the state, so he had a degree and he felt obligated to work for this man for 2 years actually; the man said he didn’t have to, but he worked for 2 years and went to a Presbyterian Seminary there, became a minister and after a few years, he became a, uh, Episcopalian priest and his future was at the Canon at the, uh, Cathedral in Denver, so that’s where he worked until he died; he died probably he was the first to die, the other 2 brothers are still living and uh the second one applied to all the schools in the Midwest which rejected him except one and that was the University of Nebraska and they accepted Japanese-Americans and hundreds of them appeared during the fall, so uh they were treated very well and he worked as a manager of the Student Union Building, uh, the food service and he graduated, became an engineer, electrical engineer and so they were located in Chicago and so when the word came from the San Francisco that yes, our family can leave as long as we had some place to go and my brothers was basically who would be the ones that would receive us, and so they released; we were the first family to be released from one of those camps and so we took a train to Chicago and my brothers, my oldest brother says you know, uh, you may have problems here in Chicago, so we have to be very careful where you will live. So he looked around and he said you know ethnic groups live in certain communities and so he says, you know, the best community to find an apartment would be in the German community, which he was right, and uh, we went there and there was a lady, she gave us a flat so the family could have a place to stay and well she was very pro-German. She told us, uh, don’t worry about it, he says Germany’s gonna win this war and you’ll be safe with us, its that kind of attitude which was interesting and in the neighborhood was a German, uh, parochial school, Lutheran parochial school because my brother didn’t like public schools for some reason, there was a lot of crime and stuff.

F - Your brother just ahead of you?

HN - No, this is the oldest brother who became a minister, so he contacted the school and they allowed me to enroll in 7th grade and basically its interesting from the standpoint that uh, they treated us very nicely, but I had to take the same thing as everybody else and the 7th and 8th grade were in one room and when it became time to study German, of course they all had been studying the language since 1st grade and I’d never seen German before, but the other kids helped me out and I passed whatever we were learning anyway, so I was there 2 years at parochial school and after that, I went to the public high school that my brother, next brother, was going to

F - In Chicago

HN - In Chicago, yeah, and so, uh, everything turned out pretty well actually and you know, as far as harassment goes, yeah there was some from the general public, uh, I was cursed at and stuff while I was walking down the street, you know, you God-damned Jap and stuff like this; they knew who I was apparently or what nationality I was, but there was nothing threatening and in high school we got along real well, but by that time, they were releasing people from the camps

F - Because the war was over

HN - No, it wasn’t over, just allowing people to leave camps and thousands of them came to Chicago and New York and every place and so I met some of those people in school and they always treated me as different because they consider me as being one of them from the camp, although I was there for about 3 months, actually, and they were there for 2 or 3 years before they were released, so that’s, uh, basically how it turned out and of course my oldest brother, I told you, became a priest and the next one was an electrical engineer and then my next brother became a mechanical engineer and I went to the University of Illinois and uh after I graduated, I was drafted, so I went to Korea, uh, for 2 years

F - After the war was over, did your family ever think about moving back to California

HN - Yeah, they did

F - oh they did

HN - actually they did go back, uh, it was I think 1947 and my next brother and my folks; my dad really wanted to go back to California

F - now what was he doing in Chicago during this

HN - well he worked as a finisher in a furniture factory, he was sanding, uh, tables and chairs and things like that before finishing and then later on he became a fireman, a person who stokes the furnaces at the seminary where my oldest brother was attending and so they, as part of the work, they gave us a house, actually an apartment and so we moved to the campus of the seminary where we lived as long as he worked there and then, uh, I think it was ’47, he decided he wanted to go to California again, so since we had the house, we went back and this time, my 2 older brothers also went back with us and they retrieved the furniture from storage and all that completely painted the inside and outside of the house

F - so you guys didn’t lose any; a lot of the Japanese families lost everything

HN - That’s right, we didn’t lose anything, see, and we were very lucky in that respect, and basically uh, after a couple of weeks, my brothers all got together and says do we, do you guys really wanta come back here to live, and my dad said yeah, and my mom said she didn’t care. Well it was interesting because uh it was decided that we would go back to Chicago, so they sold the house

F - your brothers decided this

HN - yeah, and my parents agreed and my father, he didn’t wanta sell the house and go back, but he agreed and we all went back to Chicago and sold the house, we had no more dealings there in Pasadena, so basically that explains or describes in a nutshell what the family did during that Second World War, but many families, you’re right, they lost a lot, especially farmers who had planted crops and they had to leave and the crops that stayed there for somebody else to harvest; they couldn’t sell their land or anything, so people just took it over, some of them got their land back, others didn’t, and uh, so it was kind of a sad situation and many people

F - so just to go back a little bit, you were, you were 12 when Pearl Harbor happened and do you remember; you remember a lot, but what you felt when the military police showed up at your house

HN - Well actually I don’t remember that well, uh, what kind of announcements were made, but 1941 of course, in December, Pearl Harbor was bombed and this was now going into 1942, in the spring there was word about removing and relocating all people of Japanese industry for the west coast. We knew that there was talk about this, but we didn’t know what the schedules were and the first family that had to leave were from Bainbridge Island here in Washington and they went to a camp in Puyallup at the fairgrounds and when we went to our camp, as I said, was Tulare Race Track, so like some people went to Anita Race Track and others went to a place called Mansinar, so there were many of these camps were

F - The people who went to Tulare, um, they didn’t stay there the whole; did they get moved to a relocation center then?

HN - That’s correct, that was only an assembly center and the camp was closed in September of that same year, but in the meantime, uh, new camps were being constructed all over; Utah, Arizona and Idaho, Wyoming and the people in our, at Tulare all went to Arizona. There were 2 camps there and some of them stayed 4 years, just as long as they were open and that’s kind of sad because all the money put into constructing everything from the buildings, you know, to latrines and to the mess halls, which all had brand new equipment and then people would have used it for 4 years and then they had to close it up and most of the camps now are demolished with the exception of a few historical buildings they tried to preserve, so uh, in about half a dozen camps, they had monuments, examples of barracks where people stayed and stuff like that, but you know, you don’t hear too many people complain about it, uh,

F - especially that first generation tends not to complain about it

HN - go to jail because they were Japanese aliens, but they got out and they complained he most of course, but you know, all of the second and third generation were all American citizens and that represented about 75,000, the total number was about 120,000 so most of them were American citizens and yeah there were complaints, but no mass protest or any kind and you know you’re walking around in this camp and of course there are guard towers and soldiers with machine guns up there and rifles and at first they were kind of little intimidating, but in a few days we got to know who these soldiers were, they were very friendly, they talked to us, we talked to them, so there was really no fear and nobody tried to escape that I recall, so it turned out ok and in some ways, the sociologists will tell you that was good for the people because this decimated the people all over the country whereas before they were concentrating on the west coast, although I would say a good number of them did go back to California, but there was a big number in Chicago, a big number in New York, other places, so its kind of spread out with people

F - and it must have been a different experience, um, to be in the camp as a child or a younger person. In some ways, I read something, some historical, um, articles that indicate that maybe the young people enjoyed a, ironically, um, a little bit more freedom in the camps because you know there was more freedom of movement between if you were a youngster, you could wander around kind of, in the camp there were dances and all that social activities

HN - and they had sports teams, baseball, basketball teams, uh, groups would get together and you know competed in different sports, so this kind of thing happened just like as if you were home, you know, and uh, many of the people that I knew that came to Chicago went to high school who I went to were from these camps, they knew each other because of sports, and uh, they participated in sports together and they continued their league play, but they formed a league in Chicago and they had a Japanese-American league in basketball, baseball

F - outside of the school system

HN - yeah

F - when you were in high school in Chicago, did you have any classmates there who were, you had classmates, you were classmates with in Pasadena

HN - no, no, I didn’t meet anybody from Pasadena after I left. Actually its kind of interesting but uh, I didn’t associate much with these, uh, this group because they came as a group and stayed together as a group and uh I was mainly associated with Caucasian groups and other ethnic groups in grammar school. In high school I was just very comfortable with that and uh, and so I was never invited to the Japanese group that had dances and basketball, baseball teams, I was never asked to join and uh I never thought that was funny, but looking back, you know, Jesus, how come I was such an outcast. They thought that I was not one of them, that’s

F - that maybe you thought you were better than them

HN - no, not that, but different

F - you couldn’t understand

HN - that I associated with mostly Caucasians, other ethnic groups. The high school I went to was 65% minorities who mostly Black and Hispanic and things, uh, Syrians, but uh, when I went there first, the Japanese were very few in number and then when I graduated there were quite a few off the camps

F - you said you received some racial slurs or whatnot when you were in Chicago. Was that mostly from the adults, because it sounds like the kids are more

HN - yeah these were adults, uh, walking down the street and they see me coming and they you know he must be Japanese, so the racial slurs would come out. I says well gee whiz, maybe they had a son killed in the war or something like that and they have an ill feeling against the Japanese, I don’t begrudge them of that and you know I never make, wanted to make an issue of that; it really didn’t matter.

F - so you went back to Chicago, finished high school there and then went directly into college

HN - yeah I went; Chicago had a 2 year program that was probably the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana and it was in an interesting place. There was a college which only had about 4,000 or so, it was located in the Navy pier. The Navy pier extends; it’s a pier that extends into Lake Michigan and it was built as a part of I think in 1930 something world’s fair, but its about a mile long pier and it has, it was mainly for trade, uh, institution, that’s why it was built, you know, had a lot of shops and things like that. Well they converted all those to classrooms so there was one major hallway that went out to the end of the pier which had a beautiful auditorium and then, uh, on either side were classrooms and so they built a gymnasium and a few other things to go along with the university, but it lasted quite a long time, until the Chicago circus, circle camp was built and that was probably 10, 15 years after the Navy pier uh, now it’s a huge campus in Chicago, uh, a nice campus, but Navy pier still exists and uh, I really don’t know; I think there are a lot of shops and things in there now. But it was fun.

F - And did you; what did you major in, what was your

HN - well there, of course, the first two years it was like it was junior college. I took all of the basic requirements and I met a lot of people. I, uh, was interested in music, so I joined the swing band there at the university and the second year it became my band, but that was

F - what did you play

HN - sax clarinet and in a 20 piece band with two vocalists, so it was a big band and we played for all faculty dances, student dances, 2, 3000 people, um, but it was fun because at the end of the pier, as I indicated, is a beautiful auditorium there, it had a dance floor and a stage and all the doors on the side opened up into the lake, you could go out there and walk around and be right on the water, basically, so it was a very attractive place and uh it was kind of fun

F - when you say it became your band with you

HN - well I, uh, was the leader of the band. It was still the University of Illinois band and uh, so when I left they gave me a certificate, I’ve got it still, all voluntary, but there were good people there, uh, I would say more than half of the band members were professional musicians who had played in professional, uh, bands around the country and they were older and they came back and one uh, playing for Wayne King; another guy, he wanted to come back and go into his pre-med and uh, he was very good at arranging music and uh, so he asked me well what kind of music are we going to play and I said well I like Glenn Miller because that was the rage at the time. This was now in the late, latter part of the ‘40s and he said ok, so he would listen to, uh, something and he said gee, that’s nice and he would get sheet music for it and then he would transpose everything into Miller style, the same instrumentation and everything, so when he was done, he had a sheet for every instrument in the band and we’d play it and he’d just make a few corrections and it sounded just like Glenn Miller, so it was a very, uh, a band that was well received by the student body and the faculty there and uh, oh everybody just had a lot of fun and that, uh, created a problem at home because my mom says gee, you know, your three older brothers all went to college and graduated and here you’re fooling around with music and my grades weren’t all that great, so she says you just decide now whether to go on to college to finish or go on the road and do the music. You know that kind of ultimatum was very daunting to me because when you think my three older brothers all went, I was a disappointment, basically, so

F - because they always wanted; it was always understood that you guys would graduate from college

HN - they worked hard to provide us with an education, so I left my, uh, sax clarinet at home when I went to the main campus at Champaign-Urbana that fall; I never touched them again, never played them again and interestingly enough, when I got to Champaign, I went by a nightclub and there was a sign right in the window. The sax clarinet is wanted for immediate employment and I said gees, I oughta go and get my horns, but uh, I promised mom, so I didn’t play anything any more

F - not even on the side, not even

HN - not even on the side, never played, um, just for enjoyment even and I still have them in storage in the basement some place, but that was the way it went and I had to really work hard the second and third year to get my grade point up to above a B average so I could go to graduate school and uh which was in the back of my mind but as soon as I graduated, they drafted me, so I had to go to Korea, but uh

F - and you said you were there for 2 years, is that right?

HN - uh 2 years

F - in Korea

HN - oh yeah, in Korea, uh, I spent 2 years finishing up my junior and senior year in college and then

F - and by that time had you declared a major, did you know what you wanted to do?

HN - yeah, I graduated in bacteriology and microbiology, they used to call it, but I had, uh, no idea when they were gonna draft me; all I knew is I got a student deferment for 2 years and when you have a student deferment, that means when you’re graduated, they can call you any time, so I left there and I said gee I oughta find a job, so I went to Chicago. In my neighborhood there was a big hospital and so I went to talk to the person there and I told him gee like I’d like to work in the lab and he says well you’re qualified, so I said I gotta tell you, I may not be here very long, but uh, you know, until I’m drafted, he said that’s ok, so he gave me a job. Well he gave me a job of Director of the Laboratory uh, I was the only one that had a degree; the others were all certified technicians and they had, uh, a consultant basis, uh, a Ph.D. who came once a week to work with people in the lab that they had a problem so I worked there, that must have been June, July, August and I was drafted in September, so it gave me 3 months of work, so uh, it went pretty fast

F - What was your duties, what did they assign you to in Korea, anything that had anything to do with your degree?

HN - no, uh, when I was drafted, I had to go to basic training and when I went to basic training, uh, it was a shortened training because I was gonna get specialized training and so I think I spent, uh, 8 weeks in basic, just regular training and then 8 weeks I went to radar school and when I got there, they made me, I guess the leader of the class, I don’t know why they did that, but I was in charge of the class at the radar school and all the other classes before us there were 12 and when they finished their training in radar, they all went to further training to a school in the back east, so that’s where I thought we were all going to be going back east and when they graduated, they gave us; they had a ceremony and all that and they just, their commanding officer came by and he says Nakata, you take the following 10 men and report to San Francisco and I says, that doesn’t sound good, sounds like we’re going uh, to the far east and uh, but anyhow, uh, it worked out ok, uh, the 10 men I knew who they were, they were all from the unit and we all went to San Francisco to ship out. Well while I was there, I became sick, see what did I get, I contracted, uh, German measles or something like that and I had to go to a hospital, so I left the guys there in the barracks and then went to the hospital. They in fact didn’t know where I had went because I passed out while we were waiting to get bedding and left my duffle bag and all that right where I fell and so the ambulance took me to the hospital and I was there for a week, so when I got out of the hospital, I went back to the same barracks and I says gee, anybody see (can’t understand) and the guy put, he says the guys went over there and somebody had taken my duffle bag and my carry on bag and put it under a bench and so I got everything back, so then I went to the barracks and the guys all says where were you, you know, we were looking for you but we didn’t know what happened. Well then they told me that they had got assignments while I was gone and mine was the only one in the group that were given orders to go to Japan and uh, the ship had already sailed and my records were on the ship but they didn’t know where I was, so in essence, uh, all that was straightened out and every day twice we had to fall out into groups to get our assignment and uh, again when the assignments were made, the one person, me, I had to go by myself. They all went different places, but when my name was called, I was only going by myself and I had to go to Japan, so I thought I was gonna be assigned in Japan and which wasn’t true because in Japan I got a new assignment and I was to go to Korea to the observation battalion and so I said that’s strange, uh, but I went and it was kind of an interesting thing because it was really, the observation posts were all, either all line or in front of the combat line and so when I got to headquarters, you know, there was artillery and mortar rounds going off all over, it was really scary, but they put another guy who came later, in fact 2 other guys into the Jeep and they drove us to the east part of Korea and they took us to a hill, a mountain and we got there which was just a bare hill, snow was about 2 or 3 feet deep, uh, the commander says you, uh, defend this hill and I’ll come back tomorrow and give you instructions as to what you’re going to be doing. It turns out we were to set up a new radar outpost and that night, well, (name?) came up, I don’t know if you’re interested in this kind of story

F - yeah, go ahead

HN - but he was well dressed in a South Korean Army uniform and he was a Major (can’t understand) he was just neat, uh, (can’t understand) and started to, you know, he spoke English so I said gees, this guys, where is he, uh, so I asked him where is he from. He says he gave me some unit name or I had no, nothing, no knowledge of any units, you know in the area, but I believed him and uh, after we talked a while; we had a fire going there to keep warm in the snow and he started asking me a question – how many guys are in your unit and I told him probably right now there are only 3, but uh, we’ll probably go to about 8 or 9 or 10. He says what are you gonna do and I says well they told us that we’re gonna be a radar observation unit and then I said gee, this guy’s asking me specific questions that I shouldn’t be saying anything and I didn’t know who I was talking to, so I shut up. Next day our battalion officer came up and we talked about what we were going to do and he says did you see anybody around here last night and I said yeah and I told him that Captain so and so from such and such a unit and he says what’d you tell him and I told him what I had said. He says well good thing you didn’t get too many details out because obviously you did not know what the details were, so you were lucky. But there’s no such officer on line here and no unit like that in this area, you’re talking to an infiltrator and you know these guys can walk over the line because we could see them, uh, down in the valley and a rifle would reach their line or would reach us, so that they could walk just maybe 2, 3 blocks and are right in our area, but anyhow, from thereon, we became much more careful who we talked to, well we did, but all during this time now I applied to be transferred to a medical service corps because I could work as a medical technologist in the lab and I think I applied 3 times and all 3 times it was denied right at our headquarters, never went out of our headquarters, my request was just, died there and each time they told me that I was, uh, supposedly assigned at a higher level and they couldn’t transfer me and basically it was nothing special, it was just that I knew the operation of the radar and its um, goal to what we were supposed to do, that’s just spot artillery and mortar locations and then we would relay them back to headquarters who then, uh, tell the artillery on our side to fire back at these locations and so it was sort of that kind of work and I became in charge of the unit and uh it was nothing particularly, uh, special about this, but anyhow, I was in a combat zone for 13 months, got combat pay every month and that was neat, an extra 50 bucks a month but nobody in our unit got hurt, although we were fired on by mortars and artillery and they destroyed some of our bunkers, but nobody got hurt, so it turned out to be pretty good.

F - And so when did you get released from the Army

HN - Yeah, uh, of course I got discharged, uh, after 21 months. I didn’t spend a full 2 years and I came back to the states and went back to Ft. (name?) where I was inducted and I had to stay there ‘til my 21st month was over, so my duties there were to inspect the women officer quarters every day, so I go there, they got panties and bras hanging on the lines in the barracks and I just there and told them take them down because that’s not, um, regulation and that’s about it, you know, there was nothing particularly difficult about the job or important, uh, better than nothing and after 21 months, I was released, discharged

F - And what year was that then?

HN - That was 1954. I was drafted in ’52, so in ’54 that was uh 21 months, that would be about May, see I was drafted in September, so I applied again and it was during the summer for graduate school in Illinois and I was accepted, so I started my master’s degree in September and I had 3 years of the GI bill, so I had no worries and the Chairman of the Department uh new boy was and he kept trying to talk me to accepting an assistantship and I said no, I got money, the government’s paying me, so first semester I did work as an assistant but the second semester he insisted I need to work as a graduate teaching assistant, which paid about as much as what the Army was paying me, so basically I had money in the bank you know and it turns out I worked, he was my mentor for my master’s and Ph.D. program

F - And this was still in Microbiology; what they would call now Microbiology?

HN - And he was a President of the National Society, so he was a very prestigious guy and uh, so you know, I was lucky to be able to work for him and uh when I was looking for a job, he says well what do you wanta do. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t wanta stay in the Midwest because of the high humidity, I couldn’t stand that, so I wrote to schools on the west coast and most of them wrote back, said they had no positions, but Washington State wrote back

F - So this would have been the early ’60s when

HN - This was ‘59

F - ok, and you’d done your master’s and your

HN - Ph.D.

F - in 5 years

HN - in ’59 and uh, the person who wrote me a letter was, uh, Roger Way; Roger Way was the Dean of Sciences and since the Chairman of Bacteriology at that time died in an automobile accident, he was Acting Head of the Bacteriology Department and he was from Illinois and he worked in the building right next to where I got my training and he knew my boss and he knew everything about me, so he wrote back and he says I’m gonna send 2 faculty members to the National meeting, I believe it was in St. Louis, so that summer or maybe it was June, anyhow, I met the faculty members and they interviewed several others and uh obviously I had the inside track, so he offered me a job and I never came here to interview anything, never saw the location of the school or anything, so I accepted and I came. I had one other offer from MIT, but that’s going east again where it was humid and I didn’t wanta go east. It paid quite, considerably more money, but uh, I decided I wanted to come back was west and basically I thought Washington was full of lakes and forests, so I drove to Pullman. I went right by Pullman, I was on my way to Palouse and I said gee, I thought that sign said Pullman, so I turned around and came back and sure enough, and I said (can’t understand) there are no forests here, and lakes, but hell I went to housing because I needed to find a place to live and I told them I’d like to get an apartment on the Fairways, the Fairways told me it was a golf course, but they wrote back and told me no, you don’t, that’s the poorest units on campus where mostly students lived

F - were those the houses that they built for World War II soldiers, the Fairways?

HN - Fairways are barracks that were built in different camps for soldiers and when they closed up after the war, uh, university bought a lot of these barracks and so the barracks were all between the Coliseum and maybe around where the Administration Building is. Well even further south because I remember a mess hall down there, anyway, here are hundreds of these barracks out there and no golf course. There was a golf course, a 9 hole course, but nothing was on the golf course, so they said that they had a brand new apartment building or complex on campus and they assigned me to a studio; I wasn’t married then, I married the next year, so they assigned me to an apartment in what was it called, the Terrace Apartments, you know where that is?

F - Huh uh

HN - That’s

F - I probably do

HN - Valley Road, you go up Valley Road and it’s the street turns into what is that, oh (talking about moving cars because of street cleaners)

F - So the Terrace Apartments

HN - Yeah, so I got a studio apartment at the Terrace Apartments (someone came in, conversation)

F - go ahead

HN - what about?

F - oh, so you got into those apartments and then you were teaching. What was your load like, teaching load like when you first got here?

HN - oh it was quite a bit because when I first came, I was assigned of course the food microbiology (can’t understand) 400 level course and I knew I had to teach general microbiology one semester, food micro, so that was basically one major course each semester and then they assigned me another course, uh, which I had to teach both semesters, but it was more or less teaching nutrition so students will learn about how you put together different environments for growing different kinds of bacteria, so I had, uh, basically 4 courses a year and that was all new to me but as soon as I got here, I learned that they were planning to build a new building now called Heald Hall and the guy who was on the building committee worked on it 3, 4 years left and they had nobody to finish the plans. Well it turns out; now I’m not an architect, I’m not an engineer or anything, but they gave me a job and he said you’ve got to have these plans finalized in one semester because the architects will wanta start building this thing. So I looked at the plans and they were terrible plans. This guy wanted to build empires, a series of buildings for himself, uh, labs and then another guy would have a series of labs and they were all specialized in what they were interested in, but he left so I said I’ve got to take out all of these labs on the 4th floor and part of the 3rd floor and just start with blank space and fill them in and uh that took me every night I was working there, and uh, he had to go not only location of all the benches and the type of tops that the benches needs their own top for chemistry, chemical work and other kinds of teaching labs and then all of the utilities; electrical, gas and air pressure and where they’re located on each bench, so I was

F - how did that become your job

HN - the chairman told me. He was new that fall and he came and told me that that’s what my assignment was, so I couldn’t get ready to; my research lab was just an empty room, I had to get my research going and there was no money for that and I had to get my classes ready to teach, but then I was spending most of my time designing a building and the labs, but I designed them so that it would be suitable for any discipline in microbiology; regardless of whether you’re medical or applied or whatever

F - that building and those labs still

HN - yeah they still exist, but they moved to a new building which was just finished where the tennis courts were because our department, uh, disappeared in 1999 and became part of the, uh, School of Molecular Biosciences and that unit has a new building all to themselves and microbiology is over there on the 4th floor, but its interesting; Heald Hall such a poorly constructed building, has no insulation, so they were trying to find excuses to demolish it and so when microbiology moved out, the 3rd and 4th floors and genetics was on the 5th floor and they’re also part of the new school, so those floors are all empty right now and they don’t want anybody to move in because (can’t understand) to demolish it. So all that hard work 50 years ago down the tube, uh, I had no; I’m not, I don’t regret anything if the building is torn down.

F - I’ll ask you one more question today and save the rest for next time since we just saw your wife. You said you came in ’59, but you got married the next year. Is she from Chicago as well?

HN - She was working on her master’s at the University of Wisconsin. She finished her BS at Illinois. I met her because she was a technician in the lab, my lab

F - when you were a graduate student

HN - when I was a graduate student, yeah, and she finished her BS and she went to Wisconsin on a fellowship and was finishing her master’s so we started dating, we didn’t date at Illinois, so I had to drive from Champaign-Urbana to Madison, Wisconsin if I wanted to see her and you know I went up there 4 times I guess, and we got married the spring she graduated and then we came out west

F - and she’d never been; she’d never seen Pullman either

HN - no

F - before you were married

HN - no she’d never been west of Chicago, the furthest west she’d been

F - what did she think of it

HN - well it was kind of interesting. I told her I came for a 2 year period, but maybe she won’t like it and maybe we’ll have to leave before that and she’s interested in a lot of things. We started going across Montana, Wyoming, Idaho; all those open space and no trees in some places. She started taking notes and she has taken notes everywhere we go since then. She has detailed notes of what we saw; we saw a tumbleweed this afternoon going across the street, you know, highway and she had brought her little parakeet, she had a parakeet, and she let it go in the car, it was sitting right on top of the steering wheel when I was driving, I’m looking right at this parakeet, which lived quite a few years after we got here

F - what did you say her degree was in?

HN - Her degree?

F - Yes

HN - She was in microbiology, too

F - so when; I don’t imagine there was a lot of opportunity for the wives of faculty members to teach or

HN - well with her master’s degree, she was on, became a faculty member in Sanitary Engineering in charge of a research project which she headed up for a couple years and she’d started to do a Ph.D. work in biochemistry and it turns out our oldest boy was born 3 years after, yeah 3 years after she came, so basically she had to quit, she quit work for a long time and then after kids grew up, she went back to work as uh, in research, technical; as a technician, technologist, and her last job was working at the library, Holland Library, she was the one that paid all the bills so she and I retired at the same time in 1993

F - so she made it through those first 2 years and decided you didn’t have to leave after all?

HN - Yeah, well then we decided this is not a bad place to raise kids, you know, and yeah, I was finally getting into my work and got my research going and stuff, so I said I don’t mind staying here for a while, and uh, as it turns out, you know, the chairman that was hired when I was hired, came at the same time, he was a very autocratic chairman. He dictated everything and when new students, uh, graduate students came to campus, he would interview them all and decide which one he would take to his lab and the ones he didn’t want, a lot of other faculty he talked to and then all the policies for students. He made up the policies and we had a faculty meeting of which we only had very few, and he’d tell us what he had decided and boy there were a lot of complaints from students and complaints from the faculty, and I was just a new guy on the faculty, so I hear all the gripes from the older faculty, they all come to me and complain because I was the sounding board, but as it turned out, when was this, 1968, 9 years after I got here, the Dean called me and he said he talked to all the faculty

F - the same Dean that hired you?

HN - yeah, and he says I hate to tell you this, but they all want you as the new chairman, and I says boy that’s the last thing I wanta hear, I don’t care, I’m not trained to be a chair and I’m just getting going on my research and all that and he says well try it for 2 years and then you can quit if you want to. Well this is going into the second portion of the interview, but basically um, I tried to resign after the 2 years, I tried to resign twice after that, but I was chairman for 24 years until I retired

F - Whoa

HN - God, it’s the worst job anybody could have but

F - well we’ll end on that

HN - we always had lots of problems, I had (can’t understand) go through the...

---

F - All right it’s March 8, 2011 and we’re with Herb Nakata in his home for the second part of our interview. So last time we ended, um, you’d gotten to WSU and it had been I think nine years or so and suddenly you have, you’ve been told that you’re going to be the Chair of the Department and that you stayed; where we ended was you stayed in that position that you never really wanted in the first place, for 24 years.

HN - Yeah, that’s right. I resigned twice but, you know, faculty insisted; the Dean wouldn’t accept my resignation so I continued. Of course that had a devastating effect on research program because I taught the same courses, continued to teach them all the way until I retired and so time was a major element in that respect and in the meantime, without spending that much time on research, I had some graduate students and I was able to renew my grants I guess once and then after that, kind of petered out, so...

F - And what was your research in exactly?

HN - I was researching actually the biochemistry of spore-forming bacteria and at that time was the beginning of demonstrating physiological biochemical changes in the cell when it was undergoing changes morphologically and it was kind of fun, but it required a lot of time.

F - And did you get any significant publications out of that?

HN - Oh yeah, I got about a dozen or so before all of this came to a screeching halt. Students always presented papers at local, not local but regional scientific meetings and at the national meetings and we used to take them to the meetings but once you know I couldn’t take any more students, uh, didn’t have the time so that ended probably around 1975 or so.

F - Was that the last time you had a graduate student?

HN - Yeah, I, yeah, that’s about the time, I guess, I don’t remember the exact date, but I still have contact with some of them.

F - So when you; it’s interesting when you got into this position, this Chair of your Department, late ‘60s and so a couple of things I think are important about the late ‘60s to WSU; one is their involvement in the nationwide student movement that was going on, can you talk a little bit, and every department has a little bit different memory of that time or relationship to that time, so I’m always interested in what the sciences were doing or how they were dealing with it.

HN - They got here pretty well, actually I think trouble started around ’69 and I was only the Chair for about a year and a lot of incidents happened around the country, including setting buildings on fire and stuff, so I had to organize my faculty and graduate students and other departments did as well and we patrolled the buildings 24 hours a day; we had somebody walking the halls. We did that probably for at least a week.

F - And why, why, I mean why that week, what, was there a rumor something was gonna happen?

HN - Yeah, that something was going to happen particularly in reference to ROTC which was one of the nearest places and the sciences and places where animals were used for research. Actually one of our students, I; this was never documented, one of my students, our students in the department was responsible for burning down Martin Stadium, do you remember that fire? I guess you wouldn’t.

F - I’ve heard about it

HN - But he was a very, was an activist, he was a black fellow, a smart guy, he finally graduated from the department with a degree, but people always thought he was the one responsible for setting that fire and no investigation that I recall occurred and I think yeah, and the athletic department probably figured out it was a good time to get money for starting renovation. So uh, there just revamp that part of, the burnt part, and it was ready for use the next year, uh, season, but anyhow, that was a difficult time and activists were all going up to French Ad protesting you know and things and there was also involved racial, uh, oh what do you wanta call it, unrest, particularly in reference to migrant workers and their problems and basically that was intermingled with the bombing in Cambodia as I recall, so all these things came together, so the protest here was not centralized on any one of those issues, it was a combination of those issues as I recall. I don’t have that good a memory about what happened. But it did spur on a lot of activities in the department, which would not have ordinarily occurred. I recall inviting legislators, state legislators and others on campus, the President, the Vice President and people in the minority areas to faculty meetings in our department and a number of them came. It’s interesting, the state legislators came, so we had nice discussions about that and finally the faculty and the graduate students got together and said you know, we need to do something more to help students who need additional help and we set up, that was the first fund we set up and it was for, uh, it was actually set up by contributions from graduate students and faculty, kind of a fund to help minority students particularly.

F - In the sciences?

HN - No, in the department and this came in very handy I recall one girl, a black girl who came in and she had a terrible toothache and she had no insurance; didn’t know what to do, so I just sent her to my dentist and I told the dentist we’ll take care of it and he took her in on a Saturday morning and he had to do some extensive work, uh, and she came back the following week and said she was feeling much better, I think they pulled a tooth or something, and the dentist didn’t ever charge me, I told him to send me a bill and he said no, he didn’t think that was necessary and another time another girl had to drop, said she came in about spring break and said well she didn’t have any more money and she couldn’t finish the semester and I said well that’s a terrible time to quit. So this fund came in very handy, you see, and I paid the rest of her bills for dormitory and whatever she needed to live on until the end of the semester, so a fund like that became very useful and so that got me thinking about establishing additional funds and that was the beginning of it all and basically by the time I retired, that was my legacy really, I had established a dozen endowment funds for scholarships. That’s the most I think any department in the sciences had, well I know it’s the largest number of scholarships and they’re all endowed so they go on forever and that really made a difference. The next one that followed, um, the student aid fund, was, uh, we had a woman faculty member who was extremely good in teaching, she was excellent teacher and in fact in the next few years, there was so much support for her that we nominated her and she became faculty member of the year nationally, in the national...

F - What was her name?

HN - organization. Betty Hall. She taught here since the ‘40s and she retired in 1975 or 6 or so and not only was she an excellent teacher, but she was an excellent athlete. She was invited to the National Open golf tournament in the east, every year. She never went but because of her abilities, she always made it to the top and got invited to the National Open which amateurs could play in as well as professionals. She won the Idaho state championship twice as I recall and also was a runner up in the Washington golf championship and she bowled in a league, excellent bowler, used to; graduate students, faculty used to go bowling over at the CUB and she would always just beat everybody. I mean she, you know, she belonged to a team so she practiced a lot, but when we went there, she competed against students and faculty, she was so outstanding, I mean she had over a 200 game every time she bowled, which amazed everybody, but anyhow, she was a fantastic person, you know, um, as well as a teacher. So, one of the students that graduated wrote me a letter, probably early ‘70s, and she wrote very glowing remarks about this teacher, Betty Hall, and she wanted to start a scholarship in her name and she wanted help to do that, so I said “OK.” Well about that time I started writing a departmental newsletter and the way to contact students, the only way I could figure out was to look at the students’ transcripts, students that had graduated, and the transcripts would give the family, the parents’ address, and so I sent a letter in the first newsletter to the parents and they would give it to their daughter or son and after doing that, I probably sent 600, 700 letters, or newsletters. I got almost that many responses from these former students and so immediately I got a big mailing list and they were all supportive. I mentioned in the newsletter about maybe starting a fund for Betty Hall scholarship and they said yeah, they would be glad to contribute to that and so that was the first scholarship endowment. Actually the endowment raised so much money they give now three or four scholarships every year, and basically that was all from contributions from alumni. So after that, you know, it gave me an idea of why don’t I do it for other people and one person, uh, that started a scholarship was; I didn’t even know, never met, but it was a person who contributed to the Betty Hall scholarship every year $100 and I said wow, said I have to reward her by starting a scholarship in her name and never wrote to her about it or told her about it, but I just started this fund and in the next newsletter we made the award in this woman’s name and she was astounded. So she sent more money and it turns out that all of her family at that time started contributing to this fund, so now even her scholarship, she’s long time dead, but I think we give probably four or five scholarships in her name. So basically this thing just mushroomed, and the newsletter did a lot to bring attention to the department needs and the alumni seemed to have found a home in the department when they were students. Like Betty Hall, she was so likeable that everybody knew her and liked her courses and stuff and so they bonded together and contribute, still contribute even now, uh, contribute to these funds and so that really worked well. There’s one that I remember that’s particularly unusual is... I got a letter from a man in Arizona and he said I don’t know how he got it, but he said he got ahold of one of my newsletters from somebody and he said he graduated WS, it was WSC at that time, in 1930 and he remembered, he said, how difficult it was for him to stay in school. He said he told me what he ate during the day and it was like a donut in the morning and another donut at lunch and he worked during the summer in construction, tried to make enough money to pay his tuition and he said he, financially he was very strapped all the time he was here. And I wrote him back and we started corresponding and after a year or two, he wrote me and said you know... Oh, in the meantime I asked him if he would like to come and see the campus and he said I’ve not been there ever since 1930 and he wouldn’t know anything about the campus. I invited him to come up anyway and he came, amazing he came. An old man, his wife was not in good health, but he came by himself and I showed him around campus and he was amazed, he said this looks nothing like where he went to school and then he went home, he was very thankful to see the place. He wrote back and he says you know I have no children and he says we don’t have a lot in terms of retirement money, but we own a house in Arizona and he said when he and his wife pass on, he would like to donate the money to two universities, one, where his wife got her nursing degree, and where he got his degree here at WSU. He said it wouldn’t be a, it won’t amount to much, but he said maybe it’ll help students and so he wanted help from me to set up this scholarship. It wasn’t a scholarship, it was a, well, it was in a way a scholarship fund I suppose; he wanted to have needy students and I said well are you talking about loans and he says yeah that’s good, he says I would like to have people be able to take loans. I said would you require that they pay it back and he says no, only if they want to pay it back they can, but otherwise, we wouldn’t enforce that, so I said that’s fine, um, and we wrote up, with the help of the university attorneys, write up this will, which he signed, his lawyer signed and that was probably about 1980 or so and I heard no more from him or his family. Actually, well he was, uh, had no family. His wife died, no he died, he died and I got a letter from the lawyer, I guess, that he had died and his wife, uh, went back to I guess Michigan to a nursing home and so none of the money would become available until they both died and she lived until the 1990s, sometime midway in the 1990s, and she died and the lawyer contacted us and said now the money is available, so they would send it to WSU and to the other school. And I was just flabbergasted because the share that we got which would be half was about $100,000, so that was a big endowment which they’re using and I think I’m not in control of that of course since I retired, but I understand that they’re, its not only for needy students but they’re using it for scholarships

F - Uh huh, and is it just for your department, students in your department?

HN - Yeah, and that’s, uh, I wrote up all of these, uh, awards, uh, documents so that it would go to microbiology major and that was specified in every one so other units can’t take the money and the department dissolved and became part of the School of Molecular Biosciences. That included biochemistry and genetics and they wanted the money, but I pointed out that in the document it says major in microbiology and that really saved the day because the School of Molecular Biosciences then had to retain a major in microbiology and only students in that major would be eligible and it turns out that all these years, I retired 18 years ago or so, that microbiology still has the largest number of graduates from the school and of course they provide all the scholarships so students want to major in microbiology, if they’re in financial need. So, they invite me to the award meetings every year in the spring when they give out the scholarships and I kind of keep tabs on, making sure that they’re microbiology majors and so far that’s the way it’s been going. So I’m pleased at the way they’ve been handling this in my absence, but anyhow, I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing you wanted to know about...

F - That’s very interesting.

HN - ...but anyhow to me that was probably the important, most important part of my being the Chairman I guess is that I could instigate all of these things. Well, Betty Hall was the only woman faculty member that I recall being a scientist and I said she had been there a long time. When she retired, uh, we had to find some other faculty member, we made a nationwide search and it so happens that in, when was that, about 1976 or so we were able to hire two faculty members and I hired two women at that time. So we continued having women in the sciences and...

F - That’s a good point, I was gonna ask you; you came in ’59, right?

HN - Yeah I came in ’59.

F - So you must have seen a lot more women come in every year, students and faculty, I mean what is it, what’s the ratio like or do you?

HN - Well student-wise, um, Microbiology at that time was called Bacteriology and Public Health; bacteriology, uh, appealed to women particularly, so I would say a number of women in the department was more than half, 60% or so

F - Even in the ‘60s?

HN - Yeah, and one of the strong options that the department offered was in medical technology, actually the was a pre-medical technology they would do four years here and then they would go on a one year internship at some hospital and we probably sent quite a few to Spokane and Seattle hospitals, and then of course they would go into the medical field as medical technicians. The other half, the other portion / option was in public health and I suppose at that time we called them sanitarians. They worked for the public health departments and every county has one and men would go into that and that was also a very, uh, interesting option for men students because they all got jobs when they got out. In fact most of them were sought after before they even graduated and some of them, uh, were rather high positions in the state. It was interesting, lets see it was about 1971 or 2 or so, there was a nation-wide push to support, they called them Allied Health Professions, and so there’s money available for these professions, training for these professions. So I immediately wrote a grant, um, to support these options and we got the grant and supported both medical technology and public health and this helped us to renovate laboratories and hire another teacher, etc. And so that was a boom; it only lasted for about five years, but during that time we were really able to increase our number of majors; I think we more than doubled our majors. Some years we graduated about 175 bachelor degrees whereas before we were about the forties or fifties you know, so it really helped the department. And after one year I was going to reapply and I found out that they would also fund pre-physical therapy and dietetics and they were of course in other places on campus; I think dietetics at that time was in Home Economics and physical therapy, pre-physical therapy was in Physical Education, so I got ahold of faculty there to give me information and I included them and amazingly we got a grant to cover those areas too. So they were able to hire additional faculty and boost their programs, so I sort of by just by doing the leg work on this was; I don’t know if I ever got an appointment there or what, but I was in charge of Allied Health Professions on this campus and basically it was good while the money was available and then of course the program shut down nationally and so then that’s where the money ended and unfortunately the university didn’t replace that money totally. They replaced some of it, but when you lose a grant, you know, you lose everything, you don’t get anything more. So that was a nice addition to the department. Let’s see, uh, I don’t know what all else happened that was maybe exciting during that time, but...

F - Well I was gonna ask you why, uh, the Dean wouldn’t let you resign as Chair, but now it seems pretty obvious.

HN - Well, I didn’t want the job, I didn’t like the job, but these kinds of things came about and I didn’t mind doing them. And so I think it was in 1975, I never took a sabbatical leave until then. I applied and they approved my leave, I resigned and nobody would take over. There was one guy who agreed to do it for one year while I was gone. So that’s the way it was, and so when I came back, he said well you’re still the Chair, so I had to continue, but when I retired this other fellow did become the Chairman and right after he became Chair, he got lung cancer and he died, so he wasn’t Chair for very long.

F - And was the reason that other people wouldn’t step up, was because they guarded their research, so jealous? I mean they...

HN - Sure. I don’t blame them.

F - That’s what you weren’t able to focus on and not have the graduate students, you probably would have liked to had and...

HN - Yeah, that’s right, I, uh, I don’t blame them at all because they had active research programs going on and they were busy teaching and who wants to do administrative work, its just all busy work and um, so I tried to take as much of that from the students, from the other faculty and do it myself since I’m already involved in all of that crap anyway. So I, uh, I spent probably most of my time doing odds and ends you know, administration. I also advised a lot of students, um, other faculty also advised students, and I chose the senior faculty to do this because they were most experienced and there were four or five of those faculty that advised and they all did an excellent job. It isn’t something that they say oh heck, I have to do it, I don’t want to do it, but they had the attitude that gee, if I have to do it, I’ll do it right and they encouraged students to come and see them frequently, to keep up with their programs and stuff. I was amazed at how well it goes and then you know in the last ten years or so I read in the Evergreen about the difficulty of finding advisors, uh, for students, undergraduate students and I never had that problem. I mean we might had at that time maybe 100 and some odd majors and I’d ask faculty to step up and do the job and they’d do it and they’d do an excellent job. We’d meet as a group and discuss what the department requirements are and what do we substitute for what and so they all knew what they needed to do and how they were supposed to advise the students. So I thought our advising program was first rate and I was surprised to see why it was going downhill on campus and I understand why; faculty doing research don’t want to be bothered with that. You know, its just an extra job and you don’t really get a benefit from that, but I’ve always included that in my annual review of the faculty if they’re advising, they do a good job, I make sure I mention that in their annual review. So I don’t know if it made any difference but at least they’re, they were recognized.

F - Well that must have been a; you came in ’59 so that must have been a shift you did see, was this new emphasis, am I right, this is the right time period, at WSU on research and putting the institution, you know, going from WSC to WSU and...

HN - That’s what we were supposed to do, uh, and I’d say that shift over campus overall was pretty successful and some units that became outstanding particularly the sciences and the School of Molecular Biosciences, uh, is probably the top program on campus and they bring in all the research money and they get all the regent’s professorships and stuff, so yeah, it really made a difference.

F - What about the shift; also as you were becoming Chair, there’s, a, the administration is changing, its growing and the bureaucracy is growing, so what was that; not only what was that like as a Chairperson during that time, what was your department’s relationship to Presidents, and to the Provosts, and French Ad?

HN - Yeah, that was a thorn in our side really the administration started to expand, so we invited, I invited the President and Vice President and Provosts to our faculty meetings so that they, the faculty would have an hour to quiz them.

F - Any of the Presidents, whoever was President at the time?

HN - Yeah, I think we started with Smith; we had Terrell.

F - Terrell first.

HN - Yeah and Wallace Beasley for a while, he was President. I don’t think he was there very long, but then we had Provosts, Al Yates, and trying to think of this guy who left as Provost and came back as President, uh, name slips my mind!

F - Rawlins?

HN - Lane Rawlins, yeah. And so they’d come to the department regular faculty meeting and all the faculty were there and another thing that I started with I became Chair; there’s always this problem between graduate students and faculty. Graduate students complained because they don’t know what’s going on in the department and stuff like that, so I said ok, so immediately I started... two students are welcome to faculty meetings; one graduate student and one undergraduate student and they were selected by their respective groups; undergraduates selected somebody and graduate students selected one, and they’d come, they were welcome to come to every faculty meeting participate in the discussions and they were also, they also had a full vote, as a faculty member had a vote, and when we discussed policies, they just joined in the policy and there’s some interesting results from this. The first one that came, became an issue was foreign language requirements for graduate students. There’s one for masters, two for Ph.D.s.

F - In the sciences

HN - In the sciences; and we talked about it and some of the faculty didn’t like it because it took a lot of time away from students in the lab to study for languages. Sometimes they don’t pass the first time, you know, and have to do it over again. So we discussed the need for foreign languages and the ones we accepted were French, German, Russian, oh maybe those were the only three, and the graduate students also felt that it was a big problem, a big hurdle for them, a waste of time, but the more we discussed it, we talked about the, uh, importance of knowing some foreign languages because sometimes faculty would go overseas and to foreign countries and it’d be nice to be able to know something about foreign language. Although, I agree, it doesn’t help, but anyhow, that was the idea, and we finally for to the point of voting, so I said to the graduate student representative, you go talk to your graduate students whether to require two foreign languages, one foreign language at a higher level, or do away with it and the faculty told us that thing, came back at a faculty meeting and we discussed it so I asked the graduate students what did you all decide; they said well graduate students didn’t want to get rid of it, they would like to keep one foreign language but at a higher level and I nearly fell out of my chair. I said my God, that’s coming from the graduate students. So I said ok and then I asked faculty and the faculty said they’d just as soon do away with it and that’s why when we voted it turned out that we did away with both language requirements and we strongly recommended in place of that a course in computer science. So basically the graduate students, uh, didn’t want to take the easy route and that really, you know, was interesting to me, that they would go back and require for themselves a foreign language at a higher level and I never expected that to come back. But anyhow, having these people come to faculty meetings was good. Now the graduate student and undergraduate student also became part of a council that the Dean started. The Dean started a graduate student council, undergraduate student council mainly for advice and they meet maybe only once a month or less than that, twice a semester or something. But, he also picked their brain, so these people that were elected each semester also became members of the Dean’s Council and that worked out pretty good I thought, uh, you know you kind of think they’re, they’re not going to come to faculty meetings and stuff like that, but I was amazed they’d come to every one. I could send them the agenda and they’d come, and they’d come ready to participate in discussions, just amazing to me. But anyhow, I thought that was a good idea, uh I really don’t know how many other departments tried that, but...

F - I would assume not many. I mean I know that we have, History has a representative that goes, the History grad students has a representative that goes to the meetings, but I’m pretty sure that they’re not allowed to speak at the meetings or participate or you know they definitely don’t have a vote. They can bring; if there’s something the graduate student needs to bring up, um, I think they’re, you know, given the floor, but...

HN - Well that’s another thing. These people could also bring issues to the faculty when we have our meeting and that was a good source of information as far as I was concerned, because they’re griping in the background and you don’t know what the heck the story is, but you bring it to the faculty meeting and they’ll just come out and tell you this is our problem or this is the way we think and we should change these requirements or that requirement and if that’s the way they feel, you know, I’m willing to listen. That worked out pretty well.

F - Do you know if they still do that?

HN - No.

F - You don’t know or they don’t do it?

HN - They don’t, uh, actually in probably around the 1980s or so, the graduate students, undergraduate students quit coming; they didn’t want to do it anymore and I don’t know whether it’s because they needed more time for their other work or whether they just weren’t interested any more, but anyhow, I don’t remember it continuing until I retired. I’d have to; I can look that up, basically. Well when I retired, uh, I wrote a 100 year history of bacteriology and microbiology.

F - Finally you get time off and this is what you do when you’re?

HN - But it’s in two volumes, it’s a 1000 pages full of narrative, uh, history starts in 1896 or so when the first classes were taught. I have listed; I have, in addition to the narrative, an appendix; the narrative is in two big volumes and the appendix is another volume about as big and in it it lists the names of every person that got a degree in the department

F - Since 1896?

HN - Yeah,

F - How did you do that research; how did you even begin?

HN - I’d just go sit and live in the archives is what I did and then when it starts the masters degrees, I list every faculty member, er, graduate students, their thesis title and their name of their mentor and that’s true for the Ph.D.s, too. Thesis title and mentor’s name is listed and then I listed every person that was involved in instructing bacteriology and microbiology from about 1896 and some of these, of course, were zoologists, botanists or whatever, but they taught microbiology and I looked it up in the catalogs going back then and I knew who it was, so I listed all the faculty members from day one until I retired and in addition to that, uh, I have written a, I don’t know what you’d call it, a summary about each person that was, that became Chairman from the first Chairman that took over when the department was formed in 1922 or something and a description of each, the training of each Chairman in the department and then as far as I could, uh, when the faculty members retired, well anyhow, yeah I guess when they retired I wrote up a couple, three pages for every faculty member that’s in this appendix. And actually now that I think about it, I was interviewed by a faculty member at Montana State or some place and so that should be in the section that covers me as a faculty member. He, uh, we used to have a regional society as I mentioned before, where students gave papers and stuff, and we meet at their eight or nine institutions and we meet at each institution, um...

F - Sort of like a rotating schedule?

HN - On a rotating schedule and this guy, faculty member who’s gone now, but he was the archivist for that branch and he wanted to interview Chairs and yeah, the name was Bill Walters as I recall. Anyhow, I put that in place of my description of myself.

F - You didn’t want to write a description of yourself?

HN - No, but then so the alumni, you know, I’m keeping contact with all the alumni and they write back, so as many as possible, uh, I’ve kept letters and pictures and stuff so that’s in the appendix as well and there’s a description of every fund that we endowed and also a description of honors for different faculty or students and people that went on; not everybody, but those that have gotten certain recognition in the areas of public health, medical technology; so that thing is about that big.

F - How long did it take you to do the 2 volume and the appendix?

HN - Oh it took me about 10 years, I guess, I don’t know.

F - And was this your own idea to have this or did someone ask you to do it?

HN - No, I did it because I asked the faculty when I was retiring; anybody interested in doing the history of the department and boy, all I heard was groans. But it’s a fact that I knew more than anybody else, any other faculty because I was there, um, first and early and I had all the, you know, activity in the files, in the department files, so I could look up a lot of stuff. And having found the archives in the library where I can look, go way back, you know, it was pretty, it wasn’t easy but it was, yeah it was time consuming getting this stuff out and when I got done, I never wanted to proof it. There’s errors, spelling errors and stuff in it and I just was glad to finish it and I made five copies. One is in the alumni centre library, one is in the Dean’s office, one is in the, well now the Chair, now the Director of the School of Molecular Biosciences, his office has one. I have one complete set, and the other set went to the archives in the library, so if people wanted to find out what went on, that’s a good source and I had a lot of arguments and problems with the administrative officers on this campus, even Presidents. I didn’t like a policy item, I’d just shoot off a memo and I put all that in there for historical purposes and also my response, um, and so some of that information will be rather personal, and some of them held these administrators in good light and others not so good light.

F - Would you mind telling us a couple of those instances that you had run-ins with the Presidents or a particular policy you didn’t like or; and how that?

HN - Gosh, I don’t remember specifics, you know, I have a copy of the history.

F - What is the name of the book again? I didn’t ask you?

HN - Well 100 Years of Bacteriology and Microbiology at Washington State College, or University, well hey I think its right down in the next room; I can show you what it looks like. It’d be in one place and its helpful for other, uh, anybody who wanted to know about it, they just could look it up and so the Dean’s office used to use it quite a bit and look up information about what went on.

F - So you did this, all the research and everything on your own, you didn’t have?

HN - Yeah, I did most of it after I retired, I guess. I had written a short version of the history about 1980 sometime, and I always thought I’d expand on it and this is the result. It’s 1895 to 1995 but I retired, when, 1993, but I continued inserting stuff until 1999, that’s when the department disappeared and became a member of the School of Molecular Biosciences and I was opposed to all of that

F - Why is that?

HN - One of the problems I had with the Provost is that he and the President suggested that the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences split into two colleges and I mean, WSU isn’t that big; why would we need two colleges? That means more administrative; two Deans, Associate Deans, fundraising people, and so on. You look at the Dean’s office and there are probably nine or ten people and this would double the number of people

F - And when did they begin talking about that split?

HN - Oh, that was probably in the ‘70s or ‘80s.

F - So it was still Glenn Terrell?

HN - Uh; I really opposed that because they were talking about it in the sense that a division would save money and I couldn’t see how it would save money. So I really, I wrote a memo to Al Yates I believe; he was Provost at that time and he wouldn’t budge, he wouldn’t even listen to me, uh, but anyhow, they did do it and they hired all these extra people and see he wanted to merge departments, uh, instead of splitting departments apart, then he wanted to merge them and form schools, schools of molecular sciences, schools of biological sciences and I said gee what you are gonna have, soon as you do that you get rid of Chairs, sure, but Chair, there’s only one in a department, but in the school, there’s the Director, Associate Director, Director of Graduate Education, Director of Undergraduate Education and they hired somebody for taking care of scholarships and committees and making awards and stuff and so that increased the number of administrators again and I fought that, too, but you know, it didn’t make that much difference. They said well one Chair complains about this, but uh who is he?

F - So now that it’s the School doesn’t, they don’t have separate Chairs for each?

HN - No, they don’t.

F - Ok.

HN - But they hire a, what do they call, Coordinator or something.

F - That’s who the faculty go to when they have issues or?

HN - Well in the School of Molecular Sciences there’s microbiology, there’s genetics and cell biology, there’s biochemistry and biophysics; I think those are the units in there and they each have a Coordinator, something like a Chair, you know, they used to be headed by a Chair and now they have a Coordinator or somebody designated to do that, so basically they’ve increased the number of people involved in administration.

F - And are those coordinators teaching classes at all?

HN - Oh yeah, they teach, right, they teach, that’s their job primarily. This other would be secondary responsibilities, but I’ve never been part of the School so I don’t know what it’s like.

F - And when you were Chair, you were still teaching, too?

HN - I taught the same load I came in 1959 to teach; three courses a semester, a year and, well one of the three I taught each semester and then one major course each semester, so.

F - What was your tenure process like in the ‘60s, early ‘60s?

HN - Of course there was an annual review every year, so the faculty member; I used to meet with the faculty member. They knew where they stood after one year, two years, three years. I write a summary and they get it and it’s in their files and by the time the sixth year rolls around, the seventh year would be tenure time, so there all of the faculty, the tenured faculty, get together and discuss the pros and cons of tenure for this particular individual. As I recall, um, I provide the basic information, uh, like the annual reports and stuff so they know what’s been going on until then, and decide on whether the person is, should be given tenure or not. I think I was responsible or faculty in my administration there were one; there were about two or three that did not get tenure. The others did, and the faculty were pretty stringent in decisions, you know. When you deny a person tenure you really look at all aspects and one that is usually not looked at is how does he relate to students. Of course teaching and research is the primary thing we look at, and whether they can bring in grants is another thing that’s important, so I think, uh, and the number of publications, uh, that’s considered, too.

F - You must have seen the requirements change from the time you got?

HN - Yes. They changed a great deal.

F - Became much more competitive?

HN - Yeah, uh, with my, uh, resume, if I uh, particularly after I became Chair, I would never give myself tenure. I don’t have the credentials that we required of other people, and; as it so happened, I already had tenure and I had; all my promotions were very rapid, too. I came with an Instructor in ’59 and I was Full Professor I think in ’72, something like that.

F - Do you; I think this happened in the mid ‘80s and I can’t remember the exact name of the group, but something like the Association of Research Professors, is that the right name?

HN - Yeah, there was an association.

F - Were you part of that?

HN - Uh, I don’t remember if I was or not.

F - I think they dealt something with tenure issues and kind of...

HN - Yeah, that’s right

F - ...and kind of normalizing it on campus?

HN - Yeah, later on, uh, there were committees like that after the department made a recommendation and had accumulated all the information, it would go to some, that was like an advisory committee to the Dean and they would look at it and make their comments and stuff and so they were also involved in, well in supporting and not supporting a faculty member, so a person was scrutinized quite carefully I would say at this institution, at least in the sciences they were.

F - Uh huh. You must not have had time for, or been required to be on university-wide committees?

HN - I was on a lot of committees.

F - Oh you were, ok, tell me about some of those; I would assume that you just would not have time.

HN - Well I don’t even remember most of them, uh, but anyhow, well of course on the Curriculum Advisory Committee, I was a member of that all the time I was at WSU because I advised students all the time.

F - So basically all the Chairs would have been on?

HN - Not all Chairs, but people that advise; some Chairs don’t advise.

F - Oh I see, okay.

HN - And I served on the committee, the Title IX committee, I remember that.

F - I just, uh, well before the holidays, talked to Sue Durrant.

HN - Yeah, Sue was on the committee and actually I used to go; at that time I went to the gym and had a locker in the locker room and stuff and I had voted to do away with that locker room, give it to the women I forget basketball team or something and so we moved our lockers to; where did we go? We went to the new gym and interestingly enough, they moved all the lockers out of there; I still had the same locker that I started with fifty years ago and until this last fall, had the same lock, but the Rec Center took over the operation, the faculty recreation, and so they said the old locks belonged to the College of Education and so we are giving everybody new locks. So I have a new lock, but anyhow, I have the same locker, its never been renovated or painted or anything, the same thing. But anyhow, yeah, I remember serving on a, uh, what was that committee, parking? One that sets policy on different color parking lots and the fee structure, stuff like that, I think one of my early committees.

F - Were you asked to be on these committees?

HN - Yeah.

F - You were asked?

HN - Yeah, they called and said would you serve on this.

F - Because why would you choose to be on that committee?

HN - Yeah, I wouldn’t choose to do any of this stuff, but yeah, they’d call, oh you know, depends on who’s calling I suppose, but I said yeah, ok, and there was a health and safety committee and God I don’t remember. Oh, you know, as a Chair I had to serve on the faculty executive committee and that was, uh, well no, that wasn’t Chairs, that was just because there weren’t that many on the faculty executive committee. I served on that a number of terms. There were only about eight or nine people and all of our recommendations went directly to the President. That was a pretty important one. That set up policies for tenure and stuff like that for the university. I don’t remember what else I was involved in, but that’s plenty.

F - Well I think we covered just about everything. I was going; I always ask everyone usually the last question what, you know, do you consider your greatest legacy, or what are you most proud of, but it sounds to me like it’s probably your, the scholarships you were able to set up.

HN - Yeah, I would say so. See there’s our first Chairman, there’s our second Chairman and third Chairman. And these are write-ups on every Chairman. And the faculty, emeritus faculty and my faculty that I hired in 1969 died a week and a half ago, so I have his obituary here. I used to go see him every week at the nursing home for six months or more and the last time I went was on a Friday and he didn’t look good to me.

F - What, who’s that?

HN - That’s Keith McIvor, and he died on the following Sunday, so he lived only a few days longer, and I have a write-up on him as a faculty member. These are typical ones. Now he was a graduate student, uh, you might know the name from the, uh, William R. Wiley Symposium that’s on campus, that’s named after him. He was a Ph.D. student in our department. He was a very good friend of mine because we were in graduate school together at the University of Illinois and I came here in 1959, he came in 1960 to do a Ph.D., so he graduated from the department and uh, of course received these honors, but he became the CEO of Battelle Northwest Laboratories in Richland, the top man, and he died, uh, interestingly enough of a bacterial infection, it’s too bad. Here’s a write-up on all the funds, I guess. And awards. I should organize this thing better, but...

F - You must have kept everything.

HN - Well uh, anything that came across that was interesting, yeah. Now this is interesting because she was an employee of mine way back in the ‘60s. She, um, prepared culture media for the laboratory courses and she celebrated her 95th birthday this past summer and the woman that preceded her lived to be over 100, and a lady that helped her dishwasher, she washed all the tubes and plates and stuff like that, she lived to be over 100. I don’t know why it is but people who worked in this laboratory were really, had longevity. But anyhow, you know... This is the history of the regional society, I don’t know why I wrote that, oh that was written by another faculty member. I just stuck it in here I guess. But anyhow, I need to put this back together so it doesn’t fall apart.

F - Was there any; I do have one more question; was there any; did you have any offers that might have tempted you away from WSU or thought about going to another school?

HN - Well I had no offers but I remember hearing from Long Beach State; they needed a Dean and they wanted me to apply for it and I said thank you but no thank you, I didn’t want to become a Dean.

F - More paperwork?

HN - Didn’t want to be a Chair, so you know.

F - Yeah, I was curious to know if they’d ever offered you a Deanship here.

HN - No, I wouldn’t have taken it.

F - No?

HN - Because you lose contact with the students and that was the only thing I miss after retiring is the students. Uh, I don’t uh, miss the Chairmanship or the job, but it’s the students that I think are important. Here’s the regional meetings. See, whatever, it was at WSU once, twice, three times; I was Vice President one year and the President the next year

F - And what was that association again?

HN - This is the Northwest Branch of the American Society for Microbiology. And this ended in 1995 or I assume it continued; I have no idea. So at first we met at Gonzaga or see, I don’t remember going there, but that Oregon State, University of Idaho, University of Oregon, Montana State, University of Montana, University of Washington; those were the, oh, and University of British Columbia, those were the schools that were participating in this Branch. But that’s it and I refer to it now and then because I go to the, uh, fiftieth reunions, you know, when students come back - fiftieth and sixtieth reunions. If somebody comes back in microbiology or bacteriology, the Dean asks me to go, so I go to the lunch and I think the last one I went to was probably two years ago and they’re beginning to be students that were here when I came and fifty years in coming back, so I know those students from before, it’s just amazing. What are those; I think those are from the luncheon. But anyhow, it’s fun to see these people again.

F - Uh huh, well, thank you.

HN - Well I don’t know if I did any good but you’re welcome to any of this.