Bob Martin was dean of students at San Jose State and was hired to fill the position that vacated by Sammy Bens. And he was from Middlebury College in the East. And he was like a breath of fresh air in the administration at San Jose State. He was young and single and spent a lot of time with the students in the student activities. He believed that school administrator can associate with students at a different level than currently accepted. So we spent a lot of time together because we had similar interests in the school he, and encouraged me to pursue the doctorate program also. Eventually we became like colleagues, friends. And he proved to me that you can associate with students on a different level than past accepted practices.

Don Leu was dean of the School of Education and a prestigious researcher in school administration. He had a very fine reputation in the state of Michigan and was recruited to come to San Jose and to remodel the department to become a more research-oriented school. And he also saw the need for greater participation by minority groups in the school and the graduate school, particularly in looking at the data about the number of Asian Americans and Blacks and Mexican Americans, graduate students in the in the graduate program. He was responsible for getting a grant... to get more students in the program. He didn't have a narrow view of what the academic should be. And he spent a lot of time talking about the need for multicultural education in the graduate program. And he single handedly got the grants from local industry to select two Mexican American graduate students, one Black, and one Asian, to start the program. Because the difficulty at that time was that that you had to take time off from your present job to earn enough money to go to graduate school full time. It was too expensive. Most people couldn't, couldn't take that time off. And yet he was able to get enough funding to help these students. And so I was able to move to Lansing, Michigan, and spend my two, three years there as a graduate student. Otherwise, I couldn't afford to do that.

Bob Martin and I worked together on quite a few projects, and one of the ones that I remember the most was his, his drive, to make sure that all students at San Jose State had the same opportunities in all fields, not only in the academic field, but in the social area also. So he was concerned about what impact that college fraternities and sororities were having on the student body, because that was the only social outlet for students. And yet, and he was a Greek himself when he was a student. Yeah. And so he saw the prejudices that was the Greek system and was very interested in seeing some change, which is very difficult because at San Jose State, at that time, there were no people of color in those organizations, because they had clauses that said the non-whites cannot become members. And and that was true of all of the sororities and fraternities, they were national organizations. So it wasn't just a local chapter that had this clause, but it was the national organization you had to change. And he, even as a Greek, threw his authority behind the, the move to try to get San Jose State to make that change. Fortunately, in San Jose there is a chapter of Delta Upsilon which had which was a non secret organization.

And at that time the fraternities had secret handshakes and secret, everything secret. And it was difficult to penetrate even for some whites, because they had the blackball system for the candidate, and the fraternity had to agreed to award a membership to this group. So it was very exclusive. And on top of that, there were no people of color, even though the fraternity didn't have a clause, there was a gentlemen's agreement that you couldn't become a member unless you were white. And that was not too long ago. Yeah. In fact he, as I said, he was a Greek himself, he was a student and he changed his position, not position, but his mind. When we were together he'd talk about what a mistake that was and what we could do to make that change. And that change was made for the first time in 200 year history at San Jose State.

(Interviewer) Were you, were you not an example of that change?

I was that change.

(Interviewer) Yeah. You were the change. Yeah.

I became a member of Delta Upsilon three months before I graduated in 1955.

(Interviewer) So Paul, what were you looking for in terms of leadership qualities when you participated, and what was important to you?

Change in particular, and change in the curriculum; be consistent with what the policies of the Board of Trustees was at that time.

(Interviewer) When they asked you about San Jose Unified, did you encourage Pete Mesa to apply also?

To what?

(Interviewer) To apply for the superintendency of San Jose.

Pete Mesa? Yeah. He was probably the brightest man I ever worked with and he was my vice principal and then my deputy superintendent. There's no question that he was outstanding. He was a professional baseball player before he became a teacher.

(Interviewer) You were his mentor?

Yeah.

(Interviewer) Paul, where did your philosophy of inclusion and diversity... When, when did you become aware of that was a part of who you are?

I don't, I don't think it's something that you just all of a sudden happens to you. I think it's the experiences you have as a child growing up and experiencing in the playground what is fair and what is not fair and being able to judge success and failure, happiness and sadness, ability to get along with others, all of those things.

(Interviewer) And your sensibility as a Japanese American, you know, was behind all this?

I think to some degree, yes. I think you can't help but have that happen in terms of being sensitive to the needs of others, to be, being able to weigh what is fair and what is not fair, or what is good and what is bad.

(Interviewer) Did you ever have-- feel any bitterness, or a sense of, you know, you had to make things right with the past, you know, because of your experience with internment and your parents' experience, the whole community's experience. Did you have, okay, there was always this sort of a thorn in your side. Did you feel that?

Not, I would say no. That it was not upfront always in my mind. It was always there or in the background. Of course, you can't help but take US history class and not say that there are this discrimination that exists. And so, you don't have to dig too deeply to see that there are some inequities.

(Interviewer) Did you find yourself, Paul, as you were moving up the ranks in education, and as you were put into positions where you were responsible to make decisions about who, who you were going to hire? Do you ever feel the pressure not to hire a person of color?

No. If anything, just the opposite. Pressure to hire people of color and sometimes who weren't as qualified as another candidate, to be able to select a person based on abilities rather than color. I think that if there were any pressures that it would be from the school board supporting some candidates that they had a particular interest in. Well, changing curriculum is very difficult, particularly with tenured teachers. You, you have to be able to support it with with sufficient funding. And you have to have some reason for changes in the curriculum-- the teacher is the curriculum. They teach what they feel is most important. And that could differ from the district policies passed by the Board of Trustees. But the board has the final say. It's very difficult to work with a board with diverse set of interests. And so the best way is to point out why the changes have to be made in the curriculum and get them to agree to make that change before you present it to the public. But the school board members are political animals, so it takes a lot of individual one on one meeting, and generally if it has some substance to it, it will pass and be supported.

One public appearance I made there was... I talked about supporting Asian candidates, and a member, a young man in the audience said, 'Why should we just support Asian candidates? Why can't we judge them based on ability rather than skin color?' That he was against what I was saying when I said this is made to support other Asian candidates. And, and that feeling exists. The lack of support or, I don't know what it is, you call it cultural jealousy or... but when you run like Mike does, you get exposed to that kind of thinking that they're not going to support another Asian because they don't have a good self-concept to begin with. You know, it was a great experience for us because we had quite a bit of freedom in the district because the district office didn't want anything new. This is the Sunnyvale High School that was for poor, poor minorities. And we want to spend our time with Homestead and Fremont and that whatever Pete [Mesa] and Paul [Sakamoto] do, let them do it, keep them out of our hair and that was the general feeling and the board supported that.

Yeah, there were eight teachers in the art department and that, I mean, no high school would have eight teachers teaching high teaching art. But we had three interns from Stanford, two from San Jose State. Pete was very good at putting things together.

(Interviewer) Were they were were they a diverse group of teachers, Paul?

Yeah.

(Interviewer) So a lot of the kids, a lot of the bright kids took art. Cuz they found refuge there. And I think they found–

All kids, different kids too, because the juvenile probation people would come in and say, 'Where's so-and-so?' The student they're looking for? Oh, he's in the art department.

(Interviewer) So, Paul, you said that you did your internship at a mental health institution or the prison in Michigan.

Oh, I was part of a grant that, that's how I made a living at Michigan. I was, I was full-time researcher in the school of sociology, actually. And I did a study of the interaction between the prison guards and inmates, and they asked me to come up with different suggestions on how that could be improved so that they wouldn't have the the riots and the, the fights with the inmates. So I spent full time visiting Jackson Prison, which is the wall-- the largest wall prison in the world. And they said, I asked them 'What percentage were Black for inmates?' And they said, 'Oh, maybe 30%.' And it was more like 70 to 80%. And the study that I did lasted for over a year. And after it was turned over to the governor, it was shredded. So so that never saw the light of day. So. Well, all my work went into the garbage.

(Interviewer) What percentage of the correctional officers were white or how diverse were they?

About 80% were white. Because it was one of the few jobs they could get because it's out in the middle of nowhere. They built these prisons.

(Interviewer) And so you study those, when you do the studies, don't you have copies for the archives or copies or your own copy?

I had one copy, but the copy that went to the governor at that time was was shredded.

(Interviewer) But you have a copy?

Yeah, I had a copy.

(Interviewer) Is there a possibility to read that?

I know that was too long ago.

(Interviewer) But you have a copy, though, right?

I have a copy. I'm not sure I could dig it up. I'm sure there have been many studies done before between the now and back then.

(Interviewer) But this like anchor it... it's not new, you know, it's.

It was a great opportunity because I had run the prison, and I could go to any department and show my badge and they would allow me to go visit. And the inmates were fascinated by me because I was Asian American. And in Michigan, there ain't very many Asians and and prisons are living on less than that, you know, because most of them are Black. My advisor was the dean of the School of Education called Dr. Featherstone. And he, he saw me lingering around his office once, and he says, 'What's the matter, Paul? You look down.' I said, 'I'm running out of money, all right? I can't support myself and the graduate program.' So he said, 'Wait a minute.' And he went into another room and came out and he had a grant study in the prisons of Michigan. And, and with what's a very handsome stipend. And even though I didn't have any training in sociology, he got the grant for me. He was very powerful in the whole faculty structure and... so I was able to spend all my time-- not all my time-- most of my time in Jackson. And I visited every prison in the state of Michigan, gathering information. And I got to know several of the inmates at Jackson pretty well. In fact, they, they hired one of them after he got released. And I got a scholarship for another inmate, even while he was in prison. Yeah. So there were, I didn't, you know, I didn't believe that they were all victims of society. But there are ones that somehow got lost, you know, and could be saved. But there are ones that somehow got lost, you know, and could be saved.

(Interviewer) Paul, do you think it's that background in your interest in that study that got you appointed to the Santa Clara County Justice Commission?

I don't think so.

(Interviewer) Because you, you served.

Yeah, I didn't I don't think people even knew I went to Michigan.