Oral History Program Koji Sato Interviewed by Michael Cole 1 April 2016 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Koji Sato Interviewed by Michael Cole 1 April 2016 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Sato, Koji, an oral history by Michael Cole, 1 April 2016, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Koji Sato, a local owner of ProMedica Orthopedics. It is being conducted on April 1, 2016 at the home of Koji Sato in Bountiful, Utah concerning leadership. The interviewer is Michael Cole. KS: My name is Koji Sato. I was born and raised in Salt Lake City. A little background on me: it would help if I told you a little background on my mother, and how that came about. My mother was born in Karo, Wyoming, but had the decision to either go back to Japan at the start of the war or to stay here and go to the camps that were made for the Japanese Americans. My grandmother and grandfather were the ones who had to make the decision and my grandmother and grandfather made the decision -- because they were split up -- that my grandfather would stay at the camps and my grandmother would go back with her two daughters to Japan. Fortunately, or unfortunately, their land was in Hiroshima, and as you know they got to experience the dropping of the Atomic Bomb. And that is a story in and of itself. But anyway, my mother came back to the United States after the war was over, about 1946 or ‘47, around there. She came to Salt Lake City because she had some friends in Salt Lake City and that is where my mother met my biological father, who was Hawaiian. I was born in 1952, which was seven years after the war. I was born at the old St. Mark's Hospital and then we lived in a house that was, well, not a house, but a store on 1st South. Back then, 1st South was what they called "Little Tokyo" and all the Japanese came back and lived here, and they started their stores. There was a watch store, there was Mikado Restaurant, Sage 1 Farm was there, a grocery store. My mother had a store; it was a gift store, and it was called "Amy's Japanese Gift Shop". Later it became "Amy's Cigarette and Magazine Shop", because the Japanese products didn't sell very well. I was born, and my biological father unfortunately left, so my mother was there to raise two of us, my older sister and myself. Anyway, that's the story in general. I guess the other reason I mention this was because one, the war had been over for over seven years, [but] my mother had some fantastic stories about coming back and the prejudice of being Japanese -- of course, being American and going to Japan, being a foreigner and a traitor and not knowing the language, and then coming back here and being Japanese after the war had finished. I remember even as a little kid, 4- or 5-years-old, the persecution that she received being Japanese. The first question is [about] my childhood and teen years and where I grew up. Like I said, I grew up in Salt Lake. I lived -- we went from 1st South, we got a house, luckily, over on 3rd North and about 5th West, and anyone from Salt Lake City knows that that is not a really good place in town, a pretty bad area. There were a lot of Mexicans and some blacks and then us. There was another Asian family by us; I think they were Chinese. There were some whites, but mostly blacks and Mexicans. I went to an Elementary called Jackson Elementary. It was a rough school. It seemed like I was fighting every day. I was in a gang. A lot of people think, “Wait, this is Utah - there were gangs back then?” I had to make a decision whether to go with the blacks, the whites, or the Mexicans. Since I 2 probably looked more like the Mexicans than the whites or the blacks, I joined the Mexican gang. And these gangs back then, they weren't like the gangs today. We didn't kill anybody. Our initiation was to steal something. The bigger the item, the more praise we got. But we bullied ourselves around to the other gangs and there were fistfights. There weren't knives or guns back then, or we didn't use them. Mostly we just played together and did things together. So I actually quit the gang. They started assessing some dues and I couldn't afford it, and I was literally accosted after school by five or six gang members because I quit, and I remember having a fight with each one of them. So that was a fun childhood. Growing up, I was home a lot. My grandmother moved in, spoke only Japanese, didn't speak English. I didn't learn Japanese, or didn't think I knew Japanese, I just heard her speak all the time. She was very mean; the Japanese believe that you respect your elders, and for some reason I didn't learn that early in life, so she was always punishing me. I remember we had a coal cellar, and she put me in that coal cellar many, many times for disobeying or whatever. My mother was always gone working two jobs so I didn't see her very often, and my sister was always playing with her friends since she was three years older than I was. So I kind of grew up playing with these gang members and I don't remember back then a lot [about] being a minority. I mean, definitely the word "Jap" was used quite a bit, and I had to fight anybody who said it, because that was the way to do it. Literally, I fought anybody who said it in front of me. And I took martial arts because my mother made me because I 3 was so small, [so] I was able to take on these people that -- and there was a lot of prejudice that I didn't see, because again, I would beat them up if they said anything, so I guess they didn't say much to me. But I remember hearing it behind the fences or at the school yard, and then I'd go after them, and then that stopped. I'd say more so than the fact that I was a minority was the fact that we didn't have any money; that's where the embarrassment was. The kids used that against me, that we didn't have money, I didn't have a baseball like everyone else, or a bike like everyone else. So I think more that that was the childhood that I remember, not having anything, more so than being a minority, even though I, again, heard quite a few comments about it. My mother had a hard time getting jobs and part of it was being a minority and part the antiquation. So that was my childhood years. In my teenage years, we were able to move; my mother got remarried and we were able to move into our first home on 25th South and 8th East. Before that I went to Lincoln Jr. High, and from there to South High. Most of my friends at South High, again, were from minorities. We had Greeks, blacks, Hispanics -we called them Mexicans then, but I think you get in trouble if you say that now -- and a few Asians: Japanese, a few Chinese. I remember that there were about four or five girls that were Japanese. I remember distinctly that one of the Japanese girls, or American-Japanese, asked me to a girl's dance, because I turned her down, because I didn't want to be seen with another Asian; I was afraid that someone would say something to me. I always felt like I would be 4 looked down on if I dated someone in my own nationality. But that was the fact, that maybe… again, I felt that there were things said about that. It was okay to date anybody else, but I just felt like if I dated an Asian girl I would be ridiculed. So that was growing up in high school. My family… my mother had joined the LDS church when I was 8. Probably the reason that she joined, and she states that, is she didn't have a babysitter a lot and the missionaries told her that they could take me and my sister to church on Wednesdays and Sundays and she said, "Great." And then when they asked her if she would be baptized, she said, "Will you keep taking my kids to church?" and they said, "Yes," and she said, "Okay, I'll join." So that was what happened then. We went to church, and that's probably where my values came. My mother became very active after about ten years of not knowing what she was doing. But she, right away, took off on the values and instilled that with both my sister and I. Both me and my sister went on missions and are still active in the church now. The other thing was education. One, because I guess there was a lot of Japanese spoken by my grandmother- now, my mother spoke hardly any Japanese. She was afraid, I think, if we spoke Japanese, we would be ridiculed. So she made it known to us that she was only going to speak English to us. At that time, I didn't mind. If anything, I didn't want to speak Japanese. I remember taking some Japanese classes down at the Buddhist church and hating it, because it was so hard to learn, and of course when I went on my mission, they 5 called me to the Japan mission, and I kind of said, "Great, now I have to learn the language that I didn't want to learn when I was younger.” So anyway, going back to the education- I was always behind, more so because I didn't have anyone to guide me and help me with homework and I was always playing more than I was studying, and so I was always behind in school. My grades were C's and D's. I was happy when I got a B. I think the main thing was I got a couple teachers in my junior year that really pushed me hard, and I think from then on I studied a little bit more, but it was mostly B's. If I ever got an A it was a celebration. And it was in gym or those easy classes. So, education, I didn't really have a chance. And when you go to those schools that I went to, the education… I don't think they would admit it, but I don't think we ever got the best teachers in those schools. They were great people, and they knew exactly what we needed, and that was attention. But to learn? We were way behind the East High and Highland High kids when we went to college, and that was the thing: I think South High could probably count on two hands the number of kids from my graduating class who went to college. Everybody else went off to work, or off to war, as the Vietnam War was going on when I graduated. And then hobbies: it asks a question about hobbies. I loved sports, anything with a ball involved. We didn't have soccer back then, but we played a lot of softball, baseball, stick ball, tetherball, if anybody knows what that is. I loved the girls' games of hopscotch and hoola-hoop from back then. Anything with hand-eye coordination I was pretty good at, pretty fast, even though I was 6 born with what they called "pigeon-toed" with both my feet turned in. My mother couldn't afford the corrective shoes, so she would just put my shoes on backwards to help to fix my pigeon-toes, and apparently it worked a little bit, because I became one of the fastest runners in elementary and junior high. I didn't stumble as much as I used to, so I guess those corrective shoes of turning my shoes backward seemed to help. But again, sports: since I took martial arts, wrestling became an easy sport for me. I played a lot of baseball. I did baseball, and then wrestling; as I mentioned, because I did martial arts, wrestling was an easy sport. I did well in high school. I actually got a scholarship to college that I got from that, which I didn't finish because I hated it, during college. And then I went to college. And I would say that the only reason I went to college, and I admit this, is because when my first biological father died, who I didn't know, his social security was given to me as long as I was in school. There was no money to go to college, but because of this social security from my dad, that was the only reason I was able go to college, and I continued to go to college until I had to decide on whether to go on a church mission. The hardest decision I had to make was that if I went on a mission, I would lose 2 years of that money that was coming in, and at that time it was increasing to the point where it paid for my car payment and my entertainment and my school, which I wouldn't have had except for the social security. MC: What experiences led you to believe that you could be a leader? KS: Again, being a leader to me is maybe a little different to me that what other 7 people might think about being a leader. A leader I guess is one who leads. I, at first, growing up, was a follower; when you had to do what you needed to survive, being poor and a minority, even though I lived with a lot of minorities. I felt the monetary aspect of our lives and lack of education was what maybe pushed me to succeed. You either had to be a wolf or a lamb. You either get eaten up or you eat. I think that is part of the leadership that helps you survive, and then to take over. I remember as a young kid in scouts, they would always pick kids over me to be the leader because they were more popular than me. But I always did what was needed to be a good leader because I didn't want to be a follower anymore. I did that not because I was Japanese, because my scout group was all Japanese and we didn't have any "white eyes" for a while, it was mostly Japanese though. We were at the Daichi Branch so it didn't seem like I was a minority because everyone there was Japanese. When I started going to school, most of my friends were American, Caucasians. It's kind of funny because I was their only Japanese friend, [but] I couldn't speak Japanese, and they made fun of me saying that even though I was Japanese, they believed that I wasn't. They would try and line me up with other Japanese girls but I wouldn't go out with them, and they made fun of me for that as well. I remember in junior high, two kids came up to me and called me a "Jap" and [said] that I should go back to Japan. And I remember taking them on. And after I knocked one down and put him to the ground, he never said anything after that. We became friends and 20 years later I asked him 8 about that and he said that "My father was prejudiced with any minorities. My uncles, everybody." If you look at most kids in my generation, that's how it was. The parents were the ones that were prejudiced against minorities. My friend even said that. He said, "I didn't know any different. All I knew was that my parents thought that way, so I became that way." That's how it gets passed on from generation to generation. So going back to the question, being a leader growing up: I definitely didn't want to be a follower. I wanted to be a leader, and I did everything I could to do that. It was a struggle, because I didn't have any help. I had to do it all on my own. I remember that I had a paper route when I was 7- or 8-years-old. I remember selling papers on the side of the road as long as I could. I forgot to mention: my mother managed a little motel and we lived in the back of it. My sister and I, as young as 5and 6-years-old, cleaned up the rooms, picked up stuff. So the work ethic that I picked up I think really helped in the leadership capacity. The definition of leadership is being someone that leads, and I think that is something that I always wanted to be, more than being a follower. The third question would be, what are your core values and how did they influence your experiences? I had a scout master who really pushed us to get our Eagle Scout Awards, which all five of us did. And the core value of my mother working - meaning, the work ethics that she had - I always felt that I never wanted to have the jobs that my mom had. Waitressing, working at a laundromat. She washed clothes, folded the clean clothes. We used to deliver papers. I remember the collections. I hated collections. I remember going door to door and I would see 9 people see us out their windows and they wouldn't answer the door because they didn't want to pay us, because back then they didn't send it in. You had to collect the money. That wasn't the life I wanted, for myself or for my kids; I didn't want them to have to go through what I went through. But I think those values, and of course the church - any religion. I believe if you follow those principles and you have guidance, if you follow those values the best you can to succeed… And then going on a mission was a big change in my life, in that you had to succeed. You put all of your training, knowledge, everything you had, which at that age wasn't much, into trying to convert people from other religions, especially the Japanese people who are not Christian at all. And that was a challenge. Again, as I was on my mission I was a district leader, a zone leader, and they actually asked me to be the assistant to the president and I turned it down, because I didn't want to not be out in the field, because that's where I could best serve the mission president. You don't do that anymore; that's not an option. Those leadership capacities helped me in life because you're in charge of a bunch of 19- to 20-year-olds, and you have to get them doing things the right way and obeying the rules. I remember about halfway, I was a zone leader. The church changed the way the discussions worked. My job was to go around to the missionaries and have them throw out their old books and learn the new discussions. And that was hard, because no one wanted to do it. That was, I think, again, the description of a leader: one who leads and can help others change their directions, and come up with a plan how to do it. I decided I was 10 going to have them throw away their old books. We weren't told to do it that way, but that was the way I decided to do it. Then they couldn't go back to the old ones. That's what I would have done, gone back to the old one, if I was told to do something new. We also helped them set goals, things to learn to achieve in a certain timetable. So that was, again, the values that I felt helped me in the leadership experiences I had. MC: How has that helped in your leadership today? KS: Again, I'm in a business where I am self-employed. I have my own company and I have several reps and people that work for me. There are times when you have to get them to do things, to change. I'm in the medical business, and it seems like every two years the technology changes, so when we get a new product, it's different and it's new. We have to get our reps to change from the old to the new, as well as get our clients, the orthopedic doctors, to change. It's hard to get them to change, because they've been trained one way. But there's ways to do it, and I've come up with some different ways. That goes back to the values I've learned; they are pretty basic and you use those same principles and they seem to work. MC: Who is a person that has made an impact on your life? KS: I can think of a few people. I have told you about my scout master, who did everything he could to get us to be eagle scouts. The thing I learned from him is not to give up. Because we were a tough group of kids, and he never gave up on us. He was one of those that was very influential, in that I started something with A and got to Z, and got my Eagle Scout, which was hard, especially where we had to travel so far to get to our meetings. 11 And then I had a good friend who got me in this business that I'm in now. He was influential in that he was one of the hardest-working people I knew. He also grew up poor. But more so than that, he was driven, and he worked hard; he could sell ice to the Eskimos. I learned a lot of selling techniques from him. The main thing is hard work; that's what I tell my kids now. I don't know how anybody can be successful without hard work. Once in a while you might inherit some money, but still, I don't know how anyone is successful without hard work. Those were the two people who were most influential to me. Going back to the minority aspect, Japanese-Americans are not considered minorities now, in the textbooks of the federal governments. So if you apply for benefits, there's no box to check that you are Japanese. You can be Cambodian, Spanish, Black, but the Japanese are not now considered minorities. That might be because most of us are pretty prideful. My mom never did ask my biological father for child support because of her pride. I think that that didn't help her get anywhere, being prideful. But the Japanese people are very prideful, and I think that reason… Even if they had a checklist of things that we can get from the government, I doubt that in my mother's or my generations, they would never have asked for that help from the government. My mother had to practically be forced to get help in the form of food stamps, even though she more than qualified. The church had to step in and she really had a hard time accepting help from the Welfare program. She hated it. I hated it. Back then, they would come by and leave these crates on your doorstep with milk and cheese and 12 canned food, and they would drop it off around 5:30 in the morning. I remember waking up and taking the crate off the doorstep at 5:30 in the morning, because I didn't want anyone to see that we had that crate on our doorstep, to know that we were getting Welfare. The only reason I mention this about the minority was that I felt - I think that one of the questions was... what was the advice? The advice that I would give to a Japanese American, or any minority, in the new generation, is that one of my pet peeves is when anyone asks for minority status to get anything, and I don't believe that they should unless it is absolutely needful. I would have a hard time asking. It's not a pride thing, but I don't think you should take advantage of being a minority. Sometimes I joke about it, like I wish I could make more money because I'm a minority, or I joke about how I wish I could get certain things because I am a minority. But I don't feel like you should use that to get things that are not worked for. Just my opinion. Number five, then: the challenges of being a minority leader in Utah, which is predominately white. It's true, Utah is predominately white; but again, Utah is an unusual state also, because of the religion. I remember that we used to have these Japanese government officials that would come in and talk to us in the Japanese ward about the issues that the government wanted to bring up. I remember that my aunt that went to one of the Japanese camps with my grandfather during the war was given $5,000 because the government politicians decided that they should be compensated. My aunt really needed the money, not because she was a minority, but because she was a divorcee with 13 two kids. But I remember these politicians coming to the Japanese ward to talk to us about programs we needed to know about but also what we needed to do to help in our community and help in the Japanese community, because there's a lot of Japanese Christians and Buddhists and they get together and they have their activities, dancing. And it's funny because in Utah, if you go to those, it's more whites than Japanese that go to these because so many of them are returned missionaries who married girls that are minorities. Utah is a little bit different. If you are from New York or maybe L.A. or one of the big cities, there are more cliques where the minorities stay together. MC: Where do you work again? KS: I have a company called Promedica. It is an orthopedic medical supply company. I have an office on 39th South and 3rd East. We are mostly at the hospitals. We sell to the hospitals and orthopedic surgeons. Been doing it for 34 years. It's been fun. MC: Thanks, Koji. 14