 Ah, 10 o'clock on a given Thursday. Our last day of broadcasting here in Pioneer Plaza is very important. And Jane Grudzel joins us on this very iconic day. Talk about Voices of Hawaii, which is very interesting. And I'm so glad we found you. We found you through Willie Moore. Yes. He was one of our regular guests, an amazing man, in his own right. He's been one of my supporters. I interviewed him. And since then, we've been best friends. That's well you should have. Well, welcome to the show, Jane. Thank you. So you interview people. That's what you do. And you've interviewed, gosh, tons of them. No, not tons. 75. 75. OK, that's a lot. As of yesterday. Yesterday was number 75. OK. That's my last one for this phase of the project. OK. And this phase of the project, as opposed to other phases of the project. By the way, the project is Voices of Hawaii. And it's a series of interviews that Jane has been doing in order to write a book, publish your books, this year. Rather, 2020. I'm already in there. 2020. I hope so. With these interviews. The interviews will be verbatim? No. Well, that's an interesting thing. I start out, and they would be verbatim. I would just take the interview. And then I let people edit their interviews to make sure they're accurate. And then we also edit them for readability, just to make sure I don't ask any stupid questions. And then I thought, well, I'll just plot that in a book. I don't think there's an audience for that. So what I'm doing instead is taking the interviews and harvesting material, like I might talk to you, or I might talk to Willie, or someone else. And you all talk about some similar topic, maybe TV in Hawaii. So I put it over here in the chapter on media in Hawaii. Or you might have talked about philanthropy, so I'll put it in the chapter about philanthropy. I've interviewed several ranchers, so I'm doing ranching. Voices of Hawaii is the topic. The title made change. Some people aren't happy, because voices of Hawaii means every voice in Hawaii. And surely I've just interviewed the people I know, and the people who've led me. I'll interview you. And you'll say, oh, Jane, you need to interview so-and-so. So I'll call so-and-so and say, would you like to be interviewed? And they say yes. When? Tomorrow? Sure. See you at 9. And that's how the whole thing is gone, just like that. And I've just followed the leads. And when a door opens, I go through it. It takes you. My sort of subtitle that I have for my project is collecting the oral histories of people who have participated in the destiny of Hawaii. The destiny of Hawaii. Isn't that great? People who have participated in the destiny of Hawaii. And I chose dates. I don't know if you knew that my father was a lawyer in Honolulu. And he lived here and worked here as a lawyer from 1941 to 2003. 2004, sorry. Those are the dates I used. That's why the dates you selected, those varied dates. Yes. 1941. 1941 to 2004. That was the year that Garner Anthony changed the telephone number of the Anthony Hottick firm. You remember that firm? Yes, of course. What do you mean? 537, 1941. Because he handled the martial law case. He defended the federal government's determination of martial law in Hawaii. He was so proud of that that he changed the phone number to be 1941. I love that story. I'd never heard that. Oh, that's wonderful. Well, you know, this whole project started because Jim Case, the lawyer, wrote a book called Hawaii Lawyer. And I read it and loved it. And I thought, oh, I wish my father had written a book. Then I realized I knew so many people who knew my father had been hired by my father, trained by my father, worked with my father. And I asked them, there were about 10 of them. And I said, would you let me interview you? We can talk about my father. And we did. And then we talked about their lives and their accomplishments. And the most interesting thing was they each told me about what their passion for the law was. And when they began to talk about why they like security and exchange law, which you're thinking is a big yawn, I was going, really? Tell me more. They made it so interesting. Public utility law, tax law, corporate law. It was a gift. And they told me about my father. But sometimes it's an evolution, don't you know? I mean, it's an evolution where you get into it because some senior partner hands you a case. You have no choice but to take the case. And when the case is over, you know something about that area of the law. And after a while, you develop a kind of retrospective affiliation with that area, retrospective defense of your participation in that area. So what they tell you, their reason is for being in that area, may not have been their reason originally. You find that? Well, they each told me that they went to law school for various reasons. Sometimes it was get out of the military or the draft. And sometimes it was because they didn't want to be a teacher and they didn't know what else to do. So law seemed the thing. However, once they got into law school, each one of them seemed to develop a passion for something. One man told me a fascinating story. He grew up in Fresno, California. His grandfather and his parents were both sent to internment camp. He's Japanese. They were farmers in Fresno. They both went to internment camps during the war. Then when they got out, they didn't know where to go. So they went back to Fresno, where they owned nothing, starting all over again. They learned the lesson of how important land is. So they began to put the land in the name of the children who were citizens because they've been born here. This man, then, from this background grows up to be one of the best-trusted state attorneys in Honolulu because he understands the value of law. Sure, sure, sure. Isn't that great? Shrikes me that the book to come, but the interviews that you've done over the past few years, are mostly lawyers, am I right? No. That's where it started. I interviewed 10 lawyers from my father's firm. And I interviewed at least 10 lawyers from other firms. And that was fascinating, particularly because of the racial glass ceiling that many of the Asians face. They talk about it very openly. And so then I can talk about it very openly in my book. I have one section in which I call segregated neighborhoods. And I talk about that issue. And then integrated board rooms. Integrated board rooms is a wonderful chapter because it tells you how people began to realize, we can't be all one kind. We need to have all of us participating. That wasn't a long time ago. That was more recent. Well, that was the years. Actually, I don't know the years in which that happened. But Henry Clark, for example, went to the gas company where he was a board member. And he said, you know, our consumers are all oriental. That's the word he used. And our employees are mostly oriental. We don't have any on our board. What's wrong with that? And the board said, well, this is the way it's always been. This is the way it will always be. He said, that's not right. And they said, well, go ahead, do something about it. So he did. He got a Chinese man and a Japanese man to be on the board. And that's where it began. You know, we did a program with the Life State Power Association before years ago. I watched it. Called the, what was it called? The Three-Digit Lawyers. The Three-Digit Lawyers. And we had stories from fellows who'd been practicing right around statehood even before. And they had Asian guys. They had some stories about how these mistreated them, wouldn't give them jobs, had the most racist, possible approaches to things. And it really ticked them off. And it actually defined their thinking about how you deal with such issues going forward. I was fascinated because in my time practicing, I really Yes, I'm a Chapsui Fern Lawyer. Chapsui Fern Lawyer. Chapsui Fern Lawyer. So we didn't know race. But back when there was race, and there was a whole generation of lawyers in the Three-Digit crowd that was ticked off about that, even now. So it changed. It changed. And that's what I was going to ask you. I mean, in talking to these people, and you organized it by subject, right? No, I simply interview you. If you're my interviewee, I say, how did you and your family get together? Then you organized it by subject. Well, I harvest out the material that is subject related. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I wanted to try. I know this is not exactly what you intended. But I wanted to try to connect the dots. If you're talking about people, lawyers, and otherwise, who have had whose destiny was intertwined with the destiny of the state, then you have to see it in a dynamic fashion. You have to see the changes that happened in their lives. And in their subject lives. And figure out from that, perhaps a whole new look at the way Hawaii has developed since statehood. Did you feel that happening when you were interviewing? Yesterday was my 75th interview. And I will tell you, after every interview, I'll call my brother and say, John, this is the best one ever. Everyone. So yesterday was the best one ever. That's great. That's wonderful. And it put a lot of things into perspective for me in a way I hadn't thought of it before. It's very difficult to put it all into words. The main thing I want to say is that I'm not a sage and I'm not a philosopher. I'm a collector of stories. My experience is to sit with somebody and hear the glory of their story. It's such a gift that people will sit and tell me their stories that my job is to, to the best of my ability, convey that to my audience. And I want to be clear about one thing. Even though it started as the Marshall Goodsill story, because I wanted to know what my father did at his office. Despite the fact that I worked there for a long time, a messenger girl and receptionist on the weekends, I had no idea what my father did at work. It has grown so far beyond that. And I've interviewed everybody from every top and bottom of the socioeconomic scale, width and breadth of careers. So, let's go back again. Your question is? Well, I have another question. Yeah. That is this. More and more in this conversation, it appears to me that this is this application of yours and the book you will publish. It's really an extension of your time at that firm, time with your father, whether you knew what he was doing on his desk or not. It's an extension of my having grown up in Hawaii, grown up here and having ownership of this place. To what extent is this an ode to your father? To what extent are you expressing a relationship with your father in doing this? The private part of this book is that I have discovered an entire new Marshall Goodsill. Oh my goodness, the things he could accomplish, the people he could motivate, the lessons he learned, the breadth of which he could practice law. One of the interesting things, Jay, is back in the day, there was no communication with the mainland. So you couldn't send work to be done over there by experts over there. So you had to become an expert here, which is what my father did. He became an expert. He did all kinds of law. People say that's rare about lawyers. So the private part of this is that I have developed a deeper relationship with my father. Of course, I knew him as a person, but not as his profession, which was his superpower. I think of him as Clark Kent, the mild-mannered reporter, but underneath, brilliant intellect. Now I know that part of him. But this is not the Marshall Goodsill story. It's evolved from that. Now this is Hawaii's story. It's the voices of Hawaii. And I may or may not even put the part about the law firms in there. You were born and raised here. I was born and raised here. So you could see that, but maybe not fully integrated until now. I had a similar experience doing this. You talk to somebody like this, like one-on-one like this, and it's a special experience. Never forget it. Never forget any of these interviews. And so you learn things. You have thoughts you would never otherwise have. People educate you all along the way. And people can talk about the same subject. There are many issues that are controversial. Bishop of State and all the controversy. I talked to Oz Stender and he tells me one side of the story. I talked to the people from Command Man. They tell me the other side of the story. But what you do is you get the heart of it. You understand this and this. All the same. People are all trying to do the best they can. Come up with the best possible solution. You like all the people you've interviewed? That would be like a miracle, wouldn't it? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I asked one man if there were a lot of racial slurs when he was growing up. And he said, of course he's older than I am. He said, of course there were. And I said, did you ever cast any? He said, I would never admit to such a thing. But do you think I would ever admit to not liking somebody I interviewed? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You got it. Good answer. What about when they don't tell you though? But you know when people show me their heart, I love everybody. Yes I understand that. You do. Even if their heart may not be in the same place. Well, even if they don't agree with you or even if they have a different political opinion or a different life view. When you understand it from their point of view, all of a sudden it melts away. As long as it's sincere. As long as it's sincere. And dignified, you know, creation. What about when they lie to you? I don't know that I've had any lies, and if I have, that's their lie, not mine. If you discovered that somebody has lied to you, what happens then? Do you still include it in your record of the interview? I have no idea. I haven't come up with that yet. Never even thought of it. OK, so we talked about this before the show, but I want to sort of get a handle on how you do this. This is a professional inquiry. Oh, excellent. So you call them up, and you meet them somewhere. Maybe coffee shop, maybe somebody's home. Oh, no. It's always got to be quiet, because it's an audio tape to interview. So here's been the most amazing thing. These are people I don't even know, right? So I either meet them at their office, my home, or their home. People I don't even know. Yeah, sure. Never been a problem. And how do you open it up? What do you say? How do you make them comfortable? I say I'm going to record this, then I'm going to have it transcribed, and you'll be able to look it over. So any changes that you want to make in it, you're welcome to do. This is a collaborative effort. And then I say, let's start by my asking you how your family or your people got to Hawaii. And then let's talk about your ancestor. And then let's talk about your life, and let's talk about how it unfolded. So it's personal. It's their personal life. You want their life story. You want the stories of voices of Hawaii, stories of Hawaii. It reminds me of the descendants of the movie. That was a Hawaii story, which I always felt we did not, we, the state of Hawaii, not capitalize on that because some guys out of Hollywood put it together. But if we looked at it, the people in Hawaii, some familiarity with the way things work, if we made that movie, it would have been a different, a better movie. And by the way, there's lots of stories like the descendants stories. There are lots of stories. Now that's an interesting thing. There are a lot of descendant stories, people who descended from the missionaries. There are also a lot of ascension stories, people who came over who were basically indentured servants for the plantations, who did what they needed to do, and then rose up. And then I've looked into two Supreme Court justices in Hawaii who came from nothing. And ended up Supreme Court justices. They're remarkable stories. Talking to my wife about that this morning, she grew up in Kaloa, in Kauai, right next to the plantation. I'm like, right, I think it was. And the men, mostly men, but their women too, on the plantations, they were the greatest generation. They were made of stern stuff. They knew how to work. They knew how to get it done. They were efficient. And they were kind to their families. I mean, the whole thing was a model in citizenship, if you will. What level of people are these? Are these the managers, or the workers, or all of the above? Short story now that you're interviewing me. I can't help myself. My wife's family had a groaning board table. And after work, when the whistle blew, everybody came to their house. And they offered them food for hours, and food and drink, and all that. One day, one fellow couldn't come. And he called him and said, I can't make it today. Why can't you make it? I got promoted to a Luna. I can't make it. Why can't you make it? This be a celebration. Well, I've got to go down to the county courthouse and register a Republican immediately. Because if you're a Luna, you have to be a Republican. If you're one of the other guys, you have to be a Democrat. That was really fabulous. Could you continue to party with them? Or did he need to separate himself? Oh, sure. Oh, sure. The groaning board went on every day. That's a great part of the story. It was a technicality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have collected some stories from people who grew up on the plantation, so I call it plantation days. Just little vignettes. Nothing in my book is long or tedious. It's easy to read. Just little vignettes of people's memories. Making Hawaiian, how they learned it, how they unlearned it. You know, the people in Hawaii, the Hawaiians had unlearned their own language because it was outlawed. So then you're talking to them and you're asking them about their lives. You're tracking through your curious person. And you have the background and the standard to ask good questions on that. So how long would these interviews last, an hour, two, three, what? Oh, never go more than two. I'm a therapist by trade, a psychotherapist. And there's a reason why therapy sessions are generally about an hour, an hour and a half long. People get tired. So usually about an hour and a half between an hour and a half and two, depending on the depth of the story, and the succinctness of the interviewee. Sure. Some people talk too much and some too little. People repeat themselves a lot, so it takes a long time to tell the story. But this is the marvel of being able to edit, because it becomes very streamlined. They love it. They say, oh, I sound so good. Yeah. So you just put some tape recorder on the table. You use your iPhone. You just use your iPhone. And then you send it directly to your files and it's stored forever and all time. And somebody transcribes. You can send it to somebody to transcribe. I pay a transcriber on the main line. She's an Ollie girl, but she has learned more about Hawaiian. She does now. OK, you get it back and then you circulate it to the person, the interviewee, for, I guess, accuracy and comment. Now, suppose the interviewee has said something that's embarrassing, because if you do a good interview, it's likely to happen. He's likely to tell you something private. What do you do then? Do you take his word and cut it out? Oh, no, I ask. I will highlight this part in red and say, Jay, you talk about in your family background and something about the finances, you might not want everybody to know that. And your choice. So then when you edit it, your choice. And one guy used a name. He said, when I met with so-and-so, he was a great guy, but I had to count my fingers afterwards to make sure they were all there. I said, I don't think we should put this guy's name in. I don't think this is right. There is a line there somewhere. So I confer with them and say, I would leave this out. I would edit. Or this is how I would edit it. Sometimes if they're talking about something very complex, a legal issue, I say, it's beyond me to be able to put this into words that people wouldn't understand. You take a crack at it. So you're going to have active editing, active conversation with them after. That's kind of an interesting thing in oral histories, because many oral historians don't want you to touch the original document. That's it. That's what the person said. You leave it all in there. I don't believe that. I worked for the county historical commission where I live. And I believe an edited product is more authentic and accurate. Sure, because people make mistakes when they speak. And they say things they really rather take back. And if you give them that opportunity, it'll be a better reflection of who they are. That's right. And much more interesting to read than all the ums and all the starts. So then, OK, you've accumulated all these, 75 as of yesterday. And you're going to just splat, put them in a book. How's that going to work? No. I don't know how I'm going to handle that part of it. First, I'm going to harvest things from the interviews and put them in voices of philanthropy, voices of the ranchers, voices of the warriors, voices of the old Hawaiians, voices of conservation, whatever, all my topics. And print that book, publish that book. Then if there's a big hue and cry and people say, we think you should get these transcripts out there, maybe I'll find a way to put them online. I don't know how to do it. But someone can do it. Yeah, cool. Oh, how nice. Thank you. I will. Be careful, because when a door opens, I walk through it. So if there can be an archive of these for historical record and research, it would be wonderful. It will be. But it's dense reading. Not everybody's going to want to do it. But you might want to look at, maybe you're interested in lawyers. Maybe you just want to download 10 of them, the rest you're not interested in. It should be your prerogative. I think we're in a time down, don't you, Jane? And maybe this is what motivated you a couple years ago when you started out. We're in a time that we need to take stock of the living legends, if you will. That's what we call the bar thing, the living legends. And we have to talk to them before we can't talk to them anymore. It's like Steven Spielberg's Showa project, where he talks to the Holocaust survivors, because soon enough, there won't be an ANU. You won't be able to record anything. And he did it in video, but it's the same idea. And so we have the bar association thing. We have the descendants, the movie, for what it's worth. I think Hawaii, don't you, is in a time of, it's a pivotal time somehow. And we really need to find ourselves. And the way to do that is to do what you're doing. I hope so. I think in a way, every time is a pivotal time. All the years that we lived through from 41 to 2004 were pivotal times. People made decisions then that affect us now. So now we're going back and looking at what happened in the last 50 years of the last century. We kind of see what happened, how we got to where we are. Some place is good, some place is not so good. But now it's time to maybe, it's a new sort of a fresh way to look at how the sausage was made. So some of the people that you have talked to, I'm just reading off the email correspondence that I've had with you and Bill Moore. Ron Moon, lawyer, Bill Tammy's a lawyer too. Lawyer. Alice Gill, she's the philanthropy. Well, here's the story about Alice. I meet with her because a friend says you have to interview her. So I call her. And I'm not a phone caller. If they can't text or email, it doesn't work. But I call her and I say, she says, OK, come on over. I say, when? She says, it's afternoon. OK, so I'm there. And we talk for two hours. And at the end I say, this feels good. Have I got most of your story? She says, oh no, we've just talked about my family. We haven't even talked about my career. I've known Alice all my life from growing up years. I never knew what her career was. I said, OK, let's spend another time. So I go back for another two-hour interview. She's the only one who's four hours. But she had that much material. She told me all about developing Alamoana. She told me all about the renovation of the Elani Palace. Priceless stories that need to be recorded. She says she's recorded everybody in her family and nobody's ever taken an interview of her. So I gave it to her. And she said, I don't know if I want to turn this over to you to write a book about. I might want to write my own book. In which case I go, good for you. Have it. This is my gift to you. Can I use a couple sections? Stories. Yes, of course. But you know, so. Well, you know, it gives me the thought, which we talked about a little bit. Is that you? It's interactive. Any interview is interactive. You're asking questions, of course. You could ask this question or that question and get a completely different approach. And then, of course, you're saying things. You're telling that person a little about what your orientation is. And so it's a relationship. It's a relationship. So you take these 75 people. Had you not interviewed them, you would not know them nearly as well or have that relationship. I have 75 brand new best friends. You bet. After talking to you, if I need help figuring out how to put these things online, I will call you. And it will be heart to heart. You can either help or you can't. But we have this relationship. This is, you know, you said, what's going to get chills about this? What's the point of all this? The point is when people meet face to face, that it doesn't matter really what the divisions are between us, as long as there's something heartfelt, there can be love. There can be aloha. I mean, I can be talking to the lawyers who were against the very, I can be talking to the lawyer whose job was to get a total cut through the koalao mums. And these people don't like it. This was this person's job. And then I say to this person, what do you think about that? And they say, that was their job. I didn't like it, but they were representing their clients. It's like there's an understanding of quid pro quo. The real meaning of the word, right? Reminds me of the Mission House program at Oahu Museum, if you've ever attended that. Oh, yes. They go over and they give talks about this decedent and that decedent. And the most wonderful part is when one decedent is talking through an actor, tells you about the other decedent. And he says, oh, that guy, he was mean to me. And then you go down the road to the other side of the cemetery. And you hear the actor who is representing the second person. And he says, oh, that guy, he was mean to me. And you begin to understand the whole social process in the state. You have got it. You put your finger right on it. That's it, Jay. That's been the experience I've had. And it's not my job to make sense of it. I quote this person, and I quote this person in the same paragraph. They said it, not me. You're right. Well, you say you want to give people an insight into how their lives were and enjoy them as people and so forth, just as you have. You want to share the joy of the interview with more people. I fully appreciate that. But you know this more. It's more because I think whether you realize it or not when they read this book, they're one, they're understanding the dynamic, the social dynamic, maybe the business dynamic of the state. If I can capture it, this is my job. Yes, yes. And finally, and this is what I think I would be looking for, I'd be looking for the historical dynamic, how things were changing within the life of each of them and in parallel, all of them, to learn about what core culture point, the core sociology, the core development of the state really is. I know that's another book, entirely different book, but I think some people will look at this book and look for that. Well, I say to the publisher, now in my second book, and he says, well, if your first book is a bestseller, there may be a second book. Okay. If not, not so much. I said, well, okay then, I'm gonna put everything I got into my first book. I could keep going like this. I have a lot more energy to do this, but we'll see. I mean, this has been led by the universe in a very divine way, and it's not me, I'm just the storyteller. And I just get to highlight some of the people. That's your story. That's my story. Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Jay. Good, so let's be a delight. Thank you. So nice. So nice to talk to you. Thank you, Jay. Aloha. Aloha.