 This is Think Tech Hawai'i, Community Matters Here. Aloha, and welcome to Hawai'i's Living Legend Lawyers, presented by the Hawai'i State Bar Association and Think Tech Hawai'i. I'm David Farmer, your host. Our guest today is a member of the prestigious three-digit bar number club. This year he celebrates his golden anniversary as a Hawai'i licensed attorney. Melvin Mel Masuda was born and raised on Maui's Puneni plantation, went on to earn degrees from Princeton, Yale, and Harvard. His law career has been described as that of a maverick and a Renaissance man. Instead of returning home and building a lifetime career with a Honolulu firm, Mel spent eight years in solo practice, three years in public service, and three decades as a professor of law. His proudest achievement, in his own words, is outside of the law. Raising two now-adult children, Sun Maka, an Iolani grad, is a big data expert for in-house counsel at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Daughter Kaeva is a Kamehameha school grad with master's degree in the area of counseling and is the college and career placement counselor at Waialua High School. Today we're going to meet Mel and find out what made him become a maverick and how he looks back on his adventures in the law and what also made him become a professor. More specifically, how rewarding for him is that role than the alternative paths his credentials may have allowed. Welcome to the show, Mel. You're quite welcome, David. Thank you. Let me just start out. We mentioned your proudest achievement. How would you, if you were asked, how would you rank your life priorities? That would be fairly straightforward. It would be family, and I am a person of faith, so family and God, followed by, of course, my work in the law, which has, as you've noted, followed a different path than most private practitioners. Your roots go back to Maui to put in any plantation, and your dad was an immigrant from Fukushima. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yes. As history shows, back in 1924, the U.S. Congress passed an anti-Japanese and other Asians Act, it was called the Japanese and all other Asians, and you've pointed out to me from your research, also Arabs Exclusion Act. Back then. Back then, and my dad made it onto U.S. soil just before the gate closed in 1920, and he emigrated from that area in northeast Japan, and I often think, you know, if he had not emigrated, unfortunately, I would probably have been one of the victims of that horrible tsunami in 2011 in that exact same area, and in fact, his hometown of Namie, which we visited when I worked in Japan earlier, is now, unfortunately, unoccupiable, because it was contaminated by the destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, electrical plant. It's a very sad situation. As you had a fairly brief, considering your total career period where you were as a solo practitioner, what kind of cases did you handle? What's your most memorable case? Like most solo practitioners, you pretty much, we were joking off camera about that earlier, you pretty much take whatever you can get, and actually, this harkens back to my mentor, whom we'll speak about later, Chief Justice Richardson, because he also was a solo practitioner before he, you know, ventured into public life, that sort of thing. But my most memorable case involved a previous generation running back from Dallas named Calvin Hill, and his wife, Janet, they were friends from Yale. And what happened in the mid-70s is that there was a franchise formed out here for a four-league world football league. C. Seftel. Actually, it was Chris Hemeter. I'm sorry, Chris Hemeter, all I said was C. Seftel. Yeah, anyway, so Chris managed to entice Calvin away for big bucks, away from the Dallas Cowboys. And so they came, and they settled and rented a place out on Kahului Street in Kalama Valley in Hawaii, Kai. And they had a very tall five-year-old named Grant, whom, as you know, became Grant Hill star for Duke NCAA Championship team, and also, of course, for the NBA. But what happened was that Calvin spent all summer working out, and then Janet did a reverse commute. She had a master's in math from the University of Chicago. So she did a reverse commute all the way from Hawaii, Kai, to Leeward Community College. And what happened was that I didn't go to the first game of the season, and I get this phone call in the evening, and it's a frantic Janet saying, Mel, you have to help us out. We don't know any other attorneys here. What's happened is that Calvin broke his ankle in this first game. And what's going to happen is that the Bank of Honolulu and the franchise, Bank of Honolulu had issued a guarantee to both me and Calvin, and the franchise, they are refusing to pay us anything. You've got to sue them. And I thought to myself, my God, if I sue them, the investors are all the big partners in the big local law firms here, and my name will be mud, and I told her that. But she persisted, and unfortunately, a little bit of too much of aloha on my part to these newcomers who needed help. So I took the case, and we got them a good settlement. And my attorney friends who advised me not to take the case were correct. The next thing I know, the Hills have returned to the U.S. mainland, and I'm left out here. But that was very interesting to say the least. We did get them a very good settlement. Well, and also, your philosophy of law practice, we talked about this a little bit before. But please share with me what you feel motivates you in terms of your practice of Well, there's that famous old French term, chacune asson gout, which means to each person according to her or his own taste. And so everything, to me, everything in the law is good. Whatever one's choice as an attorney in the law is fine. In my case, what attracted me to the law, because I had no role model, my dad was a waiter at Hull the Colony, and my mom was a pineapple trimmer, you know, taking the tops off the pineapples at Dole Canary. And so I had absolutely no role model, and what I had in mind really was that I wanted to go to law school and use my law degree eventually, whether it was private practice or any other area of the law, like teaching to help other people. But I was able to do that in two very distinct ways. When I was in law school, my best summer job was actually as a federal agent going through the South, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, verifying compliance for black, white racial integration in preschool head start projects. It could have been a dangerous assignment. It actually, you know, when you're younger, you don't really think about that. I'm sure that my parents were horrified and worried, but, you know, you don't really, you know, when you're young, you don't really think about that quite, exactly quite so much. But, yes, I did notice that I got dirty looks a lot of times. And as my boss back in D.C. said before I went on my field trips to do my compliance verification, I said, quote, when you walk in the door, looking like you do, meaning Asian, they'll know they're in trouble. Anyway, so that was one area where, you know, I got a good glimpse of being able to use the law to help. And then the other area was after I had spent the reason for my maverick career, as we'll discuss later, is that I had spent about seven years away. But when I came home to settle down, I did run into, I used to hang out at the old gold coin restaurant at the corner of Kapiolani and King Street. And the entertainer there was a fellow named George Helm. And he was from Molokai. And he found out I was an attorney. So the next thing I know, George is saying to me, can you help us out for free? Pro Bono. You know, Pro Bono Manawahi. We're coming up with a protest group to protest the fact that ancient trails on Molokai were closed off by the Molokai Ranch. So why don't you come over and, you know, we'll introduce you and then, you know, you can help us. So this was before Kaholawe initiative. Yeah, a year before the Kaholawe initiative. And so what happened was I went over and as you know, Molokai is 6,000 people, virtually all part Hawaiian. And when I walked into the room, I got horribly dirty looks. And George whispers to me, he says, Oh, they think you're this Japanese investor from Tokyo who's here to buy their land. You know, I said, Oh, and I gulped. But, you know, once they got to know me and, you know, it's like everything else once you get to know the person and you look beyond the outside characteristics. And then the next year, George formed the Protect Kaholawe Ohana. And so I assisted him. And then, unfortunately, when he disappeared and presumably drowned between Kaholawe and coming back to Maui in March 1977, it was really through tears that I did the album, wrote the album liner notes for his posthumous album. And then several years later, what happened was that the vinyl album was reissued as a CD and Harry Sorea from Territorial Airwaves on the radio. He took my liner notes, their public domain, and then he put some introduction on it and he got the hoku for it. At least I know it's decent writing. Well, as a former journalist, you were as a young man going through even before college, you were working for the advertiser. Yes, I was a full-time reporter for the now defunct advertiser, which which exists as the caboose end of Honolulu Star Advertiser. And also, too, we've known each other for many years as fellow board members on the Publications Committee that does the Hawaii Bar Journal. That's correct. And so both as an editor, as a writer, you've continued your journalistic endeavors, correct? That's correct. I've always thought that journalism is a great preparation for any lawyer because it causes you to think in very succinct terms of what, when, where, why, and how, you know? And so those are the skills. Oh, I agree totally. Some people and many lawyers do not like writing. And when in my classes, when I comment on writing assignments and research assignments, I my dictum is just keep it short, keep the sentences short and mostly declarative sentences. You're not writing for the Nobel Peace Nobel Literature Prize. Right. Right. And also, too, I think the observations have been made. Good writing reflects good thinking. And the fact is, if you can't write well, you're probably not thinking well either. Well, many attorneys who hate writing, of course, would disagree. That's a free country so far anyway that we can talk about. All they have to remember is short sentences, you know, and just short declarative sentences. That's really all you have to remember. We're going to take a little break and we'll be right back. OK, thank you. This is Think Tech Hawaii, Raising Public Awareness. You can beat the war, you could touch a flag, don't bring it on history. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea comes on every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join us. I like to bring in guests that talk about all types of things that come across the sea to Hawaii, not just law, love, people, ideas, history. Please join us for Law Across the Sea. Aloha. Welcome back. And we are continuing our conversation with Mel Massouda that is our guest today. Mel, you had I had mentioned in my introduction and you had discussed briefly the the appellation of being a maverick. Do you want to expand a little bit more on why or how it came to be that you became known as a maverick? Oh, I love those big words. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's an appellation. Appellation, meaning the nickname of being a maverick. How that came to be was that I got out of law school during the Battle of Vietnam War and I had to join the Army Reserves, did my basic training, did my six months, you know, full-time active duty. And then I came home. I had already luckily been chosen as a law clerk to my mentor, namely Chief Justice Richardson. So in the middle of that year, what happened was that I had applied for a program called the White House Fellows Program. It's a nonpartisan, very high level, so to speak, program which selects 15 people nationally every year. And if you're lucky enough to be chosen among the 15 from 2,000 applicants, then you get to serve for one year as a staff assistant to White House staff members or to a cabinet secretary. So it did appear in the middle of my clerkship year that I was going to probably get the White House Fellowship, which I did, I was the first from Hawaii. So I went to my mentor, CJ Richardson, and I said, what should I do? And he sat back in his comfy chair, and he chuckled, and he said, well, let me tell you this, you're going to be a maverick if you stay away from Hawaii too long, because if you stay away from Hawaii for five years or more, by the time you get back, all of the people who started in the profession, you know, with private firms downtown, are all going to be partners, and they won't want to let you in. So let me put that on the table right away for you so that you understand that. So I said, hmm, but I went through, and I did get the White House Fellowship, and I served as a staff assistant to the then secretary of the Treasury, who was David Kennedy. Now, this was the first, what I call the first, Nixon administration before, unfortunately, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall in his second administration and ruined it for us all. As I've mentioned to you before, you know, this interview, I took that as a sign from the gods that I was not meant for full-time public service. But the point that the CJ made actually came true, which is that after I, or during my last year at the White, during my last few months with the White House Fellowship, we had a field trip visit to Boston, went to the Harvard Kennedy School, and the dean of the Nutions, Harry Weiner, there, said to me, well, you've done Princeton and Yale. How'd you like three? How'd you like to do an ice hockey, what they call ice hockey hatchery and make it a perfect three and come to Harvard? And I'll let you into the Harvard Kennedy School. So that's how I spent, you know, two years at the Harvard Kennedy School, got a master's. My classmate was current Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island, who is the up for his fourth term this November, and he's the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he's also on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating, of course, the current regime, the Russia situation. Anyway, but after that, then having done the Ivy League circuit and all of that, I thought to myself, you know, I spent all this time proving that I'm, you know, I'm a good American and I know absolutely nothing about my Japanese roots. So I went to, I was fortunate to get a two year law clerkship in Japan with the International Business Law Firm of Anderson Mori and Rabinowitz in Tokyo. And in Japan, you cannot practice law as an attorney if you're a foreigner, you know, you have to go to a Japanese law school. So that's why I was a law clerk. Those are all very interesting work. And then, you know, I came home. But by then the C.J. was correct, which is that I was a maverick because I was off the normal career path. Right. Well, also your your gay in Japan allowed you to visit the ancestral home. Oh, yes, yes. We went to with my mom and dad who are alive. Then we went to my dad's what they call in Japanese Furusato, his hometown. And it was fascinating because I found out two things. One was his cousin said to me through an interpreter, you know, your dad was really Kawaiso because meaning we had to take pity on him because he was left behind at age three, his parents couldn't take him to Maui and they didn't send for him for 10 years later. So every morning he would go out to the beach, look in the direction of Hawaii and say, whenever my parents coming home, which, of course, they never did. And the second thing is they promised him an education when he arrived. And when he arrived, he was sent because the child labor laws weren't strictly enforced. He was sent to work in the cane fields right away. They're right away. And so one day his friend, Hirai, didn't show up for work five years later. And so he said, where is Hirai son? And they told him, oh, he's got, you know, he lucked out. He got this cushy job as a dining room waiter at the plantation hotel. So he went to his friend, Hirai, he tells me. And he says, I told Hirai son, oh, next job, please, Shimpai, you know, please beg for me to have the next opening, which he got. And then, of course, when the hotel dining room, you know, I had to close because the plantation was closing. He then had to move to to Honolulu and he got a job at the Hale Kalani. But sort of like, you know, his parents had to leave him behind. He had to actually leave us behind on Maui while he came to look for a job. Well, and as you and I shared the fact, I started my young life as a waiter in New York City. But I think that any lawyer, if they haven't had some life experience before law school, should have a year's internship at Pick Your Favorite Restaurant. And to learn customer service and what the real world is about, because unfortunately, our profession is woefully inadequate when it comes to customer service. But that's another. No, no, I would I would agree with that. And that's one of the points that I do make in my in my courses. I teach both criminal justice and business law. And the way that the transition occurred was that what happened was essentially that my kids came along. My kids were born and my wife said, you want a wife? You want kids around? You have to stay home a little more. You have to stay home a little more. So what the what the academic schedule allowed me to do was to actually have flexible hours so I could actually take the kids to school, you know, Ilani Kamehameha and then I could pick them up. And that proved to be really quite wonderful in terms of bonding and also in terms of support. The big family crisis we had was 22 years ago when my son was 15 and at the end of his sophomore year at Ilani, they didn't x-ray because his hand was hurting. And believe it or not, they actually found a case of cancer of the wrist. And on the Internet, we researched that there were only three in the whole wide world that year. So, you know, he did have to have luckily they were able to save save most of the forearm, although, you know, he has about maybe two thirds of it. And they also Dr. Singer at Queens also did a marvelous job. He saved the dexterity and his right hand, you know, so. But I was there. The main point is I was there and I was available because I had the kind of flexible schedule that the academic life allowed. So that was very important to me. And as I said, family and God are most important. So, you know, it worked out quite well. Well, do you think that having pursued the non-practice path that your credentials gave you the opportunity of both? How would you describe the rewards in the in the work you've done? That you continue to do as a professor emeritus now as compared to at least the little taste you had of solo practice? How how do those rewards compare? Well, actually, I would say, as I mentioned earlier, it's all good. Yeah, you know, when I discuss options in the law to my students who are juniors, seniors and MBAs, I point out that what a law degree does is that it gives you the training and background to move in all kinds of different directions. There's a somewhat of an old saw on that that says it's too bad that legal education is wasted on lawyers. But that's another look at the same thing. Yeah, that's true. Yes, I would say, you know, it's like the Sinatra song, My Way. It happens to be OK for me. But, you know, it would not be satisfactory, have been satisfactory for other individuals. Well, and also, too, I think you found the satisfaction that you talked about in private practice of helping people solve problems of helping them with their problems. In a sense, that's what you do with students all the time. Oh, yes, that's correct. Your earliest education, not very earliest, but certainly one of the stepping stones in your education was at Roosevelt High School. That's correct. And you were in the English Standard Program, System Program. For those people who are not familiar with it, maybe describe it, but also say how much do you credit your future afterwards education at Princeton, Yale and Harvard, not too shabby, any one of those, much less all three. With your success subsequently. Well, Professor Christine Yano, who is a sociology professor at UH, she's a jokingly call her the world's expert on Hello Kitty, because she does have a published book on how on how Hello Kitty traveled, you know, across the Pacific. Which is an amazing story. And it became a worldwide phenomenon. But she is now working on the manuscript about the so-called Capital E, English Capital S, Standard Capital S system in the Hawaii public education system from 1924, you know, for four more decades. And what she points out is that it was actually separate but equal and it was actually allowed for by law. And then it was finally phased out, of course, because after World War Two was viewed as discriminatory. So they phased it out. But what it was was to get into the system where you had some elementary feeder schools that fed into Stevenson, into now now middle school and Roosevelt High School was that you had to pass a spoken English test. Right. And if you were showing a picture of a cat and you said at age five in perfect English, that's a cat. But you said in pigeon. Yeah. That one cat. Yeah. You splunk the test and you didn't get into English standard. Yeah. You know, so I was lucky because I was able to transfer from Maui into the English Standard system here. My mom actually went down to Stevenson and begged the principal for a district exception, which I got, you know. And then it turned out that the CJ and I bonded very well because he himself is a graduate of the Roosevelt High School English Standard system. Mel, I have to tell you this would we could continue on for another hour and a half or two or three hours because it's a fascinating story you have to tell. Unfortunately, we are out of our time here. And I think this is actually your second time at Think Tank Hawaii with this series. You would three or four years ago, you were with several years ago. So but anyway, it's been a pleasure to talk with you and I hope our viewers also have enjoyed it. And thanks, thanks for appearing on Think Tank and hope to do it again. Well, you're quite welcome and thank you very much.