 Mark Shklav, I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. And today we're going to do a special program, a retrospective program on one of my favorite people, Judge Samuel P. King. We have his first daughter, Louise King Lanzalote. I hope I pronounced it that correct, hey Louise, welcome to our program. So great to be here and remember Dad. Yeah, I was talking with your sister Becky a while back about your dad and a lot of memories and ideas started coming back to me and it's something that I wanted to do a lot. Right in front of us we have an award that the Japan Hawaii Lawyers Association gave to Judge King for all of his help in 1985 to bring Japanese and Hawaii lawyers together. And our first conference that we had was in Hiroshima and your dad was the keynote speaker at that conference. Judge King was very gracious, he and your mom and went with us to Hiroshima. By the way they wanted to stay in a Ryokan, a tatami mat, not in an American style hotel. And he got up and gave the speech, a very moving speech. He talked about being present in Honolulu on December 7th, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. And he also talked about touring in Hiroshima. A month after the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima and he talked a great deal about how lawyers can make a difference and how lawyers can do good things and bring people together. So he gave this great speech and then he sat down and people were talking and drinking and having a good time and he and your mom decided well wait a minute, let's get up on stage and they started to sing Japanese songs and dance and they did a great job. But that tells me a lot about your dad. I mean he was very serious, he knew a lot about contemporary history and Japanese things and Hawaiian things but he also had a kind of a klohe side or a humorous side. And he got up there and it didn't make a difference. He was still well respected and he could laugh at himself and your mom too. Your mom got up there and joined him and they both had a great time. So I wanted to talk to you about your dad and tell me, who was your dad? Tell me a little bit about him and what his background was. You know I often think of my dad as a person with one foot in each of two worlds. He was Kamakamali, both of his parents were part Hawaiian and he was a proud American and a proud citizen of the world but he thought that both were important. He didn't give up one for the other and I think that was really an important thing about dad. He had a very interesting life. He was born in China in a really interesting circumstance. His father was on a U-boat during, not a U-boat, sorry, a little ship going up and down the Yangtze River rescuing people during World War I. So that's where he was born. Like a gun ship or something like that. Yeah, a gun boat. I think I have a picture of it somewhere. And so he was born there and so we told him he couldn't be president because he was not. Born in China. We had great discussions about whether that was legal or not. And so then he grew up in Hawaii partly and because his father was delegate to Congress he partly grew up in Washington, B.C., many other places. So he was born in China because his father was in the Navy in World War I. And obviously his mother was there. His mother was there. And they were there patrolling a river in China. There's actually a movie called The Sand Pebbles that's about that exact experience. And so his father was in the Navy. So your granddad was in the Navy. Do you know how he got your grandfather? He was an Annapolis graduate. And so he was in the Navy. His father himself was a sea captain. So the ocean ran deep in the family. I see. And yeah. Okay. And he was given the name Samuel P. King. What's the P for? Pale Thorpe was not a family name. It was a friend of the family. Pale Thorpe. Okay. How do you spell that? P-A-I-L-T-H-O-R-P-E. Okay. There wasn't originally an E, but they added one. I don't know why. It's an unusual name. Yes. But was this a friend here? It was a friend that my grandfather looked up to in Hawaii, I believe. I see. Yeah. Okay. So he was born in China and how long was he there and then what happened? Not long. I think they moved back to Hawaii. And then also he was a delegate to Congress soon after that. I'm not quite sure what year. So then he was in D.C. when he was very small also. Because your grandfather was a delegate? Was a delegate to Congress, right? So he was involved in Hawaiian politics? Yes. He was a delegate to Congress. He was governor. He was various things. But he always went back to either his career in the Navy. He fought in both World Wars or as a real estate person. Okay. That's your granddad? Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to show a photo of your dad as I saw him when I became a lawyer. And that's in his office at the federal court. I actually knew him before he was a federal judge. But I remember often having cases and going in there and talking to him about cases with counsel. And then at other times when we talked about the Japan Hawaii Lawyers Association having meetings there. And that was a pretty interesting office. What can you tell us about his office? Well he liked that photo because in addition to showing his office it showed some of his 5,000 books that were kept there. I think my mother said, you know, you can put your books in the office please. But on many topics when dad died we had to pack them up and they were just on law but also human behavior and all kinds of traveling things and just really great stuff. And then he had various things on his table including candy for visitors and photos of the children. A lot of Hawaiian type things there. So he took his Hawaiian background seriously. Yes. Yes he did. I guess. Okay. So that's a photo of kind of the end part of his professional career when he was a senior federal judge prior to that. How did he get there? What was his background as a child? Where did he go to school? What type of things did he do? He did spend most of his childhood in Hawaii. He went to public school for most of his life but when he got to eighth grade he was going to be going to an English standard school. And his parents were opposed to English standard schools because they discriminated against Japanese people for one thing or immigrants. So his father wouldn't let him go. My grandmother said well he has to go to school somewhere. So they applied to Punahou school and he went there from eighth grade through twelfth grade. Okay. And he mentioned the discrimination about Japanese and I know he had an affinity for things Japanese and how did that begin? I think it maybe began with his parents who were really welcoming to all kinds of people and his father even sent him to Japanese language school when he was a child. They lived in Kaneohe so after school what can I do with Sam? I'll send him to Japanese language school. So he actually did learn some Japanese and Japanese language which most of my friends who are Japanese say I didn't learn any Japanese and Japanese language school. So that was part of it. And just friends and growing up with all kinds of people he just fell in love with all things Japanese. Yeah. I know that as I told you when we were planning to go to Hiroshima for the 1985 conference he demanded Ryokan that they wanted to sleep on the tatami mat and that was what they were very interested in. That was their background. So the fact that he went to Japanese language school as a young boy kind of maybe shaped a lot. I think so. I think it was an influence. I do. And that was before he went to Punahou. Yeah. So he didn't go to Punahou until he was 12 years old. So what happened next in his upbringing? When he was in high school at Punahou another wonderful thing that happened was that he was in a speech contest, a national speech contest I think sponsored by the newspaper and newspapers all over the country and he was one of the finalists. So the prize was a trip to Europe. So he was able to go to Europe before. I think we have a photo of him when he left with all his lays from I wonder I guess that's all his family. So that's when he's about to take off as a young high school student. I think he was about 17 years old. And he got a trip to Europe. Yeah. Did he tell you anything about that? You know, he did a little bit but it was the beginning of many, many, many trips to Europe after that. He loved Europe as well and he loved traveling. They would spend a lot of time traveling with us or after we were around. So I think it helped spark his love of travel. Okay. All right. So he went off, went off traveling and what happened? Then he, well my sister tells me that that photo was after the travel and on his way to college but he did go to Yale University on a scholarship. And he spent four years at Yale and then three years in law school at Yale. So he was away from Hawaii for a very long time. By Yale? Then what happened? Then what did he do? When he graduated he came back to Hawaii and he was teaching math at Punahau I think and just trying to become a lawyer and everything and then pretty soon Pearl Harbor happened. Okay. What was the result of Pearl Harbor? What happened in your dad's life after Pearl Harbor? Well he was there. He witnessed Pearl Harbor. He was staying with his best friend up in Manoa and it happened and he was just shocked. He thought that it was just the worst thing they could possibly have done. What a bad idea. And yet it happened so he tried to volunteer for the Navy but he only had one eye which is another very long story and so he couldn't go in the regular service so he went into Naval Intelligence. Okay. Now I'm going to go back a little bit to the one eye because what's that about? When he was a very small boy his father was opening a box that they used to send things in really wooden boxes with metal things and he was hitting the nail out and it flew right into my father's eye and he lost his eye. But that never stopped him. He always thought it was fate and he never thought that he was disabled by that. He thought well that got me out of being an Annapolis and getting killed with my class at Annapolis because that class that he would have been in a lot of them fought in World War II and didn't survive. Okay. So he found another way to serve in World War II. Which was what? Which was in Naval Intelligence they wanted him to do Japanese language because he spoke Japanese. So that goes back to his dad sending him to his Japan classes as a young boy and he knew a little bit of Japanese. So he went to Boulder, Colorado to study and on another end of the country my mother heard about Pearl Harbor. She was 21 years old I believe. Where was she? Where was she? She was a graduate of Smith College. She was from the East Coast and she was a linguist. She majored in ancient Greek. So she was really smart. She was really smart. Right. You could get into this Japanese language school if you spoke Japanese or if you spoke a lot of languages easily. If you learned languages easily. So she went and looked up Pearl Harbor and then she volunteered and went into some other things first. But then she applied for the Japanese language school and she got in. So that's where they met in Boulder, Colorado. So I'm thinking that this is the start of a love story. Yes it is. And so tell us a little bit of the background. Your dad wanted to serve and so you went to the language school, so did your mom and she wanted to be and then what happened? I mean tell us the story. They met and well the early story was that they only knew each other for three weeks. I think they had seen each other before that but they knew each other for three weeks and after that time my father said to her on some picnic up in the mountains, how would you like to live in Hawaii? And she said well what are you asking me? So he finally got around to asking her to marry him and she said I'll tell you on Wednesday. Alright now we're going to take a break and then I want you to tell me what she said on Wednesday. Okay so we'll take a break right now. Name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I'm the host of Shrink Rap Hawaii where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this, we must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. We are back talking with Louise King Lanzalotti about Judge Samuel P. King, her dad. He's the first daughter and we just got to the point of a love story between Judge King and by the way I can't call him anything but Judge King it seems but because of my great respect for him over these years since I was very young and Anne King. So he asked her will you marry me and she said I'll tell you on Wednesday. I think I know the answer but what happened? Well before she said yes she did say to him you know I don't really want to be a warbride and he said to her everyone who gets married during a war is a warbride in true daddy humor and so she said oh I guess I don't have an argument for that so she married him. Okay and they were married during a war in Boulder, Colorado. My mother took a train across the country which apparently was very difficult to get a ticket to come across the country during that time but she came across for the wedding. What did he tell his parents? Do you have any idea? I mean I'm getting married. I don't know. You never heard that side of the story. They probably were fine. They were, I'm sure they were fine. Okay all right well let's we have a photo of your dad in his military uniform. Oh wow. Yeah. That's about 1942 I believe that shot. Okay. He was a lieutenant, yeah. What did he, okay so what do you know about what he did? I understand he didn't want to disclose what he did during the war. He didn't disclose some of his military intelligence. What do you know about what he did during World War II? I know that when they dropped the second bomb on Hiroshima he was called quickly to go to Japan and then he toured Hiroshima. He was the translator for the admirals but you know dad was pretty self-effacing so he would say oh you know those people all spoke English anyway they didn't need me but possibly they needed him sometimes. I would think so yeah under those circumstances so yeah so did he give you any idea about being in Hiroshima or Nagasaki or I think he was in both probably. Those descriptions were leading the admiral around the land and everything was flattened and there would be a shadow of a body basically just black and a sign was hanging and he asked the admiral what does that say and it said something like you know groceries or something so it was pretty devastating I think to see that. Did he drew any conclusions from that from his for his life or he was always sort of introspective in some ways. Right and I think and he was after his father and you know going down to myself he was opposed to the death penalty so I think he felt this was possibly a necessary last thing but horrible. Okay so he moved back to Hawaii after the war what happened in his life where did he go from there. Well they were married by then they went on to have three children the three of us dad was an attorney he had a lot of really interesting cases there were some people I think on the big island who were Japanese and when the war ended for some reason they thought that Japan had won the war so they were flying their flag and they got. They were flying the Japan flag. Their flag they said this is our flag and they got in big trouble so they didn't know and would represent them so my dad called them up and said do you have an attorney and they said no so he said I'll be your attorney you do now. So he felt strongly about that even though having served in the military felt people needed to have some sort of a representation. Right I think to him war is politics it's war is not people I think that was really important you know. Big difference. Yeah. Okay so what was his career like and as a child of Samuel P. King what was your life like. We well you know we didn't know any better at first they were our parents they were great parents they were so fun and so intelligent and they would do all kinds of fun things with us and they would travel with us so we were very lucky we also when we were children had a grandfather who was governor at the time. So once in a while my grandmother would pick us up in the limousine and we'd go get ice cream or something and I had no idea I mean I just really had no clue that it was anything more than just here comes grandma right. But I guess later we started to see oh this is something we maybe have to live up to a little bit you know we felt responsible about carrying on something that was important. I think also we grew up being very aware of our Hawaiian heritage and how important that was. Now it's from your dad's side or was he obviously he was telling you about that what did he what was his impressions what was your thoughts what was he telling you. You know it was really interesting because he was a child of people who who were from both sides of the argument in terms of sovereignty you know in terms of terms of the overthrow sorry yeah and when the overthrow happened one of his parents was really close to the queen and the other one was part of the ministry after it happened. But you know again these were people who loved each other and they managed to function in a place that was changing rapidly. So I think he really recognized that change is inevitable and you can't go back to the old ways always but he had strong feeling he wrote an article actually about sovereignty in which he felt that it would be great if you could have sovereignty and be an American citizen. You don't have to do one or the other. I think we have a photo of him after after yeah there there he is sort of I guess that's his lawyer's photo. That's his lawyer phase with the bow tie yeah yeah and he was he was a lawyer in Honolulu yes and and then then what what where did he go from there what was his he was eventually he eventually became a judge in the state state judge and he would hear all kinds of cases and he and another judge founded the family court in Hawaii. So that was a really important achievement and I think it was the first or second family court in the country right I seem to recall being in that court at some time but that was a long time ago then what happened in his career what where did he go from there you know eventually he was recruited by some people to run for governor and it was the only time I think that he ran for office as opposed to his father who ran all the time and never lost and he did not win that election. And that was against the burns and I think at that time I think nobody expected burns to run again right right and your dad I think maybe new new burns and may not have intended to be in that battle necessarily yeah he wouldn't have run I think if he had realized that burns might run. Your dad ran as a Republican yes and things have changed a lot things have changed a lot he was much more liberal than the Democrats are right now it's kind of crazy but anyway another topic for another time but he often said to us that that was the best thing that ever happened to him because then he got to be a he got a named a federal judge soon after that. And okay so he became a federal judge and then then what happened to his career? He served for 40 years I think yeah as federal judge until he died. Did he tell you anything about that or his background or did he tell you what was going on? He loved the opportunity to be a federal judge he made fun of it all the time you know in fact I think when the first time he got on a plane he said I could turn this plane around but he was really big on you know not taking power too seriously he thought he was always saying power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely so he tried to live by that by not being that person. And I note that he maintained his love of things Japanese at this time and we have a photo of him playing goal and I understand this photo he the the fellow on the left is talking with another player in Japan I think this is a game he's playing at a distance right and and so they're playing against each other and the fellow on the left is speaking with somebody in Japan who's telling them the moves and then Judge King is countering with his own moves on the goal and they're going back and forth this was before the internet okay yes now you just yeah go online and do it you know I we don't know who won that game all right apparently we have a caller coming coming in what please life judge fabulous member of the legal community and and one thing I've always wondered about was just exactly how he took the loss when he ran for governor that was that was a different move for him he might have been a great governor by the way but but question how did how did how would that campaign go for him how did it how did Louisa the other members of the family take it when he lost how did he take it when he lost okay so I'll take my answer offline so the question is how did Judge King take the loss when he ran for governor and you know what what did he tell the family and and how did he feel about that I mean the caller said that he would have been a great governor by the way oh how sweet how sweet I think he was initially kind of sad because he I don't know he would have loved to do it his father had been governor he had a lot of ideas so I think he was a little bit unhappy about it but you know he moved on pretty quickly he didn't run again for anything I think he I think he perhaps felt that and and and so the other question is during the campaign were you involved in it at all or did you participate in my sister did and my brother did yeah but I was not in Hawaii okay you were the eldest and the way I was second my brother's the first brother he's the only brother first and only yeah so he's a Sam King too yeah okay and and so basically he decided that I'm gonna stick with being a judge and that was how well he got that offer and he said wow great so what can you tell us about just words of wisdom and advice that that he gave you that you can give us from from him what what type of things that did he say he's very wise very wise humorous man he I think the dad had an amazing way of taking short pithy statements or jokes or quotations and using them at the totally appropriate time to make a point without lecturing so he for example he'd see someone and the person would be doing something really ridiculous and he would say that's lack of poor judgment which came from something that had happened before or he'd say you know power tends to corrupt or an absolute part and he said that those things so many times that we have a book which I brought to show you I'll show you later that had has over a hundred things he used to say that we remember so he used to say them regularly and in court and everything else and he just would just pop things in at the right time I think one thing that happened during broken trust that I thought was really amazing was when they were talking about the breaches of fiduciary duty and Randy and Randy Roth his partner in crime was talking about every single you know every single thing he they could have done wrong they did it and he was listing them and after a couple minutes dad said they can't even spell fiduciary and that was the quote it sort of said it all so he was very good at targeting things and also you'd see you'd go in the court to watch and it'd be very tense and he would make a joke just at the right time to just make everybody just relax and stop worrying about things he's very good at that and I can tell you from my own experience that we left the court always feeling that justice and fairness and the right thing had prevailed and and that's how we're gonna leave this right now we didn't have much time so thank you so much thank you very much