A TRIBUTE TO FUJ MATSUDA

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       5       251    3572          535       421       173

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

          10       534     4813         593     1013        198
          12     1504     6556       1242       835        130
          16       522     4525         582       961        162
          18     1358     6312        1365    1089        280

          24       510     4356          679      854        100

          25     1290     5856        1215    1066        149

          30       369     4182         398       960          47
Sept     3     1094     5886          830     1083       174
            4     1033     5814          855     1066       115
            5       707     4822          646     1044       101
            6       432     4129          456     1008       110
            8       496     4477          516     1107         82
            9     1208     6222        1136     1168         82
           10    1090     5988          922     1213         97

Summary:  Still high.

Donald Trump says we are doing fine.  From The New York Times daily briefing today.

A scholar, leader and friend, Fujio Matsuda, passed away on August 23 at the age of 95.  You can read his Star Advertiser obituary or Wikipedia page for details.  I'll provide some personal insights.

We both grew up in Kakaako.  In those days, people didn't go to restaurants.  However, his parents had a saimin stand (actually, a large restaurant) which my family frequented a lot.  Here is his mother, Shimo, at the cash register.  It was about two blocks away from my home.

Never knew him growing up, for he is 15 years older.  My older brother Stan and I have a decade difference, and, in many ways, the relationship I had with them was generational.  Their socio-psychological profile was similar.  Both were engineers and had a self-effacing personality molded by the nature of Hawaii during their maturation.  When I came around, I was a bit more assertive.

Fuj (shortened from Fujio, which to many became Fudge) and I  both came from Kakaako, went to McKinley High School, served in the 442 (although he actually went to war in Europe, while I tried to avoid the Vietnam War), and got our doctoral degrees in engineering on the mainland.

However, unlike me, Fuj was famous, for he is on the cover of the book, Kakaako:  As We Knew It.  My earliest real discussion with him was a few years after I joined the faculty at the University of Hawaii when he was president.  He pulled me aside during a campus reception and asked me to join the Urasenke Tea Ceremony group.  I asked when they met, and it was on certain Saturday mornings.  I was part of a University golf group then--Dean Paul Yuen, Chancellor Richard Takasaki and a rotating third person--and just couldn't abandon them, for that was when we played.

That tea group, I knew, consisted of the top political and business leaders in the state, and they anointed people to the top.  Perhaps I could have been governor if I gave up golf.  Good thing.

When I first became a member of the UH College of Engineering, I eventually ended up in the Civil Engineering Department, where he had not long before been chairman.  One of the senior professors, Tets Mitsuda, during a lunch discussion, indicated that he went through school with Fuj, and he always got the highest grade.  Thus, Fuj was really, really smart.

At McKinley, a classmate of his was Daniel Inouye.  They had a special friendship, for they also were students at the University of Hawaii when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.  They joined the 442 and went through similar tribulations.  No doubt their link provided special funds to Hawaii, but more than that, their combined status led to much of what we have today.

He also served on the United Airlines board.  A colleague, Andy Trenka, and I caught a United flight from Chicago to San Francisco.  We had the same meal, a steak for lunch.  At our hotel in this city by the bay we about the same time got nauseous and suffered from food poisoning.  We were sick for a couple of days.  When I returned to Honolulu I told him about this incident, and he recommended that, in a constructive sort of way, inform UAL, but don't make a big deal of it.  Interestingly enough, a year later when my wife and I took a trip to Europe, without my reminding them of that plight, the company upgraded us to first class, going and returning.

Fuj was an important partner in the formation of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) and Blue Revolution Hawaii (BRH).  Sad to say that in November of 2012 I posted:

     IN REMEMBRANCE OF PAUL AND GUY

Paul Yuen and I founded PICHTR, while Guy Toyama (tallest guy in the photo, with Fuj to his left--this was then the board of BRH) and I invented BRH.  They're now all gone.

Maybe he had a greater vision than I had, for there would not be a PICHTR nor BRH if Fuj, in 1982, did not send me a letter:

Two and a half years into my Senate assignment, I received a letter from President Fujio Matsuda of the University of Hawaii.  He basically said, a long time ago the UH only allowed him a three year leave, so that must be the policy, or something like that.  Senator Matsunaga had given me a rather hefty raise in anticipation of this ultimatum.  However, I did not want to give up tenure, and, frankly, it was time for me to strike out on my own. so I went home.  I never did, but I should have thanked Fuj, for the 80's and 90's at the University of Hawaii were my most productive.  This three year experience in the U,S. Congress provided the base from which I could develop a fabulous academic career.

Our relationship took a hit once when the Journal of Hydrogen Energy asked me to find a reviewer for one of my books, SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.  I asked Fuj, who, after a while said he can't because he disagreed with me on one of my statements that the Maui biomethanol project of PICHTR was a failure.  My view was that we had been provided $25 million by the Department of Energy to produce methanol from bagasse at a sugar factory.  I had left PICHTR by then, but the group barely even got started and did not get close to producing any biofuel, when it was shut down.  His position was that this is what science and engineering are all about.  You need to go through the process, learning something along the way, that will assist someone else later.  Nevertheless, for the past decade we have had annual lunches, usually at Kahala Nui, where he and his wife Amy lived, or dinner.  And Amy, incidentally, is about the nicest person in the world.  That is their son Bailey to the extreme left.  Also in the photo are Jean and George Ariyoshi, who also served on the board of both PICHTR and BRH.

One more almost misadventure that says a lot about him.  This was a quarter century ago when we were trying to organize a national program on ocean resource development, were in a Washington, DC meeting with the top dozen potential partners, and there was an impasse.  Someone named Jim Wenzel, the lead from Lockheed who had managed their Mini-OTEC project, could not agree on an important matter that was about to scuttle the effort.  Fuj leaned over to Jim and suggested that they leave the room for a chat.  Ten minutes later they returned, said all is well, and the agreement was reached.  Fuj was Yoda.

To close, here is something cheerful from Italy, Volare:

While most will only remember Volare, the Dean Martin version, I go back to 1958 when I left Hawaii for the very first time, heading for the Stanford campus.  The #1 song that summer was Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu, by Domenico Modugno.  This was also Billboard's song of the year, and is in my top 100, to begin on September 21.  At the Grammy awards in 1959, Modugno became the first winner ever for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year.  A case for the music being more important than the lyrics, for no one in America understood what he was saying.  Interestingly enough, he performed this song for Eurovision '58 (started in 1956), and came in third.

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