AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES AKAGI

Interviewer: Jewell Willhite

Oral History Project
KU Retirees' Club
University of Kansas

JAMES AKAGI
B.S., Bacteriology, University of Illinois, 1951
M.A., Bacteriology, University of Kansas, 1955
Ph.D., Bacteriology, University of Kansas, 1959
P-D, Western Reserve University School of Medicine, 1959-61

Service at the University of Kansas
Instructor, 1958
Assistant Professor, 1961
Associate Professor, 1964
Professor, 1967
Emeritus, 1995

James Akagi
Interviewer: Jewell Willhite
Q:

I

am speaking with

James

Akagi,

who

retired

in

1995

professor of microbiology at the University of Kansas .
in Lawrence, Kansas, on September 25, 1995.

as

We are

Where were you

born and in what year?
A:

I was born in Seattle, Washington, on Dec. 23, 1927.

Q:

What were your parents' names?

A:

My father's name is Teiji Akagi and my mother's name is Yone.

Q:

What was their educational background?

A:

My father was a

second son in Japan.

everything and the
nothing.

second

The first son gets

and third and any

Only the first son gets everything.

the Samurai sword, the home and everything.
sons of most of the people would emigrate.
them

who

came

to

this

somewhere around there.
They settled in Seattle,

get

My father's

The first son got everything,

family was a Samurai family.

of

females

country,

So the second

My father was one

about

1919

or

1920,

My mother came later as his bride.
Washington.

sisters and a younger brother.

I

have three older

There are five of us.

Q:

What was your father's occupation?

A:

He ran a produce house, that is to say he would get all the
produce from the farmers around Seattle and pack them up and
ship them off to various cities .
store.

Q:

Did you grow up in Seattle?
1

He also operated a grocery

A:

Yes,

I

grew up in Seattle until I

starting high school.
In

1942

we

all

was 14 years old,

just

And that's when World War II broke out.

had

to

go

into

these

camps,

so-called

concentration camps in the United States.
Q:

I've heard of that .

A:

To Minidoka, Idaho.

Where did your family go?
That's just by Twin Falls.

There were 10

of these camps scattered throughout the United States in the
interior away from the West Coast with approximately 10,000 in
each camp.

There were a total of 120,000 Japanese on the West

Coast, and they were all evacuated into these camps.
Q:

That would be like a small town.

A:

It wasn't like a

town.

There were barracks,

barbed wire

fences and guard towers and guards and everything.

It was a

concentration camp, as Roosevelt and Truman admitted.
were not just camps.
concentration
involved.

camps

These

These were what they would consider
with

limited

movement

by

the

people

So we were in this camp up until 1945, three years.

Q:

So you went to elementary school back in Seattle.

A:

Elementary school in Seattle through eighth grade and I had
just started the ninth grade when we were evacuated.
the ninth, tenth,

and eleventh grades,

So for

I went to school in

camp.
Q:

so you graduated from high school while you were in camp.

A:

I was in the last graduation class in 1945 when I graduated.

Q:

Did your father lose his business when your family went to the
camp?
2

A:

Yes,

everyone that was evacuated had very short notice to

evacuate.

There were some who had only 24 hours.

two weeks.

some had

To get rid of everything in that period of time

was virtually impossible.

And so a lot of people were coming

around buying material very cheaply, and the people had to get
rid of their property for whatever they could get.

There were

some

very

people

who

were

fortunate

to

have

some

good

Caucasian friends who said they would take care of their
property for them, which they did, until the war ended.
most of the people were left with nothing.

But

Because of that,

President Reagan signed in 1988 this entitlement to pay every
person $20,000, which didn't cover it all but it was some way
of saying they apologize.
(

Q:

Did your family go back to Seattle when you were released?

A:

No, there was nothing for us to go back to because we had
nothing there in 1945.

Our family relocated to Chicago,

Illinois, and made a new start.
Q:

Did you have relatives there?

A:

No, nothing.

Q:

Your father just chose Chicago?

A:

Well, not my father or my mother.
over.

By then the children took

They (parents) were called Issei, the first generation

in this country.

We are the Nisei, the second generation .

The second generation people are American citizens because we
were born here .

The first generation was not.

law that was passed,

Because of the

they could not become naturalized or
3

anything.

They were not citizens.

The law was passed in 1924

or something saying no person from any part of Asia could
become an American citizen or become naturalized.

So my

parents, like any other Nisei people's parents, could not own
property.

The property that they had, many Issei used to take

it out in the name of their oldest child, in our case it was
my oldest sister.

Not only that, they couldn't speak English

very well and our generation was slowly getting older .

The

average age (of the Nisei) at that time in 1942 was about 17,
so we were not old enough to take charge of everything.

Some

people fought the evacuation and said they would not go.

They

were put in jail for the duration of the war.
were so young,
said.

But because we

we had to just go along with whatever they

And then in camp it was the older children who decided

what the family would do.
go to Chicago.
whatever

their

And so my sisters decided we would

By then most of the parents just followed
children told

children told them to go.

them to

do,

wherever

their

So we came to Chicago and I started

college there in 1945.
Q:

What school did you go to?

A:

I went to a junior college in Chicago.
junior college .

Now it is a four-year college.

North Park Junior College at that time.
course.

It was called

I just took a general

That first year you have no choice.

requirements.
Q:

At that time it was a

You take certain

I played baseball for the college.

Had you played baseball before in the camp?
4

A:

We played a lot in camp.

Q:

I suppose, to have something to do.

A:

We played a lot of baseball, a lot of football, a lot of ping
pong, a lot of pinochle.

We had a lot of time in camp because

there was nothing to do.

We had a lot of spare time and we

learned to do everything.

Most of the young ones my age, from

14 to 17, played a lot of sports .

So anyway my first year in

Chicago I went to college and played baseball.

After the end

of that year I was 18 years old and was getting ready to be
drafted by the Army, because the draft was still on.

So I

went into the Army in 1946.

Q:

Where did you go for your training then?

A:

I

went through basic training at Fort McClellan,

Alabama.

Then from there the Army sort of got mixed up on my records.
My outfit went to Korea but I was left behind through a mixup.
A very kind colonel knew that I came from the West Coast .

He

had fought with a lot of Japanese-Americans in Europe and he
said he would like to do something for me.

He said, "Would

you like to go to the West Coast?"

I said, "Sure.

to go back up to Seattle. 11

11

He said,

with your company to Korea.
the West Coast. "

All right.

I'd love

You won't go

I'll make orders for you to go to

And so I stayed behind .

But the Army got it

all mixed up, like they always do, and I didn't go to the West
Coast.

I

direction.

went to Fort Dix,

New Jersey,

in the opposite

They didn't know what I was there for.

After

three or four months of just doing nothing, they said they
5

would send me to school in the Army .

And they sent me down to

Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, to laboratory school, where
I came across microbiology, hematology, all the things you do
in a medical lab.

Q:

Were they training you to be a medic?

A:

A medical lab technician, one who works in laboratories.

So

that's the school I went to, where I was first introduced to
microbiology, that I found fascinating.

The Army, just before

I finished laboratory school, ordered me to go to Washington,
D.C., to the Pentagon.
I

Why me, I don't know.

But they said

had to teach the people there how to do what they call

venipuncture, take blood from people, because that's what we
learned at the school in San Antonio.

I was stationed at Fort

Myer, Virginia, which is just outside of Washington.
sent me to the Pentagon every day with a staff car .
a ride every morning and I

went down and I

They

So I got

worked in the

Pentagon drawing blood from people , dependents who were going
overseas to join their husbands.
blood tests .

They all had to have their

And they had no one qualified to do this.

that's why they got me.

I was the one drawing blood from the

people going over to Europe.
there how to do it.

So

And I taught the technicians

Finally, they were in a position where

they could do the blood taking without me.

Then I was just

stationed at Fort Myer and didn't have to go to the Pentagon
any more after about three months .

I was assigned to the Fort

Myer medical laboratory, where I worked until my discharge i n
6

1948.

In 1948,

returned

to

after being discharged from the Army,

Chicago

and

enrolled

at

the

University

I
of

Illinois .
Q:

Had you always expected that you would go to college?

A:

Oh, yes.

From the time I was very young my parents said I was

going to college.

One of my sisters also did.

sister is very talented.

She is a violinist .

My middle

During the war

while we were in camp she went out of camp and went to
Oberlin, to the music conservatory there and got her degree in
music.

She went on to play with the Kansas City Symphony, the

St. Louis Symphony and got accepted by the Chicago Symphony
until they found out she was a girl.
to be.

It was all men, it used

Because of her name--she used "Terry"--they thought

she was a he, until she went up for her interview and they

(

couldn't accept her on the symphony because at that time--I
don't know how it is now--it was an all-male symphony.

She

eventually married another person from the st. Louis Symphony
and they went to Hollywood where they were playing in the
movies and the TV and the Los Angeles Symphony.
professional musicians.
Q:

They were

They are now retired.

So you went back and went to the University of Illinois.

Were

you majoring in microbiology?
A:

That's right.
there I

I got my bachelor's degree there .

While I was

met another graduate student at that time in the

department who came from Kansas.
well-known microbiologist,

He later on became a very

biochemist.
7

He was telling me

about

possible

places to

go,

because

in

those

years

the

general policy of people graduating from any university was
not to go on to graduate school at that same university.
try to send you away.

So I was looking for a place to go.

said Kansas was a pretty good place.
accepted at Kansas.
time.

They
He

And so I applied and got

I was still on the G.I .

Bill at that

Because I was in the Army for two years, I had a total

of 36 months.

It is the total amount of time plus twelve

months that they give you.

So I had 36 months of schooling.

So I had one year to begin with and I had three years left and
that was 27 months and I had one more year so I used that to
come to Kansas in graduate school .
courses here on the G.I. Bill.

And I came here and took

I didn't have any financial

aid at that time, so after one year I said that since I had no
financial aid I would go back to Chicago and work.
in

a

consulting

laboratory

for

breweries

I worked

testing

beer,

analyzing beer because a lot of breweries have microbiological
problems.

And I

worked there until Dave Paretsky at the

department here at Kansas University got some money and he got
word to me that he had a research assistantship for me if I
would come back to college.

So the next year I came back and

pursued a master's degree and then eventually a Ph.D.
Q:

Was he your major professor?

A:

He was my professor.

Q:

Did you write a thesis for your master's?

He was my mentor.

8

A:

Yes, I wrote a thesis for my master's.

Q:

What were you studying for your master's?

A:

My major

interest

biochemistry .

in graduate school

in microbiology was

I love chemistry, and so I applied chemistry to

microbiology, which is essentially biochemistry.

And so it

was a biochemical problem for my master's degree, something
about a protein I put together and a similar sort of thing for
my Ph.D.
my Ph.D.

I just followed it up and did a chemical problem for
I graduated in 1959 with a Ph.D.

Q:

Do you remember any other influential teachers from that time?

A:

Oh,

yes.

One person who was very influential was Dr.

Ray

Brewster, who was chairman of Chemistry.

He was the one who

really excited me in organic chemistry,

and he was a very

stimulating teacher.

He was very, very good.

Dr. McEwen at

that time was another organic chemistry teacher.
got me very much interested in chemistry,
becoming

a

chemistry

microbiology.

major

I

applied

They just

and instead of

that

chemistry

to

Because of that, all my students went the same

route that I did.

They all had to learn their chemistry.

So

that was the basis of my so-called program in microbiology for
graduate students.
Q:

What building was that in at that time?

A:

We were in old Snow Hall .
work

and

We were doing all the microbiology

teaching microbiology

and

everything.

All

the

biological sciences were in Snow Hall, other than a couple
departments, such as biochemistry in old Haworth .
9

We were in

Snow Hall until 1969 when they built the so-called new Haworth
Hall and we moved into that department in 1969.
Q:

Did you teach for the first time while you were a graduate
student?

A:

Yes .

My degree was in 1959 but I actually finished the work

in 1958,

just after the deadline .

So Dr . Paretsky said he

would keep me on as an instructor where I could teach that
whole academic year until 1959, because that's when my degree
was actually conferred .

So I stayed on until 1959.

During

that year I was looking around for a postdoctoral position .
I

found one with Western Reserve University Medical School .

So my postdoctoral year after 1959 was spent in Cleveland ,
Ohio, at Western Reserve, now known as Case Western Reserve.
So

(

I

spent

two

microbiology.

years
I

got

there

furthering

introduced to a

my

chemistry

whole new group

and
of

microorganisms by a person, Leon Campbell, a very well-known
individual .

He later became the president of the American

Society for Microbiology , which is a very great honor .

But he

was a young person who had lots of ideas and when I talked to
him before I took a postdoctoral with him, he said coming over
to Western Reserve would be very nice, that we could do some
work together.

I had almost committed myself to Johns Hopkins

at that time.

But at the last second I changed my mind and

went to Western Reserve.

Q:

Were you married at this time?

A:

I got married one year into my post doc .
10

My first year in

Cleveland I was not married.

But my fiancee was here.

was a graduate student in the department of microbiology.
so I

She
And

came back after the first year and we got married on

August 3, 1960 .

Q:

What was her name?

A:

Barbara Jean West.

And we went back to Cleveland to finish my

postdoctoral at that time .
which ended in 1961,

I was looking for a

postdoctoral training ,
years.

After my postdoctoral training,

like internships,

After that one goes to a job.

and I was considering an offer I
this is Chicago.

I

told you I

job because most
are generally two

I was looking around

got from Northwestern but
had lived in Chicago for a

while, and I thought that this is not the place to raise a
family.

So having known Lawrence for a while, and not only

that, my wife ' s family were right in Missouri, so she was very
excited about coming back here .

Dave Paretsky at that time

was chairman and he offered me a position here.

So that's how

I ended up back in Kansas in 1961 .
Q:

What were you teaching at KU?

A:

I taught mainly courses in my field, which we called microbial
physiology or microbial biochemistry.
teach introductory microbiology.
microbiology.

So I

But all of us had to
taught introductory

I taught microbial biochemistry .

I introduced

another course later on called applied microbiology because by
then people were becoming interested in the applications of
microbiology .

So I

thought I
11

could use some of my prior

experience working at the consulting laboratory for breweries
on

how

microbiologists

could

utilize

their

knowledge

in

analyzing foods as well as how to make wine, how to make beer ,
cheese and all this .
part was

mostly

So it was a course in which the lecture

biochemical

but

actually making these products,

the

laboratory

like yogurt,

part was

cheese, wine,

sauerkraut.

Q:

That must have been an interesting lab.

A:

The kids loved it.

They enjoyed it very much.

That was an

undergraduate course .
Q:

Did you teach some undergraduate and some graduate courses?

A:

Yes.

I taught undergraduate introductory courses, which I

enjoyed very much, applied microbiology, and graduate courses
until 1967 .

(

I came here in 1961 as an assistant professor .

In 1964 I was an associate professor.
professor.

In 1967 I

In 1967 I became a full

also received a government research

award, a research career development award.

That award was

that the government would pay the recipient's total salary, 12
months' salary, and the university would agree to hire someone
else to take the recipient's place in teaching, if they wanted
to.
Q:

So that you could do just research .

A:

That's right.

I got this award for 1967 for five years and I

got a renewal for another five.

For a total of ten years I

was on this research career development award in which I did
not have to teach at all, just do nothing but research because
12

I qualified and competed well enough to get it.

But I wanted

to continue teaching, so I did teach once a year at least.

I

continued working in the classroom as well as in the research
laboratory.

It was a very good thing for ten years where I

didn ' t have to worry about my salary.

The university gained

because they didn't have to pay my salary.

And since Dr.

Paretsky did not hire anyone to take my place in teaching, the
university was able to save that money because I said I would
teach.

Q:

What was your research interest during this time?

A:

My research after my postdoctoral training, where I got my
introduction to this field by Leon Campbell.

He introduced me

to these very interesting organisms, bacteria that really had

(

nothing to do with medical microbiology but were of interest
in ecology .

They are organisms that you find at the sulfer

springs, those that give you that smell that's called H2 S,
hydrogen sulfide.

This chemical is produced by bacteria.

These bacteria utilize sulfate and reduce it to H2 S.
organisms are called the sulfate-reducing bacteria .

These

These are

those organisms that do not grow in the presence of air .
must have what we call anaerobic conditions.
conditions

they - produce

this

gas .

They

They

Under these
were

a

very

fascinating group of organisms because not too much was known,
and so I got involved in this and decided this is what I want
to study for the rest of my career.

And so I brought this

problem back with Dr. Campbell ' s permission to Kansas.
13

The

other scientists in the building didn't appreciate i t because
when I worked with this the smell would permeate through the
whole building.

They were calling it Akagi's outhouse.

worked with this organism in Snow Hall and old Haworth .

I

I got

a lot of grant money for this, so I was well supported during
my tenure as a faculty member at KU.
Q:

Did you have publications?

A:

Oh , yes.

You had to publish to keep getting these grants .

RCDA, the Research Career Development Award, made i t possible
for me to spend a

lot of time in the research laboratory

instead of the classroom.

The classroom work was minimal

compared to what I would have done.
more time in research.
and produced papers.
were fortunate

So I was able to spend

I had very good students who worked

You had to.

Even today you have to.

We

in producing and publishing papers and we

continued to get these grants.

We got grants from the NIH,

the Public Health Service, the National Science Foundation.
NASA was interested in our problem, and so we got grants from
various sources.

I was on the editorial board for The Journal

of Bacteriology, which was the main journal of the American
Society for Microbiology.

Because of that, I was able to keep

up with a lot of publications.
you saw a lot of papers.

Q:

Did you ever write a book?

A:

No, I didn't.
book.

Being on the editorial board,

So that helped me.

I didn't want to take the time to ever write a

I contributed to three books.
14

People who were writing

them would say, "Would you write a chapter?"
do that but I

won't write a book .

So I

For sure I can

was able to write

chapters and the last book is coming out this year.

So it was

very nice that I was able to finish my career with a chapter.
Q:

I

guess I

forgot to ask you about your children.

They were

born here in Lawrence, I suppose.
A:

I

have two boys, one born in 1961 and the second one was born

in 1963.

The older one is now 34 going on 35.

unmarried,

unfortunately.

married yet .

I

Both are

can't talk them into getting

The older one is with a government agency.

He

works for the Drug Enforcement Agency, what they call a DEA
agent.

He is in the Dominican Republic at this time working

on various aspects of drug trafficking.
Tempe working in real estate.

The younger one is in

They are both fine and I hear

from them from time to time.
Q:

You were at

KU

in the late '60s and yearly '70s when there

were so many problems here .

Did that affect you or your

department?
A:

No, not really.

The only time that we were really involved

during that period of unrest was when everyone in New Haworth
had to watch guard at night.

Remember that?

Q:

Quite a few people have mentioned that.

A:

We had to stroll the hallways and stay all night because the
bomb went off in Summerfield right by the computer .

So we

were on guard.

There

were a

That's the only time I was involved.

few marches but I

never took part in them.
15

These

marches occurred and some faculty members were involved in
these marches in the 1960's.

That was a time when I was able

to spend an awful lot of time in my research.
Q:

I

assume you didn't have administrative responsibilities,

since your major area was research.
A:

None until 1976.
I

was

When Dr. Paretsky stepped down as chairman

appointed as the chairman .

against my will, really.

I

became the

chairman

I didn't really want it, but at the

same time I said every person should try it once, so I said,
"All right.

I'll try it."

So I was chairman from 1976 to

1985, when I just said, "I can't take it any more."
died in 1982.

My wife

I was going to resign then, but at that time KU

was undergoing some real severe budget cuts and I thought, "I
can't let that stop me at this time . "
said, "I'll see this through."

So I didn't resign and

I stayed on until the budget

situation stabilized and then I said, "Now I can resign."

I

stepped down as chair in 1985 and then in 1989 I was called
back to become acting chair from 1989 to 1991.

I figured that

the only way I could get out of that was to go on sabbatical,
so I went on sabbatical .

Since then I've been out of the

chair.
Q:

Do you remember anything specific that happened while you were
chair?

What was going on in the department while you were

chairman?
A:

There were a lot of challenges at that time .

The first nine

years

to

were

not

bad,

trying
16

to

learn

how

chair

the

department.
department I

The

most

difficult

part

of

chairing

the

found out was treating everyone equally fair.

It's very difficult to do.
Q:

You mean merit pay and things like that.

A:

That's right.

Even though you like some faculty member and

you want to give that faculty member a good raise,

if that

faculty member did not produce, according to the criteria that
you put down,
raise .

then you cannot give that faculty member a

And some faculty member that you don't care for as

much would get the bigger raise.
had to do it.

It was the only way.

You

I have lost some close friends because of that,

but it was the only way I could think of doing it.
eventually those friends realized that.
about the whole thing.

I think

At least I was honest

At least my conscience was clear.

But

that, I think, is a very difficult thing for any chair to do.
And some people would come and ask you for a raise and you
just could not, even though the raises were not that much and
you would like to give

it to them.

It's very difficult

because if you put down the set of criteria that you say
you're going to use for raises, you've got to stick to it.
Q:

The budget cuts must have been very difficult too.

A:

The budget cuts were difficult.

I tried to let the faculty

decide what to do, but sometimes that didn't work out either .
Sometimes they had some bad advice.
own intuition

And I should have used my

in solving these cuts.

learning process.

But

it was

a

good

At least I can tell the chairmen now when
17

they would come to me, like the present chair , to ask me for

(

advice, at least I was able to give that person some advice
what not to do anyway,

mistakes

I

made.

It was

a

good

experience, but something I didn't want in the first place.
But I learned .
Q:

You were on university committees, I suppose.

A:

Yes,

I

time,

was on quite a few university committees during my
like Promotion and Tenure,

the College Committee on

Faculty Appointments, Promotion and Tenure.
a while .

I was on that for

I was on Biomedical Research Grant Committee, The

University General Research Grant, a committee on the budget
for the College, a member of search committees for chairmen of
various departments.

(

that I was on.
about.

Writing Across the Curriculum committee

I still don't know what that committee was all

The steering committee for establishing the School of

Religion in the College.
or not.

I don't know whether I regret that

I was in charge of getting the School of Religion

into the College.
people serve on.

There were various committees that many
At the national level the University of

Hawaii asked me to teach a course one time, and I was able to
do that.

I was a member of various panels for NSF programs,

for postdoctoral programs.

Editorial member and site visit

member for the Department of Energy.
various other publications.

And I reviewed work for

I was a member of panels for the

Department of Energy and whatever grants they would be giving
out, the usual things that I'm sure most people are involved
18

with .
Q:

You mentioned that you went on a sabbatical.
just one?

A:

Where did you go and what did you do?

The first one was
Hawaii.

Did you have

in 1981.

I

went to the University of

They invited me to teach and then I made some friends

there while I

was there.

The person who was there in the

biochemistry department was doing some work that I wanted to
do in my laboratory.

As a matter of fact, he contacted me and

we had a collaborative problem going on, together with another
person down in biochemistry, two people, Dr. Hersh, Dr. Hines,
and I all collaborated with that person in Hawaii, because he
was doing all the work that we didn't know how to do.

So we

sent him all the materials and he was doing the work there .
Q:

Was this the University of Hawaii?

A:

Yes.

And so I decided to take a sabbatical in his laboratory

to learn that particular technique.
was there from August on .

That was in 1981.

But that was the year my wife

became sick and she died in January of 1982.
called me back in December of 1981.
short at that time.
and my chair.

And I

So the doctor

So my sabbatical was cut

So I came back and went back to teaching

Then I had another sabbatical in 1991.

that to get out of the acting chair position.

I

I took
went to

Germany.
Q:

That must have been interesting.

A:

Very interesting.
who got his Ph.D.

I took it in the laboratory of my student
with me and went to a
19

very well-known

biochemist and from there established himself as a very good
up and coming young microbiologist.

The German university saw

this, so they hired him to become a professor.

So he was now

the big shot professor there and I said, "I'll go over there
and do a sabbatical with him."
Q:

What university was that?

A:

The University of Bayreuth.

I wanted to go back to Germany

because I was invited there 10 years earlier in 1980 with an
international conference, worked on some of the things I had
been doing in my laboratory.
expenses paid,
Germany.

so I

And so they invited me,

had a free vacation there.

I

all

enjoyed

My younger brother was in Germany for 30 years.

He

married a German girl and he was teaching American dependents
in Munich, teaching in an American school.

So he was there,

and every time I went to Germany I would go see him.

He took

me around everywhere and introduced me to things.

I

love

Germany and that's the reason why I decided I would like to go
back to Germany for a sabbatical in 1991.

It was a good

opportunity because my student was a professor there.
Q:

You belong to professional organizations, I suppose.

A:

Yes,

three

main

ones

are

the

American

Chemical

Society,

because I always enjoyed chemistry, the American Society for
Microbiology, and the American Society for Biochemistry and
Microbiology.

Q:

Did you hold offices i n any of these organizations?

A:

No,

I did not.

The only office was at the regional level .
20

The American Society for Microbiology is made up of various
regions in the United States and we all have our own group,
like the Big Eight.
branch of

So you would have the Missouri Valley

the American Society for

president of that in 1972 .

Microbiology.

I

And we all had to take turns.

didn't become part of committees on the national level.
just takes too much time away from your research.
was my main interest.

was
I
It

Research

That's the reason why most people come

to universities, so they can do the research.

Being hired for

teaching is a way of getting to research.
Q:

You mentioned one former student who became a professor in
Germany.

Are there any other outstanding former students

you'd like to mention?
A:

Yes,

there are quite a

laboratory.

few students that went through my

One very bright student I had was from Korea.

He

got his Ph.D. and did some very good work and went from here
and got involved in research and somehow got involved with a
person who wanted to send him to medical school.

In his

postdoctoral years he decided to go to medical school and now
is a very good infectious disease person at Temple University.
I got another student from Korea who came to my laboratory
about 15 years later and he said that that first student,
whose name was Bing Suh ... He said Dr. Suh was very well known
in Korea and is an example of what a person can accomplish in
America.

He said it was very difficult for him to realize

that he was in the very same laboratory that Dr. Suh came
21

from.

And that one, named Jay Kim, got his degree and now

he's chairman at one of the Korean universities.

I

had a

student from Iran who got his degree and is back in Iran-.
He's

chairman of microbiology at one of

there.

the universities

Then Harold Drake is a professor in Germany.

Q:

Oh, he was an American who became a professor in Germany.

A:

Oh, yes.
accent.

He was from Kansas.

He speaks German with a Kansas

That was the amazing thing about him, because Germans

tend to hire Germans.

But he was just a plain old Kansan and

made a big name and they hired him.
which he's very good at now.
summer after I retired.
doing very well.

He didn't know German,

I was just over there this past

I went out to visit him again.

There are others.

Tom Novitsky is CEO of a

company in Massachusetts just outside of Boston,
company in the world on a

He's

a

leading

certain analytical method they

discovered, how to detect certain bacteria in crabs.

It's

become very important now medically because in people who have
various infections, one of the bad things that can happen is
what they call septic shock,

the bacterial product going

through your whole body and can cause death very easily.
Doctors are very concerned about this condition.

Well, this

Tom Novitsky's company isolated a factor from what they call
the horseshoe crab out there in the ocean.

This component can

detect very minute amounts of this toxic substance.
everywhere in the world.

Now it's

He sends me postcards from virtually

every part of the world, Russia, Japan, France, England, you
22

(

name it, he's been there because he had to go help set up a
laboratory or set up a business there.
he's now CEO there.
Chan.

So he's a big shot and

My brightest student was a woman, May

She came from Taiwan and she is now working for the

Navy in China Lake, California, and she was so good that she
has been put up many times as woman of the year for that
section.

There was some university unit right outside of

Stanford .

They offered her essentially an endowed chair, and

so she called and asked if she should take it.
ahead. Take it."

I said, "Go

But she didn't take it because she was with

her husband, and her husband did not get any job over there.
Her husband was a big shot at China Lake, so she decided to
bypass it.

But she was the brightest student I ever had.

But

the most interesting case about a student that was not mine
but somehow came to KU ... I

used to tell this to my classes

whenever we'd come to this part of the course.
was Satoshi Mizutani.
years,

I

was

research there
Japan.

in Cleveland

and

I

was

and another postdoctoral

doing

postdoctoral

student was

And Sam and I

came to Kansas.

from

were very

All of us post docs were very close.

Sam went to Manitoba.
I

Going back now to my postdoctoral

His name was Sam Suzuki.

close friends.

The person's

Anyway,

He got a job in Manitoba, Canada, and

Satoshi Mizutani was a student from Japan

looking for a place to go, and he thought he would be more
comfortable if the person he went to was Japanese.

So he

heard of Sam Suzuki, so he wrote to Sam Suzuki and said he'd
23

(

like to go there, but Sam said right now the department can't
use any new students.
to, Jim Akagi.

But I have a friend in Kansas to write

And Satoshi wrote to me and I

was on the

admissions committee at that time and he was just another one
of hundreds that was coming in.

So I said, "Why don't you

write to me later on in the year and I' 11 know more about it."
And I thought that would be the end of it.
forget.

Well, he didn't

He wrote me at the end of the year and since we had

some money, I said, "Okay, why don't you come over.
give you a research assistantship."
a very good student.

We can

He came over and he was

He was working with another person but

the interesting thing is that after he got his Ph.D. he was
looking for a postdoctoral position.

Dave Paretsky had just

come back from Wisconsin from his sabbatical and he said,
"There's a person up there named Howard Timmons who could use
a post doc."

He was applying to everywhere and one of the

places he was applying to was Howard Timmons and Timmons
invited him to

come work with him.

interesting person.

Timmons was

a

very

He was for five to ten years saying that

the genetic material in this virus he was working with was
RNA .

Now everyone knows that DNA is genetic material and RNA

is just another part of nucleic acid,
different.

similar to DNA but

And everyone said, "You're crazy."

fact they were laughing at him and saying,

As a matter of

"Who would ever

think that RNA could be genetic material when everyone knows
and it has been established that DNA is the genetic material."
24

Now Satoshi Mizutani goes to Timmons' lab as a postdoc .

And

pretty soon Satoshi is writing back to us saying that some
very interesting thing will be reported at the Houston meeting
and Howard Timmons would report it.

And what Howard Timmons

reported was he got unequivocal proof that RNA could also be
the genetic material in this virus as Satoshi Mizutani found
in his laboratory.
Satoshi

did

all

biochemistry.

And Timmons got the Nobel Prize for it.
the

work

because

Timmons

did

not

know

He just had this circumstantial evidence that

RNA was involved.

But Satoshi went up there and because we

trained our graduate students in biochemistry he was able to
do the biochemistry that finally allowed Timmons to get the
Nobel Prize.

And so we are very proud of that.

But there are

many good students that went through my laboratory.

I was

proud of many of them.
Q:

Were you involved in community activities in Lawrence?

A:

Only when the kids were growing up.

One almost had to.

I was

happy to do it, the Boy Scouts and the Cub Scouts as well as
other things.
demonstrate

to

We used to travel to various grade schools to
them what microbiology

is .

We'd

bring

a

microscope and these other things to classes where someone
knew someone who knew my sons.
personal invitation.

It would be more or less a

We used to advertise to teachers that if

you want us to come by we will be happy to teach for one hour
and give a demonstration of microbiology.
Q:

That would be interesting to kids.
25

A:

We'd let them look in a microscope and see why they shouldn't
put coins in their mouths.
of fun.

I

We used to do that.

It was a lot

think some of that is still being done by the

department.
Q:

Do you have continuing involvement with KU now that you've
retired?

A:

Well, with the department I ' m still a member of some of the
students' Ph.D. committees.

Other than that, I told them let

me at least for this first year--I just started my retirement
three months ago--let me just enjoy my retirement and not have
anything to do with academics .

After that first year or two

if I'm still here in Lawrence then I'll reconsider.

But right

now I'm not interested in doing anything for the university.
I went to Germany, I went to Seattle a couple of times and
I've been taking these trips.
Q:

That's what I was going to ask you.

What are you going to do

now that you've retired?
A:

Well, I'm going to do a lot of things that I've wanted to do.
Our whole family has always been musically inclined.

Q:

Do you play a musical instrument?

A:

I'm the only one that does not have any music .
like to .

I am ready to set up piano lessons.

But I would

My older sister

played the piano and my younger brother was a music teacher.
So I

would like to take piano lessons, which I will.

going to start as soon as I
Other things like bowling,
26

I'm

get my trips out of the way.
I

want to do bowling .

I

love

cooking.
those .

If there are cooking classes around, I want to take
Cooking always fascinates me.

Q:

Do you do Japanese style cooking?

A:

Oh, yes.

I can cook Japanese.

was an undergraduate.

I

I used to cook a lot when I

learned from my mother.

And I've

been learning from my sisters and whoever would teach me
anything.
students I

A very close friend of mine, when we were graduate
lived with Dr.

students here together.
he is Italian.

So I

Consigli from K-State.

We were

Well, as you can guess from his name,

learned a lot of Italian cooking from

him, which I still use, and Chinese cooking, which I learned.
Cookbooks are one of my big things that I love to look at and
learn from anyone.

Not baking but cooking.

And I'm going to

get back to bowling and horseback riding, which I used to do
a long time ago.

If I run out of things I even am planning to

go to bartenders' school, not to do that as a living, but just
because I am curious.
Q:

Oh, so you'll know how to mix your own drinks.

A:

I was on the other side of the bar for all these years and I'd
like to see what it is to be on the other side .

I understand

they have a bartenders' academy in Kansas City.

So eventually

I

would

like

satisfaction.
Q:

to

take

that

course,

just

for

my

own

Travel in the meantime.

What is your assessment of KU,

especially your department,

past, present, hopes for the future, that kind of thing?
A:

Well, the department was very, very good.
27

We had a very good

reputation nationally and internationally.
its heyday.

I was involved in

And then gradually the budget problems began and

then during my tenure as chair we were hiring people, good
young people.

I

guess they were too good,

the people we

hired.
Q:

You mean they leave?

A:

They left, yes.

Other places wanted them too and we couldn't

compete because KU doesn't pay very well.
to lose people.

And so we started

As our department started going down and

people were leaving, we were having a difficult time filling
their positions, getting permission to fill their positions.
And the strategy of the dean's office at that time was this.
In 1968 because of various departments, biological sciences
department getting kind of weak, very little enrollment.

One

way the biological science department could survive is to go
in as a division,
proposed.

biological science division,

which they

So they called a meeting of all the biological

sciences and said,

"If you go under the umbrella of this

division, you will be protected.

The regents cannot look at

you and say you are weak, we are going to get rid of you . "
But microbiology was very strong.
publishing.

We all had grants.

We were

We said we didn't want to go into the division .

And the other biological science division was the department
of radiation and biophysics.
go in.
Q:

They said they did not want to

So every other department went in.

And that became systematics and ecology?
28

A:

That was one department, systematics and ecology.

Physiology

and cell biology was another department.

Entomology was a

department, botany was another department .

Biochemistry was

another department.

All of them went into the division.

Microbiology was an island.

Biophysics was an island but

eventually

into

they

got

pushed

microbiology and the division .

it.

So

then

it

was

And every dean that came up,

even when I was the chair said, "How come you're not in the
division?"

We didn't feel like we were weak.

up on our own.

We don't need the di vision.

the

are

way

we

and

being

was as big as the division's.

academically,

Our departmental budget

Now that is not going to go

unnoticed by people in the division.
gets so much money?"

We are very happy

successful,

researchwise, grantwise, everything.

We could stand

"How come microbiology

They just kept going to the dean until

finally their budget started going up to where it should have
been, because their budget was pretty low.
said, "Come into the division."
We don't want to."
It's not very good."

But they always

We said, "We don't have to.

And many people said,

"Don't come in.

our friends used to tell us that.

But

anyway, from the dean's standpoint it would be much easier to
deal with one person, the head of all t h e division, rather
than one person plus microbiology.

And so they always tried

to get us involved and they said they would never force us to
go in unless we ask to go in.
about that.

So the deans were very good

Well, now we're coming up to 1989, etc .
29

People

in the dean's office as people in our department moved said,
"We don't have enough money to give you to hire someone new."
People

in the division were getting money to rehire

vacancies.

And so another person from our department would

leave and they would say, "We don't have any money."

So from

a full staff of 10 we finally came down to five, half.
were getting pretty small.

that with five people.

Now we

And not only that, our enrollment

is going up more than when we had 10.

And we are doing all

Finally, the dean said, "You've got to

come into the division.

You have to come in or, you know,

there are various consequences."
forced.

any

So we were more or less

So we said, "Give us three years to phase in."

In

other words, we'll go into the division but let us still get
our own budget.
wanted our money.

They (the division) wanted our budget, they
That's what they wanted.

So the dean said,

okay, for three years we can handle our own budget, although
we are in the div ision.
of fact.

This is the third year, as a matter

So we came into the di v ision t wo year s

slowly are phasing in.

ago and

And as soon as we joined the division,

all of sudden we got permission to hire a lot of people.
personally don't feel that was right .

I

The deans knew we were

strong and they deliberately wanted to make us weak so they
could tell us to go into the division.

Because of that we are

in the division now and I don't know how they are now.
glad I

am not in the department right now because I

I'm
don't

think the future of microbiology is going to be that good.
30

And yet it is microbiology that is going to be one of the more
important fields in the medical sciences.
the genetic ... all the things on DNA,
evidence.

You can think of

the O.J.

Simpson DNA

All that started from microbiology .

science of that began in microbiology.

The whole

This whole thing on

the immune response, the HIV, that's all microbiology.

The

viruses are all microbiology, and nutrition, where we got all
our

information on vitamins

started with microbiology.

and

of these

things

Don't ever eat any hamburger

We tell our students that and the salmonella

problem that you have to be careful with poultry.

There are

so many aspects of heal th that involve microbiology.
microbiology is still going to be one of the big,
fields.

all

And now we are very well aware of

the E Coli thing and hamburgers.
that's pink.

all

So

important

The biggest problem hasn't even come yet, and that's

the use of antibiotics.

The bacteria become so resistant to

antibiotics that pretty soon from an ordinary scratch it can
turn into septicemia,
process.

There

is

antibiotics will help.
I

that is to say the whole infectious
nothing

you

can

do

about

it.

No

From a simple infection you'll die.

mean it can get to that point.

Prewar, we call it pre-

antibiotic era or pre World War II.
when there were no antibiotics.

I grew up in a period

And I remember a friend of

mine who got an earache and then a few days later he was dead.
No antibiotics.

You'd get a scratch and then it would become

what they called blood poisoning at that time, and you could
31

die from it.

There was nothing you could do about it because

(
we didn't know what antibiotics were at that time.
remember those times.

I still

And we are entering that period again

because doctors are prescribing antibiotics for people who
really don't need them.

And people are asking for antibiotics

when they don't need them and doctors will give them to them
because they don't want to lose their patients.

These people

are just ruining this whole process.
Q:

So you mean they will have to discover new antibiotics.

A:

Well, yes.

But in 1979 the Surgeon General made the statement

that we don't have to worry about infectious diseases any
more.

Antibiotics will take care of

concentrate on heart disease,

everything.

Let's

let's concentrate on cancer,

let's concentrate on this but don't worry about infectious
diseases, bacterial diseases.

That was one of the more stupid

remarks to make because from then on until 1991 only one new
antibiotic was developed by a pharmaceutical company.
there were only three.

In 1993 back to one and in 1994 about

three, when there used to be 10,
year.

In 1992

20 new antibiotics every

But now in the past from 1991 to 1994 not even 10 new

antibiotics came out on the market, which shows they're not
doing any new research in new antibiotics.
starting now,

but we are a

I think they're

few years behind now,

because

they're realizing now that the ordinary, common bacteria that
causes pimples, causes boils, now they are causing massive
infection and killing people.
32

Before they used to just treat

them with penicillin.

They can't do it any more.

And some of

them, when you go in a hospital, 50 percent of every case of
staph, staphylococcal infection is due to an organism that is
resistant to every antibiotic except one, and they are trying
to hide that antibiotic from this organism until they have to
use

it.

If

that

organism

gets

resistant

to

that

one

antibiotic, which it will, then there is nothing you can do
about it .
right now.
again.

And there are people dying from a common infection
And these are some of the problems, microbiology

One of things about KU is that everyone was trying to

protect their own field, which is good.

This is human nature.

People in the dean's office--there are so many biologists in
there--they are trying to protect and help people in their
particular field of interest and not help microbiology as
much, when they should.

So microbiology at this time will

make a comeback, I think.

The younger people that we've hired

are very good.

I am really impressed with the four younger

people that we have hired in the past three years.
very good.

I

They ar_e

just hope that they won't be ruined,

not by

microbiology but by certain administrativ e decisions.

But if

they are allowed to do as they want to do, I think these four
plus maybe

one more,

my

replacement,

might help get the

microbiology department back to the lev el where we were once
a very well-respected department.

I'm just hoping that this

will be the case .
Q:

Well, I think that's about it.
33

Is there a nyt h ing I didn, t ask

you that I should have or that you want to add?

A:

The 34 years that I

spent at KU were very happy ones.

really enjoyed every year.

It went so fast.

It was so quick

that it is hard to believe that I was here for 34 years .
has to do with when you're having fun,
quickly.

I

It

time goes by very

It was all fun, really, the teaching as well as the

research .

Not only that, but the community of Lawrence is one

that one rarely finds throughout the United States.

I will

have to admit that if the right place becomes available, I may
go back to the Seattle area, back to my roots.

I have a lot

of good friends there from camp .
Q:

Oh, you mean they went back.

A:

Most of them did.

Some of them I haven't seen in 40 or 50

years, but we still keep in contact.
them.

I would like to see

It would be a very difficult decision if I were to find

a place back there.

There is ambivalence there .

Or maybe if

my son--my older son lov es Lawrence and keeps coming back
here--I may make a deal with him.
You can buy this house.

Let me go back to Seattle."

could come b a ck and forth .
place .

"Do y ou want this house?
Then I

But Lawrence has been a v e ry nic e

If at all possible, I'd like to stay here.

34