Naito Boulevard runs along the west bank of the Willamette River, past the waterfront of downtown Portland, but it hardly sums up its namesake’s achievements.
Portland’s Audacious Champion, a biography of Bill Naito authored by granddaughter Erica Naito-Campbell and newly published by Oregon State University Press, astonished me with its account of all the buildings and sights I’ve taken for granted during my 33 years in Portland, most of which Bill Naito either saved, improved, built with his brother Sam, or had a hand in creating.
Unlike other developers who construct and name projects from scratch, Naito loved to preserve and honor old buildings and neighborhoods. The Naito brothers acquired and rehabbed more than a dozen structures, mostly in Old Town, but there were other notables across the city.
Many residents know about The Galleria, Montgomery Park, and the White Stag (whose sign is easily spotted from Interstate 5), but there were many more, from historic Erickson’s Saloon, the Dekum Building, and Norton House (which Naito renamed Captain Couch Square) to the Albers Mill next to the Broadway Bridge.
Before the Naitos became real estate investors, their father Hide — an Issei immigrant from outside Kobe — opened a low-cost import retail and wholesale business about 1920. First at SW 13th and Washington, later 9th and Morrison, H. Naito Goods was not in Portland’s Nihonmachi (or Japantown) proper, but near it.
The book states that after firstborn Sam, Fukiye Naito desired a girl. In an interview, Naito-Campbell said Fukiye was “a terrible mother. She didn’t want Bill, she wanted a daughter, and she dressed him as one.”
During the Second World War, the Naitos didn’t suffer the same trauma of many neighbors sent to prison camps. Hide moved his family to Salt Lake City, outside the Wartime Exclusion Zone, and leased their Portland home. A longtime clerk — a white woman — ran the store while the family was away. But the racism and dislocation (especially for a high school sophomore like Bill) were still deeply injurious.
Naito enlisted in August 1944. After military intelligence training, he was sent to Tokyo for postwar service. The Japanese didn’t regard him as one of theirs, either, so his granddaughter said he returned to the U.S. “a broken, lonely person.”
Work and drink were among his few consolations. For much of his life, Naito-Campbell said, his workday was 30 minutes in the garden, 15 minutes of breakfast with family, then 12 hours at the office.
Drinking hour began at 5:30 p.m. with straight gin or whiskey from half-gallon bottles in Naito’s desk or a credenza. Newly elected mayor Bud Clark won Bill’s immediate friendship by offering him a beer at 10 in the morning. Everybody loved to drink with Bill, the author said, but “he was chasing something deeply unhealthy, which was acceptance by white society.”
Naito found a few close friends as an undergrad at Reed College. His doctoral advisor in economics at the University of Chicago was Milton Friedman, whom he would idolize all his life.
The book details Naito’s long-term alliances with local, state, and government officials. He had excellent relationships with everyone from city planning bureau staff to Mayors Vera Katz and Clark, as well as US Senator Mark Hatfield. I asked about the seeming contradiction between that and his worship of Friedman, who insisted government should keep out of the economy.
“He believed in the free market, but he wasn’t a complete idiot,” Naito-Campbell said with a smile. Government and the private sector should work together to arrive at appropriate solutions. Friedman taught him to make no moral judgments — just identify the economic forces.
But there was so much more than just buying up old buildings to rehab, rent, and sell. From Victoria, BC, Naito imported the idea of hanging flower baskets. He persuaded city officials to install lamps that resembled old gaslights. He pushed for street trolleys (even purchased old cars from Portugal and Australia himself), and singlehandedly cajoled Mayor Neil Goldschmidt to route light-rail MAX trains along First Avenue.
Naito also served on more than 30 nonprofit boards and task forces, among them the Multnomah County Library foundation and the Urban Forestry Commission. He loved libraries and trees.
Back in 1963, after the Naitos bought the Globe Hotel at NW First and Couch and opened the unexpectedly successful Import Plaza, they obtained the city’s permission to cut holes in the sidewalk and plant sweetgum trees (which have since grown to 60 feet).
During his 20 years on the Urban Forestry Commission, more than 30,000 trees were planted across Portland, including 177 along East 82nd in 1988-1989. Naito also lobbied hard for the annual Christmas tree in Pioneer Courthouse Square.
How did he get his way so often? As the book says, “his true talent was shameless persistence.” In the interview, the author added: “Especially in this town, where everybody is passive-aggressive, he was shameless.” Naito labeled himself a “local busybody.” But in addition, his granddaughter said, “he was intensely likable … and he was loyal. He was gonna pay you back, and it wasn’t going to be with money.”
His most personal achievement was the Japanese American Historical Plaza at the north end of Waterfront Park. Though famously cheap, for once he told architect Robert Murase that money was no object. Naito found someone in Japan to donate cherry blossom trees.
In his final five years, he also served as director of the society that got the Lan Su Classical Chinese Garden designed and (nearly) funded. After his diagnosis of an aggressive cancer, Mayor Katz asked Naito what she could do, and he said: “Build the garden.”
The City Council readily broke its own rules (5 years minimum after a person’s death — in this case, just 56 days passed) to rename the former Front Avenue in honor of the citizen who, arguably more than any other, is responsible for the look and character of Portland today.
