Sister City founder Ed Tsutakawa dies

Ed Tsutakawa, a tireless advocate of international understanding who built a cultural bridge between the city he loved in Eastern Washington and the city he loved in Japan, died Friday evening at 85.

The seeds Tsutakawa planted in 1961 with the Sister City relationship of Spokane and Nishinomiya have come full bloom, from the authentic Japanese garden that borders a South Hill neighborhood to the local outpost for a Japanese women’s college built on the grounds of an old U.S. Army post.

A printer by trade and an artist by avocation, Tsutakawa was a confidante to Spokane’s mayors and other top political leaders for five decades.

“I always called him the ‘shadow mayor,’ ” former Mayor Jack Geraghty said Saturday. “He was always trying to get things done for the Sister City organization.”

He spent a life committed to his community, son Mark Tsutakawa said.

“You almost couldn’t believe how many community organizations he was involved with,” Mark Tsutakawa said. “His whole life was built around helping people.”

Born in 1921 in Seattle, where his parents worked in the import-export business, Tsutakawa was sent at age 6 to school in his parents’ native land, to Nishinomiya, a smaller city between Kobe and Osaka. He returned nine years later, graduated from high school in Seattle and enrolled at the University of Washington. That’s where he was when the United States entered World War II and Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were forced to sell their homes and property for pennies on the dollar, then sent to internment camps inland.

The Tsutakawas were sent to Minidoka, a camp behind barbed wire on the Idaho desert near Twin Falls. During the nine months he stayed at Minidoka, Ed Tsutakawa used his art to depict the guards and the camps. He was then drafted to become a military translator and teach Japanese.

Years later, Ed and his wife, Hide, whom he met at Minidoka, revisited the camp as part of a documentary, “In Time of War.” What’s striking about their scenes in the movie is how much they joke and laugh. As they first arrived, Ed says, “Now isn’t this a treat.”

Mark Tsutakawa said that was typical of his father’s attitude toward that chapter of his life.

“I think a lot of people would have let that situation defeat them,” he said. “He took a very negative situation and really took what little positive out of it he could. You could positively say it did not defeat him.”

Tsutakawa received notice for active duty but the orders never came. In 1944, he came to Spokane where, he would later say, he fell in love with the small town feel and the friendliness of the people.

“Truly, I would have to say Spokane is the greatest place,” he told a newspaper columnist earlier this year. “There are great people here.”

He worked for a local printing firm and free-lanced his artwork. His wife of two years, Tama, died in 1946, and he married Hide in 1949. They raised three children, Nancy, Margaret and Mark, and were married for 57 years.

He established Litho-Art Printers Inc. in 1954, and for years was known as a businessman and designer of trademarks and logos, including the Spokane Centennial logo of 1981.

In 1961, he worked with Neal Fosseen, Spokane’s first mayor elected under the council-manager form of government, to form the Sister City bond with Nishinomiya.

“It was all through Ed’s connections in Nishinomiya,” recalled Geraghty, who was an aide to Fosseen at the time.

Dave Rodgers, Fosseen’s successor, said he was “hardly even elected when Ed collared me and wanted me to go over to Nishinomiya.”

Rodgers went twice, both times with help from Tsutakawa on Japanese customs.

“I remember he worked out a business card for me in Japanese characters,” Rodgers recalled Saturday. He was always friendly, always helpful. I never heard him raise his voice.”

He was, the former mayor said, “the kind of fella that we could use more of.”

Roland Herriges, the president of the Sister City organization, said Tsutakawa was serious about educating the children of the two cities.

“It was a natural part of him,” Herriges said. “He wanted these exchanges so that there was a closer relationship between his people in Japan and his people in Spokane.”

Out of that relationship came the Nishinomiya Japanese Garden in Manito Park. Tsutakawa helped bring a master designer from Japan to Spokane, Geraghty said. The planner had expected to stay two days but became so enthralled with the site and the project, he stayed 10.

Also from that relationship came Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute, a Spokane “branch campus” of Mukogawa Women’s University in Nishinomiya. In the 16 years since it opened, more than 7,000 young women have come to Spokane to study English in a setting that was once an Army post and later a small liberal arts college overlooking the Spokane River.

Tsutakawa retired from Litho-Art as the plans for Mukogawa Fort Wright were being laid.

“The school just asked him, ‘Do you want a job?’ ” Mark Tsutakawa said.

So for the next 17 years, Ed Tsutakawa served as vice president of administration and operations for the school, overseeing building operations and maintenance. He “semi-retired” three years ago, his son said.

In failing health for more than a year, Tsutakawa remained active in the community and was honored in January with a reception at the Davenport Hotel, designed to raise money for a scholarship in his name at an Inland Northwest university focusing on international business and trade.

He died of complications arising from diabetes and lung cancer.

A memorial service is planned for 7 p.m. Friday in the commons at Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute.

“We’ll miss him,” said Geraghty. “He was a great citizen of Spokane, of Japan, and, really, the world.”