The following is a speech given by Richard Forsyth at the Bench Dedication Ceremony held at the Japanese Friendship Garden & Museum to honor Rio and Tamiko Imamura on November 16, 2024. Richard Forsyth was the legal advisor to Minato Gakuen for 25 years, legal advisor to Japanese Friendship Garden & Museum for more than 10 years, and founding Chairman of the San Diego World Trade Center.
It is fitting that we find ourselves this morning near the Inamori Pavillion in this beautiful garden. We all know that Dr. Inamori was very generous to San Diego. But, in my mind, one of his most impactful and enduring gits was in bringing Rio Imamura and his wife Tamiko, to San Diego.
I first met Rio in 1986 – during a job interview. He and two others were interviewing me to take the role of outside legal counsel for Minato Gakuen, San Diego’s Japanese elementary and secondary school. I say it was a job interview, but Rio made it immediately clear that there was no pay attached to the position. I was successful in that interview and happily served in that capacity for 25 years. In the years following, I discovered that Rio and Tamiko had arrive in San Diego in the mid-1970’s as a Kyocera executive and became an immediate presence in the Japanese business, educational and cultural communities. Rio played a major role as one of the founders of Minato Gakuen in 1978, and by the mid-1980’s, had become the Chairman of its board.
Let me take a minute to emphasize to you the importance of the decision to start this school, not only for the Japanese business communities of San Diego and Tijuana, but to these cities as a whole. This region was looking to expand its industrial base and this meant attracting foreign investment.
In that era, that meant Japanese investment. The way to secure that investment was to make the region more attractive to Japanese companies and their Japanese employees. There is no better way to do this than to ensure the educational needs of the community are met.
Schools like Minato Gakuen existed elsewhere, nearby in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, but putting Minato Gakuen together in San Diego was a major commitment by Rio and a handful of business colleagues, some in Kyocera, some in other well-known Japanese companies.
I say Rio and other Japanese business leaders – who were likely all men considering the era – but I think it should be stated, that it was without a doubt, Tamiko and other ex-pat wives who were the most important drivers of this movement.
And to state that Rio and his associates founded Minato Gakuen is too simple an expression. Let me take you through the process.
They needed the school to be first accredited and supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, then form a US nonprofit corporation, next negotiate a significant lease of space from the San Diego Unified School District, hire teachers and staff, and finally convince Japanese parents to send their children to the school. This was a significant undertaking.
Minato offered and still offers classes in Japanese in core subjects every Saturday to elementary and secondary students. Since its founding, thousands of students have attended Minato Gakuen and benefited from its offerings.
Rio was not only there at the founding, but he guided the school for much of the 1980’s and 90’s as its board chairman and later as chairman emeritus. It was in those roles I saw his best work.
For example, Minato, by the mid 1980’s, had outgrown its original facilities and Rio renegotiated and expanded the least of space with the San Diego School District. I recall we encountered some resistance from the district because, as it turns out, something I did not know – most teachers are possessive of their classrooms and do not like them used when they are not present. Rio, always a diplomat, convince those American teachers to accept the lease and open their classrooms. He did that by encouraging the US teachers to attend a session or two of Minato, to meet the Minato teachers and staff, and to become acquainted with Japanese teaching methods. He was always a builder of bridges between cultures.
One of my fondest memories of Rio was in the late ‘80s during Minato’s Sports Day or Undokai. If you do not know, Sports Day, as celebrated in Japanese schools and at Minato, is a day-long event with wonderful athletic competition among the students. During this day, he spoke to virtually everyone in attendance - parent, teacher, and child alike. He inquired about them. He welcomed all and treated them as family. My own family was among those he charmed that day.
I think this typified Rio. He loved people. It did not matter to him if you were a high-ranking Japanese executive sitting on Minato’s board, or if you were a second grader enjoying Sports Day. He cared about you and once you spoke with him, you could tell he cared.
He also cared about San Diego, its diverse communities and this garden as demonstrated by his family’s action here and by his friends who join Kirk and Yukina today.
I want to leave you with one last story. In preparing these remarks, I came across some correspondence I received from Rio, which I think will serve as an inspiration to us all. I found a letter from 1997 – I know many of you received such letters from Rio throughout the years, because he also loved to write.
He and Tamiko were just newly returned to Japan. He was lamenting his lack of accomplishments and energy that year. He went on to write that he had only that year restarted his Chinese language lessons and was back to swimming daily, and he had traveled to the US to hike the Olympic Peninsula and visited six cities in Mexico and four cities in Australia. Rio may have felt disappointed but I have a feeling that Tamiko was probably feeling pretty exhausted.
Kirk and Yukina, thank you for this bench. I plan on using it often, and when I do, I will reflect on Rio, his life, his dedication to San Diego and his lasting legacy.
