[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 67 (Tuesday, May 14, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5017-S5018]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    A TRIBUTE TO BILL NAITO, 1925-96

 Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, Portland, OR, has long been 
hailed as a city of innovation and vigor. While all denizens of the 
city bask in that community energy, there are a handful of people who 
can be credited with fostering Portland's uncommon spirit. Through 
visionary imagination and bold leadership, they have made Portland the 
progressive city it is today. Bill Naito, who died last week, was one 
of those leaders.
  Naito was a Portland businessman who combined his business acumen 
with a deeply-felt sense of civic obligation. Working with his brother, 
he started his career in 1962 as the proprietor of a bustling import 
business. The brothers soon bought the building that housed their 
business, and thus began Bill Naito's long legacy as a property 
developer. Over the next three decades, he repeatedly built thriving 
developments in areas shunned by other businessmen. Skid Road, home of 
the Naito

[[Page S5018]]

brothers Import Plaza, grew into revitalized Historic Old Town. An 
abandoned department store building became the Galleria shopping 
center, the 1980's anchor of Portland's commercial revitalization. He 
turned an old warehouse district into the McCormick Pier apartments, 
luring middle-income residents into downtown Portland.
  While he prospered personally from his business initiatives, Bill 
Naito was generous with his time and assets, and his sense of civic 
responsibility enriched Portland endlessly. In addition to serving on 
countless boards and civic organizations, he donated space in office 
buildings to nonprofit or public agencies. He was a founder of 
Artquake, a long-running annual arts festival. He also donated land to 
help launch Saturday Market, a weekly showcase of local performers and 
artisans that has drawn tourists and suburbanites to downtown Portland 
for a generation. He was perhaps most popularly noted for preserving 
the White Stag landmark when the company moved out of Portland. Thanks 
to Bill Naito's sense of whimsy, each Christmas season west-bound 
motorists enjoy the White Stag reindeer's illuminated red nose.
  Though he was never one to trumpet his own accomplishments, it was 
clear that Naito took the greatest pride in the creation of the 
Japanese-American Historical Plaza in Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Naito 
is the son of Japanese immigrants, and his family was forced to 
relocate to Utah in 1942 to avoid the internment forced on Portland's 
Japanese community. Though he seemed to carry little personal 
bitterness from those war years--in fact, he joined the Army himself in 
1944--he worked the rest of his life to make sure that Oregonians 
wouldn't forget the lessons learned from the Japanese internment. The 
memorial he spearheaded, dedicated in 1990, is a moving tribute to the 
families interned during World War II, and serves as a reminder of the 
guarantees the Bill of Rights provides for us all.
  The accomplishments I have enumerated only begin to convey the varied 
contributions Bill Naito made to Portland throughout his life. This 70-
year-old, who worked long days at an age when most men are content in 
retirement, spent a lifetime fusing community and business pursuits. 
Bill Naito seemed the image of hard-working vigor and energy when 
cancer snuck up on him, and he died just a week after being diagnosed. 
His death saddens those he touched personally, and he enriched the 
lives of many more Oregonians who live, work, and visit the city to 
which he brought so much life. The nose of the White Stag reindeer 
burned red last week in tribute to Bill Naito. Portland has truly lost 
a treasure, Mr. President, and I want to pay tribute to him again here 
today. 

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