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Because of Bill: William Sumio Naito’s Legacy in Portland
The following description was submitted by the event organizer.
Because of Bill: William Sumio Naito’s Legacy in Portland at the Japanese American Museum of Oregon offers visitors an in-depth look at all that Bill Naito built in Portland and the personal motivations that drove his success.
Bill Naito was a force of nature whose infinite imagination, unbridled determination and limitless persistence transformed Portland during the second half of the twentieth century. Starting in the 1960s when the Naito family bought their first building in Portland, he took an interest in downtown, particularly in transforming it into a livable city center with green space and places to live, work, shop, and play. An influential civic leader, he was often the only person of color amongst any given group of businesspeople or politicians.
Earlier this year, Erica Naito-Campbell, Bill’s grandchild, published Portland’s Audacious Champion. The biography explores how the extreme racism and xenophobia of World War II traumatized her grandfather and how he confronted that trauma by becoming a successful businessman who sought to make Portland better than the city that had expelled him and his family. Using her book as a foundational document, the new exhibition explores intimate details of Bill’s life alongside the origin stories of many iconic Portland structures and how much of the city we know and love today is because of Bill.