Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum

Interview of Tapio Holma October 25, 2014 Seattle, Washington

Interviewers: Gary London; Marjorie Graf Also present: Brend Holma

Gary London: [0:04] This is an interview for the Nordic American Voices oral history project. Today is October 25, 2014, and we’ll be interviewing Tapio Holma. We are the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. My name is Gary London, and the co-interviewer today is…

Marjorie Graf: [0:26] Marjorie Graf.

Gary: [0:29] Thank you very much, Tapio, for agreeing to be interviewed.

Tapio Holma: [0:34] Okay. I am honored.

Gary: [0:35] We appreciate it.

Tapio: [0:36] Thank you very much for inviting me.

Gary: [0:38] So, we’d like to start with your recollections of your grandparents- sort of your first memories of this generation. Do you want to start with your paternal grandparents?

Tapio: [0:53] Sure. Actually, I wasn’t lucky enough to realize my grandparents as such. My father’s side, my grandfather died the same year I was born, so I just have some pictures where he’s holding me on his lap as a farewell goodbye kind of situation. My grandmother also from my father’s side lived in another city, but I was able to meet her a few times with my father. They lived in Tampere.

[1:31] On my mother’s side, both of them had already gone before I was born. So my earliest memories really of the grandparents is limited, except that I have some historical knowledge from my father and so on- what they experienced.

[1:53] Since you asked about my grandfather, his name was Kustaa. He came to the in 1904. My father was two years old. He left because at that time, Finland being part of , was at war with Japan, and he didn’t want to serve in the Russian forces.

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[2:16] He came to the United States and lived in New York for five years. And when the war ended, he returned back to Finland and experienced a lot of those things which we afterwards learned about- the civil war and so on. They were active… I don’t know whether it’s good to say “on the right side,” but they were on the right side. [Laughter] In any case, he experienced in his life a lot of things which were in the birth of Finland, so to speak.

Gary: [2:51] Yeah. And you can tell us his name again? His full name?

Tapio: [2:58] His name was Kustaa Laine Holma.

Gary: [3:03] And your grandmother’s name on that side?

Tapio: [3:05] My grandmother’s name was Hilda Holma. Her maiden name was Roos.

Gary: [3:13] Okay. And how about on the maternal side?

Tapio: [3:18] My grandfather died I think in early 1930s or something like that- even before that. As I said, I don’t know much about his background. The all lived in Häme, which is a lake area of Finland. My mother was very close to her mother, and as I said, she passed away just a year before I was born, as well.

Gary: [3:55] Yeah. And what were their names?

Tapio: [3:57] My grandfather’s name was Karl Gustav Fenander. And my maternal grandmother’s name was Henrietta… not Henrietta… My god, I can’t even remember the name. Henrika Fernander. And her maiden name was Saksa.

Gary: [4:27] Saksa.

Tapio: [4:27] Yeah. And nobody knows where that came from. [Laughter] Just one of those unusual things.

Gary: [4:34] Thank you very much for that. What do you know about how your parents met? Any family lore?

Tapio: [4:44] Yeah. Actually, my mother was in the restaurant business. I think first she started as a waitress, and later became in charge of the restaurant itself. She worked also for… in Finland called [inaudible 5:06]. At that time there was a separate restaurant, which was handled by HOK [inaudible 5:13]. She was in charge of that restaurant, which was actually catering to the parliament members.

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[5:21] She has told me some funny stories about when she had to wear the tray, you know, with a lot of stuff, and politicians who were speaking all the time. I remember one particular case. The president of Finland at that time was Kyösti Kallio. [Inaudible 5:40] on his knee with the heavy restaurant tray. [Laughter] You can’t wait until the politician has finished his speeches. So that has stayed in my memory. It was really interesting.

Gary: [5:55] And how did she meet your father?

Tapio: [5:59] My father was working for telephone company, and went often to the restaurant where my mother was working. I think that’s how they really got together. They were married in 1929, February 10, in the old church in Helsinki- [inaudible 6:21]. [Laughter] So that I know for sure.

Gary: [6:26] Can you for the record just give us their names, please?

Tapio: [6:29] My father’s name was Laine Erkki Holma, and my mother’s name was Jenny Martha Fernander, maiden name. Holma was later.

Gary: [6:45] And they lived, then in Helsinki?

Tapio: [6:47] They lived in Helsinki, in the city of Helsinki first. When I was born in 1938, they moved to Käpylä, which is a suburb of Helsinki.

Gary: [7:01] You told us before the interview that you have some recollections of those war years. You’d be too young to remember the Winter War, but some memories of the Continuation War?

Tapio: [7:18] Right. Well, this was when the Continuation War started, in 1944. I was then almost six years old. And I was ready to go to bed. It was early evening, maybe around seven, eight o’clock, and the sirens went off. That was when the first Soviet Union bombers started to unload their bombs in Helsinki.

[7:47] We barely got with my mother to the cellar, you know. It was like a crawl space, but it was a very nice cellar. It was like a bunker, because around it was a granite base. So we survived the bombing, although the whole house came down. The bomb went just in front of our garden, and three or four buildings came totally down. It was wood structure buildings.

[8:17] My mother, I don’t know even how she got out- how we got out of the cellar. We ran to the bomb shelter, which was about a kilometer and a half from our house. And I remember it was a cold February day [night]. There was a lot of ice on the road. Not so much snow yet.

[8:43] And one of the memories just going to the bomb shelter was that one officer who was on

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vacation from the war… who died on that street where we lived. And I have a memory of where his hand was in the snow with a ring on it. And it was just one of the memories that stays for the rest of my life.

[9:10] There were three people only who died in that suburb because of the bombings. We had fantastic antiaircraft artillery at that time, and that helped in many of those, so the Russian planes didn’t reach Helsinki. They had to drop their bombs to the Gulf of Finland.

Marjorie: [9:33] Where was your father at that time?

Tapio: [9:34] Oh, that’s interesting. My father had an orchestra event. He was a cellist. So he played in the Helsinki orchestra. He came back of course when the sirens and everything had all come down. He came down to see the house. And he said, “Oh, my family has gone.” He just learned later where we were. But he just couldn’t believe that anybody survived in that house when he saw that.

[10:07] And there was one interesting memory about that. We had a dog, an English Setter, Jermu was the name, and he survived, too. In the kitchen when the table went down, we like had a marble slab on the table. He was under that table, and he survived. I don’t recall what happened after the war. My father actually placed the dog with some other family. He was the only survivor in that building. [Laughter]

Gary: [10:45] Do you have other wartime memories?

Tapio: [10:49] Not really. We were evacuated from Helsinki to the countryside for a couple months, and then we came back to Helsinki when the peace treaty, I think, was already signed, and we were in temporary housing for a little while, until they repaired all the buildings which had been damaged.

Gary: [11:16] You returned, however, to the area where you had been living?

Tapio: [11:19] Yes. I started my elementary school in 1945. At the age of seven in Finland, children have to start their school. So that was the time.

Gary: [11:33] There were some children who went to during the war.

Tapio: [11:37] Yes, I had a couple of cousins myself. It was common practice of a lot of families to send their children, particularly to Sweden.

Gary: [11:47] Any discussion of that in your family, do you remember?

Tapio: [11:50] No, not that I recall. Later, I had talked to my cousins, who were I guess fortunate enough to go there. They stayed there a few years. But I don’t have much knowledge of what they

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experienced, or anything like that.

Gary: [12:07] And in your own case, you don’t remember your parents discussing that possibility?

Tapio: [12:11] No, not at all. This information has come up later with my cousins, and what they learned later from their own parents. I don’t think my family was too much involved with that kind of discussion.

Gary: [12:26] You said your father was a cellist?

Tapio: [12:29] Yes.

Gary: [12:31] He played in the…

Tapio: [12:32] He actually played in two orchestras- Helsinki Young Men’s Christian Orchestra, which is, by the way the only symphony orchestra in the world with the YMCA. And he established with three other guys the orchestra in 1929, which has actually celebrated their eightieth anniversary.

[12:66] And the other orchestra he played in was I think Helsinki… not Helsinki Symphony, but something… It was also not the professional orchestra; it was like a voluntary basis, but it was a big orchestra. I think it had something to do with the labor party, but I’m not sure.

Gary: [13:19] So was your father involved in the war?

Tapio: [13:23] Only the Winter War. In the Winter War he was at that time, I think, thirty-six years old. So he worked in Mikkeli in Mannerheim’s headquarters, so he was a radio assistant, or something, too, since he had telephone experience.

Gary: [13:44] Did your father share with you his wartime experiences?

Tapio: [13:49] No. Not much at all. I think the closest memories I got… anything from the wars was from my father of the Civil War. He was only sixteen years old, but he had to go with his father. They were the only people from my family that time.

[14:07] He was even that young that it was all on a voluntary basis that he followed his father. And their home also in Tampere was totally destroyed. They were defending Tampere when Tampere was really taken over by Mannerheim. He was involved. Even about those things, he didn’t want to talk much about.

Gary: [14:31] Yeah.

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Tapio: [14:32] It was sad- brother against brother, and he had a lot of friends who were on the other side, so it was sad. Sad memories.

Gary: [14:41] Tampere, of course, was a focus in the Civil War.

Tapio: [14:41] Right. Yeah.

Gary: [14:48] Did you have siblings? Brothers and sisters?

Tapio: [14:50] No. No sisters, no brothers. Only spoiled brat. [Laughter]

Gary: [14:56] What do you remember about life growing up with your parents?

Tapio: [15:02] Well, I was one of those people who always was sick about something. [Laughter] In Finland, there were all kinds of epidemics. If one came, I got it. [Laughter]

Gary: [15:14] What childhood diseases did you have?

Tapio: [15:17] Well, [inaudible 15:18] infection. Some sort of typhoid, even, you know. It was not good nutrition and food at that time. I didn’t have measles, but I had chicken pox and [whooping cough], and those children’s diseases. You know, the four years in elementary school before you went to high school, there are not too many memories, except you learn the basics of the educational system. It was very, very interesting.

[15:50] One memory I have from my elementary school is that when the war ended, we got some gifts from America. There were three things: pencils, marble balls, and chewing gum. [Laughter] I don’t know what the government really thought about that, but that’s what everybody received. There were even fights among the kids in school about who gets what color marble ball. [Laughter]

[16:15] From Russia we got sunflower seeds. Yeah, I remember that. After the war, the things were tough. I mean, I didn’t see an orange and banana before 1950 when my uncle came to Finland. He was a sailor, and he came to visit Finland.

[16:45] So that period from ’45 to ’50, that was really kind of the thing when everybody was racing with the coupons to buy different kinds of things. If you knew some farmer, you went to get the potatoes direct from them. [Laughter] But it was a tough time.

Gary: [17:04] So, which elementary school did you attend?

Tapio: [17:06] I went to Käpylä [inaudible 17:08]. Yes.

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Gary: [17:10] And what kind of experience was that for you? Was that…

Tapio: [17:15] I just don’t recall too much, except that you had to go there. [Laughter] Just to learn something. So those four years, I know that there were some subject matters which were of very much interest to me- basically, mathematics, and geography. Those were my favorite subjects at the time.

Gary: [17:48] And then you went on to what we might call here, middle school.

Tapio: [17:54] Yes, right. Fifth grade, I guess, in this country, right. That was also at Käpylä. Käpylä [inaudible 18:03] School. It was like a gymnasium, or comparable to K-12 education in this country, high school.

Gary: [18:12] Do you happen to have retained any friendships from those school years?

Tapio: [18:17] Yes, as a matter of fact. I’ve been corresponding with one person in particular because we followed our educational pattern quite far away. We still communicate with each other, but not too many. Most of the others, particularly from elementary school period, they are already gone. They’re dead.

[18:46] Many from the high school years. We have occasional reunions. The last one was two years ago. From that group of graduating students, I think we had about twelve left of twenty-four. So half had already gone there, too.

Gary: [19:08] Yeah. And tell us about your subsequent education.

Tapio: [19:15] Okay, after high school I went to Helsinki University to study… I was not knowing what I was going to study, so I took some courses in the political science area. I stayed at the university a year and a half, but I didn’t like it, so I applied to Helsinki School of Economics, and they accepted me there, so I graduated from there, and got the business experience, which helped me a lot when I moved to this country.

Gary: [19:55] Before we leave Finland and come to the United States, can you tell us about any hobbies or recreational activities you engaged in?

Tapio: [20:07] Well, I was active in sports, particularly at a young age- field and track. I enjoyed soccer. We didn’t have ice hockey in Finland at that time. It was bandy, you know- jääpallo in Finnish. I was actually involved both in soccer and bandy as referee. So I did a lot of work in those areas.

Marjorie: [20:40] I wanted to ask- after the war, when times were really difficult, did your family

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have a garden? Or how did you feed yourself?

Tapio: [20:48] We had a garden, yeah. In Käpylä it’s called like a garden city of Helsinki, so everybody has a little block. And we had basically some vegetables, and various black and red currants, and that kind of stuff. Not in our particular are, but close, we had apple orchards everywhere. They are all destroyed today for parking places for cars. [Laughter]

[21:22] But it was really that kind of community where everybody had some kind of plot to grow something. I even got so many strawberries and berries in general from our plot that I sold them to the local grocery store. I made some extra money during high school years. So yes, there was a very great need for people to really cultivate something.

Gary: [21:53] Was religion important in your household?

Tapio: [21:57] I’m sorry?

Gary: [21:58] Was religion important in your household?

Tapio: [22:00] Not really. You know, you are familiar with Finland- we are eighty percent, I guess, Lutherans. We are supposed to be. [Laughter] I don’t remember too many events where it played a major role in our life, in our family. I mean, you went to the [inaudible 22:25] always, to church for the opening and ending, and that kind of stuff, and funerals, and weddings, and christening children. That was a part of life. But it didn’t play a very, very strong, active part in our family.

Gary: [22:45] Did you go to catechism school?

Tapio: [22:49] Yeah. Yeah, you had to do that. I think that’s a tradition. Everybody went. You reach that age, fifteen years or whatever, that was part of that. Yes.

Marjorie: [23:03] What were dating [inaudible 23:05] when you were a teenager?

Tapio: [23:07] What was that?

Marjorie: [23:07] For boys and girls. Dating. What were the [inaudible 23:11]?

Tapio: [23:11] I think it started maybe between that period, fifteen; eighteen. Many people were sort of late in those kinds of things. There was activity, I’m sure. I don’t know to what level, every individual. [Laughter] I would say you got active before… in our case, men go to military service, so a lot of people already had established some kind of girlfriend situation.

[TAPE BREAK (?) 23:42]

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[23:43] At the student union, yeah, I was involved in the student union. I was a treasurer of Finland’s student union, at the same time when I was in college. I held the position [of treasurer]. So I was very interested to see how the Finnish student politicians started their career. And today, many of them are prime ministers, or CEOs of Nokia and so on. So I have a lot of memories from that. I saw how important it is to start young to become a politician. [Laughter]

Gary: [24:23] So what kinds of responsibilities did you have as the secretary [treasurer]?

Tapio: [24:27] Well, as treasurer, I controlled at that time sixty million Finnish marks. Finnish students owned a lot of Helsinki. People don’t know that. I think major buildings are owned by Finnish students- student unions, usually from Helsinki School of Economics side, but also from Helsinki University side. The faculty established this in the early 1900s, and somehow the students got involved and bought these properties.

[25:06] I don’t know what money and where they got it from, but some of the buildings were probably donated by some people to them as well. But even today, you go to the heart of Helsinki, opposite department store Stockman, all of those buildings are owned by Finnish students.

[25:25] So I had two jobs, really, which were important- keeping the counts, you know, for the union. But I had a special permit to buy alcohol. In Finland, you know, there is a limited amount of alcohol anybody can buy, even today, but then it was restricted. So Finnish students had a lot of parties, you know. Either students from other countries came, or we had to cater to politicians or whatever. So I had a permit to buy six hundred liters every month if I needed it. [Laughter] I remember that six hundred liters is close to a hundred and fifty gallons.

Marjorie: [26:13] Was the university education privately… Did your family pay…

Tapio: [26:18] No. Government takes care of all things. It’s free. Yes.

Gary: [26:23] So, following your graduation from the university, what did you do?

Tapio: [26:29] I pretty much packed my things and came to the United States [laughter]. There was a period of my life… My uncle had just passed away in the United States, in an automobile accident in Boston. And he was actually the sponsor for my visa, and since he was not anymore available to sponsor me, I found a correspondent pen pal in Denver, Colorado, of all places. This young lady said, “My father will sponsor you.” And that way, I got the papers to come to the United States.

Gary: [27:10] What motivated you to come to the United States?

Tapio: [27:14] Everybody always asks that. I don’t know. I just… [laughter]… I think more or less

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like it was an advantage in many ways. But besides that, I always admired America. It was a distant something. We didn’t have too many relatives living in America except my uncle. And I don’t think that was really the incentive for us, for me to come to this country myself.

[27:47] But… some kind of thing I can mention, at my Helsinki School of Economics, I was in charge of an excursion to the United States. We planned an excursion in the lake area, Great Lakes area and also east coast cities. We traveled about six weeks.

[28:11] And during that time, I saw how dynamic this country is. I got through my university job with IBM in New York City, which had lasted, you know, a trainee [inaudible 28:28] type of situation. I was in Manhattan, and I really said, “Hey, when I come back to the United States, I want to come back here permanently.”

[28:38] Yeah. I also met president Kennedy- Jack Kennedy, when I was in the Helsinki School of Economics. We had a conference at Princeton University for students from various European countries’ school of economics. We called it AIESEC. It’s like an international exchange program between colleges and universities- more so for training them to understand what jobs are available in various countries.

[29:14] So when I came to the United States working for IBM, there was a student from New York going to Helsinki to work with some company. So that was like an exchange program. After that I started to really plan and make my papers ready. Of all places, I moved to Los Angeles. [Laughter] I hadn’t come during my first trip to the United States to the west coast, so I said, next time I’ll go to .

Gary: [29:44] Any recollections about leaving home, leaving Finland?

Tapio: [29:49] No, it was just, you know, a young spiritual experience in many ways. My parents… just being an only child, they said, great, he took off out of the country. They had all kinds of feelings like this is not going to be good. [Laughter] So, it was more difficult for them than it was for me. I established myself pretty fast in California.

Gary: [30:27] What was your level of language proficiency when you came?

Tapio: [30:31] It was reasonably good. I mean there were a lot of things which I had to sort of get a little deeper understanding. You know, I came to the United States in the middle of the Vietnam War, Civil Rights movement, and that kind of thing.

[30:54] So I did a lot of interviews with people in southern California during the Watts riots, which I broadcast at the Finnish radio station with a friend of mine. I had actually done that in Finland before moving to the United States. I don’t know if you ever heard of [inaudible 31:13- 31:15].

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Okay, [inaudible 31:18] and me, we would do a lot of things together.

Gary: [31:22] So, you were doing… actually broadcasting from Finland as well?

Tapio: [31:24] Yes. Yes.

Gary: [31:25] Why don’t you tell us about that?

Tapio: [31:26] Well, we did that pretty much by phone. You know, Finland was interested in knowing what was happening- earthquakes, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam war, those kinds of things. So we did a lot of recording with tape recorders at that time. We were able to communicate through the telephone lines, so they got it almost immediately broadcast in Finland.

Gary: [32:00] So this went out over Yle?

Tapio: [32:03] Yle, yes.

Gary: [32:03] Finnish national…

Tapio: [32:05] TV was not really that powerful at that time yet.

Gary: [32:08] But you’d said you actually started doing some broadcasting in Finland, too?

Tapio: [32:13] No, I didn’t do broadcasting except all these interviews in California.

Gary: [32:17] Yeah. How long did that continue?

Tapio: [32:22] Well, I came to California in 1963, and lasted there until 1969. I also wrote a lot of articles, and took a lot of photographs for various papers during that period of time. Photography is still one of my greatest hobbies. I was very interested. And I got involved through another person with the Hollywood foreign press, also. So I was invited to many interviews with movie stars. I remember at least John Wayne, Hitchcock, and Julie Andrews. Those three really stay in my memory.

Gary: [33:04] Yeah. And why are they so memorable?

Tapio: [33:07] They were good interviews. I remember a lot of good stuff, particularly with Hitchcock, you know He had a humor of his own. [Laughter] Yeah. I remember one interview asking, you know, “How does it feel to be now rich?” Well, Hitchcock said, “I’ve never been poor.” [Laughter] So like that [inaudible 33:32] you guys.

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Gary: [33:34] Yes.

Tapio: [33:35] I don’t know. He said, “I don’t know.”

Gary: [33:38] So, broadcasting was something of a sideline. What was your main occupation?

Tapio: [33:44] Actually, I was working with a lot of Finnish companies- import and export. I imported some goods on an agent basis, some as an importer, basically consumer products. And that led to the position I had later with Arabia of Finland. I became the export manager. There was a period of time I left California for one year to Finland to become export manager.

[34:16] So I was working in Finland, and my territory included the United States, Russia, and Israel. [Laughter] I never got to Israel. I went to Russia a couple times. But during that period of time in Finland, I was traveling more in the United States than I was in Finland.

[34:33] As a result of that experience, we established our own sister company for Arabia of Finland. It was established in Kansas City, of all places. The reason Kansas City, Missouri was that we had a duty-free zone. Under the city there are a lot of caves, so we can keep the merchandise from foreign countries without paying duty. When you take them out, then you pay the duty. Consumer products are very expensive- the duty, even today. Finland produces glassware, ceramics, and sanitary [inaudible 35:15] and so on. So it was really a very good set up.

[35:20] But our parent company in Finland had a problem in their financial world. A Swedish company Rörstrand, which actually established Arabia in 1700, bought Arabia. But that marriage didn’t work out, so it ended up that Arabia bought Rörstrand [laughter]. That just shows how complicated things can get sometimes.

[35:46] I was in Kansas City almost two and a half years. When they didn’t know which way they wanted to go, I just couldn’t work for five different bosses- five factories I had to be in charge of. So I subsequently moved back to California- this time the area.

Gary: [36:07] And what did you do there?

Tapio: [36:08] I was also involved in import and export business. I actually got involved with the log home industry. So we [imported] some log homes in Finland, [inaudible 26:25] and a couple other people. So it was a nice experience. Our first homes actually were built in the Pacific Northwest, in Idaho; later in Utah- a lot of homes in Park City and that area. A famous football player- Steve Young has a home which was made in Finland by this company. There’s some on Whidbey Island here in Washington State; a lot in California.

[36:53] During that period of time, I also met my lovely wife. We got married. So we had some

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common interests. We established a limousine company. We had some of these stretch limousines, and I catered to 49ers, for instance. It was a period of a very interesting part of our life. Subsequently we moved to the Pacific Northwest, so that was the end of the story there.

Gary: [37:26] Well, how did the two of you meet?

Tapio: [37:29] Oh, how did we meet? We just lived in the , and I was in Marin County, where my wife was at that time a speech pathologist. Through some drinking establishment, I guess [laughter], called Restaurant, we just happened to meet each other. From there we developed a relationship.

Marjorie: [37:58] When you lived in these different places, did you have contact with other Finnish immigrants who had moved?

Tapio: [38:05] In California, yes- in Los Angeles. We have a pretty strong activity there with the Suomi Verho, was the name of that. Not so much in San Francisco- I was too busy with my business, so I didn’t have time. But I’ve been involved with the Finlandia Foundation as a member all my years. So later, coming to this area, I have been happy to work for the Seattle chapter of the Finlandia Foundation before moving to Bellingham and establishing our own chapter there.

Gary: [38:46] Tell us more about your experiences in terms of your work life. Anything you want to tell us regarding this import-export business you were in? Any challenges?

Tapio: [39:01] There are always challenges, of course. [Laughter] More so financial than anything else, but I don’t really recall anything… I know it was a busy time in my life. I had to travel to various states, being involved with the exhibitions, conventions, and that kind of thing. But product- wise, I’ve been always very keen on Scandinavian design, and Finland being such a major player in that field, it really was an interesting field to work with. I don’t know what else I can say.

Gary: [39:50] You might say a little bit, since this will be archived, and there may be people watching it who are not as familiar. You may say a little bit about the importance of Arabia in Finnish commerce.

Tapio: [40:05] Okay. Arabia has been in this country… oh, close to… I would say right after the war. So, ’45, the first importer started to bring the products to the United States. There was a growing period, I would say, between the sixties and seventies. For instance, during my tenure in Kansas City, we doubled our imports, which was even to the extent of… The whole industry was quite small- it was three million dollars at that time and went to six million.

[40:52] There were some companies, like in England and Ireland which always had a double amount. And Swedish people always have been strong competitors, and so are the Danish, with the design

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products. But I think our product was very, very strongly established, because of the distribution. The best products usually were distributed in college and university towns in this country.

[41:27] This was the idea of Crate & Barrel- Gordon Segal, who actually established this in university cities. Students were our best customers, because Finland sold a lot of seconds. I mean, that helped students to get all kinds of Arabia products to their homes. And I think students, being that keen and interested at that time of their life, they carried that to their later years and they always remember that.

[42:03] So Arabia became very well known, I would say, between ’71 through ’79- that period of time. Right now, unfortunately because of the situation of currency- the Euro being so strong now- there are not too many products available to this market. You know, the Asian market is so strong, so it’s taken over.

[42:38] There’s still Oiva Toikka glass birds, which we know are very famous. And some furniture area; architectural design is still very strong. But I mean consumer products… you don’t find too much of Arabia anywhere in department stores. It’s unfortunate, but that’s okay. That’s the way it is.

Gary: [43:03] Anything more to say about changes in trends regarding Finnish products in the United States?

Tapio: [43:12] I think there is a trend in Finland to get designers from all over the world to come there. I know that there’s a lot of influence from Italy- Mediterranean countries, to get some [inaudible 43:27] designers [to come to Finland] from Japan. But they really want to keep the quality very high, so because of that, maybe that is a surprise as well. They don’t want to go to that mass market area.

[43:43] We get a lot of our products today from Eastern European countries; Turkey, Asian countries, and so on, which are a totally different category, but you know, consumers buy whatever they can afford. So that’s natural, so maybe… This design area is still where the are very strong, whether they can manufacture the product anymore in their own country… it might have to go to some other areas. So, that seems to be the pattern.

Gary: [44:15] So I’m intrigued as to how you got into the stretch limousine transport business.

Tapio: [44:25] It just came through some advertising from certain people, and also the travel industry. I had a contact in Finland who said, “Don’t you have any kind of method to get out tourists to show them places?” I said, “Yeah, we can start buying buses, or something like that.” But it didn’t really appeal to us, personally. So I think the 49ers were one of the best customers [inaudible 45:02]. [Laughter] That was one reason we expanded operations, so [the limousines became major business for San Francisco tourist visits from Europe].

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Gary: [45:08] That was the clientele.

Tapio: [45:10] Yeah, the clientele. And also in their case, particularly people who understand what service you can do in that area, it’s very, very important to quality. You know, like the 49ers owner sometimes said they would never see this kind of service from anybody [in other parts of the country]. There were two people, actually in San Francisco- another company and us- who catered to the 49ers with quality. There were certain aspects to that- if you use a limousine and you go to some other areas, you better watch where you’re going and what kind of [drivers] you have available.

[TAPE BREAK 45:50]

John Halgren: [45:51] Okay, the light is on.

Gary: [45:52] The light is on. We’re recording again. Good. Yes. Apparently we left out part of your work experience when you were in New York and traveling to Germany.

Tapio: [46:09] Yes. I had a one-year situation with a company actually from . We were importing fabrics from Lyon, which were used for interior decorations, and also for the tie industry and that kind of thing. So it was just something between… really my limousine company already passed and coming here to the Pacific Northwest. It was something… I wanted to get some time in some other business area. So they invited me to do some research in that area. I was a year and a half in Manhattan again before moving to the Pacific Northwest.

Gary: [46:58] So with all this representation of foreign companies, and traveling about, you must have had some experience learning some other languages?

Tapio: [47:07] Yes. I think it sort of became mandatory. Besides Finnish and Swedish, which you learn in school, I also studied German and Spanish. So it helped a lot in certain areas. I am not fluent in any of these languages anymore [laughter], except Finnish maybe. But it really stays with you after a little practice. You know, I can communicate with Germans, for instance.

Gary: [47:42] Coming to the Pacific Northwest- what was the motivation for that?

Tapio: [47:49] It was like an accident, more or less. We traveled with my wife to the Vancouver area one summer, and we stopped by various places. What we saw in Bellingham, we said, “This might be something to consider to retire.” She was not ready to retire herself, but I had just experienced heart surgery, so I tried to take it a little easier.

[48:22] That was probably one reason I just wanted to get away from the California rat race [laughter], so to speak. We both… She was born in California, a native Californian. I’m just a

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convert, you know, but I’ve lived most of my life in California, so I feel very strong. We have a lot of friends there, and we still go there constantly, even though we now permanently reside here.

Gary: [48:50] Tell us a bit about your wife.

Tapio: [48:52] Oh my god, that’s two days already, particularly because she’s present. [Laughter] Well, she’s multitalented in the educational field. She has three master’s degrees: education, and speech pathology, and communication. So it’s been very, very easy to be married, since she can correct me all the time [laughter], particularly as to the language part.

[49:15] And she’s active in the educational field even today. She works for the Pickford Theater in Bellingham, which shows foreign movies. In the educational field, she is creating, you know, the pattern where the schoolchildren can come to the theater to see some educational documentary films. It is something new, which was started, I guess, in Bellingham. So… I want to keep it very little. [Laughter] What else?

Gary: [49:53] Any children?

Tapio: [49:55] No. Yes, I have a son from my first marriage, living in Finland- an old gentleman already himself. He works for actually Finland’s audio-visual institute. It used to be [Finland Film Archives], the same company.

Gary: [50:15] Yeah. Now KAVA.

Tapio: [50:16] KAVA… It’s now KAVI.

Gary: [50:19] KAVI. Uh huh.

Tapio: [50:20] Yeah. Kansallinen Audiovisuaalinen Instituutti.

Gary: [50:24] Institute.

Tapio: [50:24] Yeah. Uh huh.

Gary: [50:25] Yes. During the break we saw a picture of a beautiful granddaughter.

Tapio: [50:34] Yes. We have a granddaughter, Jenny. She is now a first year teenager. She has visited us not only in California, but here also. We have good promises that she is going to be a real nice lady. She is interested in the United States as well.

Gary: [51:03] Tell us about Finnish customs, traditions that you continue to observe in your home,

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for example. Christmas, any remembrance or tradition?

Tapio: [51:19] Yeah. Traditionally we celebrate… besides U.S. holidays of Thanksgiving and so on. Very much… Juhannus- Midsummer Day; Christmas. We try to follow Finnish culinary things, so we prepare meals accordingly. We really enjoy the good memories we have- we both have- from Finland. She has visited many times there as well, and was close to my parents.

[51:59] My mother’s side, there were five ladies. They were all in the restaurant business. So we got a lot of this culture of what is a good impression in the restaurant field. We’ve been really grateful, I think- all meals we prepare really are based very much in our experience in that field.

Brend Holma: [Inaudible 52:28 – 52:29]

Tapio: [52:30] I don’t know what it does.

Brend: [Inaudible 52:32]

Tapio: [52:35] I don’t know. I don’t [inaudible 52:37]. [Laughter]

Brend: [Inaudible 52:39]

Tapio: [52:41] Finnish food in Bellingham. Yeah. We have brought that to the Pacific Northwest in connection with our Independence Day parties, and even socially when we have some caterings to our friends in various occasions. We brought a lot of [Finnish delicacies] and that kind of thing, which people, you know, have no knowledge of in this country. And it’s been really fun. We don’t have mammi, but everything else. [Laughter] They wouldn’t understand that part of the food, I guess, in Easter time.

Gary: [53:26] So when you moved to Bellingham, was there any Finnish organization there at the time?

Tapio: [53:33] No. Absolutely nothing.

Gary: [53:35] Well, tell us about getting the Finlandia Foundation chapter there off the ground. How did that happen?

Tapio: [53:43] Well, actually since I was here in Seattle a few years on your board, and I felt that I don’t want to drive here all the time, I thought that with the few people we had of Finnish descent, I thought it would be nice to start something like this. And we’ve been very successful, not only among the few Finns we have there, but outsiders. We have had a lot of visitors from Finland- orchestras, lecturers, and I have been able to get them also to go some other places. Bellingham has

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been like a stopover.

[54:29] My alma mater, Helsinki School of Economics- the singers were there two or three years ago; Helsinki Policeman Choir before that, and several other groups. It’s been exciting in a cultural sense to have all these various people visit us. And we have created so much interest now with the school board for instance, that they have some kind of educational system with Finland, where they exchange either teachers or professors both ways. There was a lady who did the research, in education in Finland and went to Vaasa- Vaasa being a sister city with Bellingham, and studied what the teachers learned there. It’s a very interesting project right now.

Gary: [55:20] So how did you contact the Finns that lived in the Bellingham area? How did you coalesce?

Tapio: [55:28] Well, we don’t have too many, as I said, in our immediate social circles. We really have two, three. And even on our board right now, we have only, besides myself, two other people who speak Finnish. So it’s been hard, particularly when I think about that on the other side of the border, there are almost three thousand Finns in Vancouver, British Columbia. So we try to have some cooperation with them, but even that is very hard.

[56:03] You know, a lot of old folks from Canada- they don’t want to come down unless they buy gasoline or something like that. [Laughter] So it’s a very small Finnish community there. We have fifty-eight members right now in the chapter, and maybe… I would say ten of them are only of Finnish origin, somehow. All the others are outsiders.

Gary: [56:32] So, how long has your chapter existed?

Tapio: [56:34] We established it in 2009, and actually with the state, registered in ’10. So about five years now.

Gary: [56:45] But it’s affiliated with the Finlandia Foundation nationally.

Tapio: [56:49] Nationally, yes. And we have [seven] sister cities in Bellingham, which we started, also- Vaasa, being one.

Gary: [56:57] Tell us how that came about.

Tapio: [56:58] Okay. We have had six… no, five sister cities in the past, and most of them are in the Pacific Rim- Chile, Russia, South Korea, Japan, Australia. So there was interest to start something new, so I guess originally the idea was that all of the sister cities should be from the Pacific Rim area- that was the idea.

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[57:35] So I brought up with our Mayor at that time, Mark Asmundson, who is of Icelandic heritage- “Why don’t we start one in Europe?” He said, “Oh, do you have some good choices?” “Well, I have one which might work, you know.” “Okay, let’s go and see them,” he said, you know.

[57:52] And we went to Vaasa with Mark, and established contact. The next year we had the Vaasa city orchestra coming here. That’s how it started to develop, in that area. I was the president in 2008 of BSCA. At that time, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary with Japan. We have a city in Japan called Tateyama.

[58:16] This whole sister city movement started during Eisenhauer’s presidency. And we were one of the first… Much before even Seattle had a sister city. Bellingham had one of the first in the whole country- we had a sister city with Japan, in that case. We recently celebrated with Russia, which is Nakhodka- it’s a small city next to Vladivostok- another sister city that celebrates twenty-five years.

[58:50] And I know that there has been a lot of past history between the Nordic Heritage Museum with Bellingham in that respect, because we have the cold storage system in Bellingham where the Alaskan and Russian ships bring the fish. I just saw it a couple weeks ago down in the hall- there are pictures this Russian-American corporation, which was really done here in Seattle. But Bellingham is where those storage facilities are today.

[59:24] So, we have now seven sister cities. We have too many… [laughter] for a small city. On a per capita basis, we are one of the biggest in that respect. Seattle has twenty-one, and you have a moratorium here. Yeah. And Oakland, for instance, in California, has almost thirty- twenty-nine of them are in China. [Laughter] So it’s amazing how these things can develop.

Gary: [59:49] Was it a relatively easy process to establish the sister city relationship?

Tapio: [59:54] Yes. I think it takes more maneuvering in your local area, that people are really respecting that, so to speak. A lot of people don’t even know what the sister cities do. It’s a lot of an educational process to get them to understand. It’s a lot of activity.

[1:00:20] In a size like Seattle, you even have a permanent person employed by the city who handles that. Most cities in the United States don’t have that privilege to have it. So, yeah, actually it worked very nicely. During my period as president, we got Vaasa and Cheongju from South Korea. And now we have one new one from Mongolia, of all places. That will be enough for a while.

Gary: [1:00:50] Well, it certainly sounds like you have had a major role in increasing the visibility of Finland in the Bellingham area.

Tapio: [1:00:58] I think so. [Laughter] Some people just wondered how important it has been, but it just happened by accident, with a lot of work, of course. But we are a small city, and we are between

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two mega-cities- Seattle and Vancouver. We get a lot of influences from both sides. But we are very active in international fields- education, art- art in particular.

[1:01:27] We have a major rock garden in our city which has art from all over the world- sculptures, different buildings. There is a huge, beautiful pagoda, which was established a few years ago to the memory of American soldiers who came back from Korea, and established an orphanage for a lot of Korean people in this country. So we have a lot of international stamps on the city right now.

Gary: [1:02:04] Anything upcoming in terms of your Finnish activities?

Tapio: [1:02:09] Oh, yes. We have plans.

Gary: [1:02:11] Anything you’d like to talk about?

Tapio: [1:02:13] It is Sibelius year next year. That’s going to be important- the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our beloved composer. We are trying to get even performers from Finland to come to the event. One of my major, favorite programs will be to get the local children’s choir to sing Finlandia in Finnish. And I think it’s going to happen.

[1:02:43] Other than that, we have exchanges with art museums. We have a very good new modern art museum in the city. We have a lot of exchange with Finland, to get some works from there as well. But basically we try to be multinational, so to speak, and there will be some activities from other countries as well.

Gary: [1:03:15] And your wife was telling us before we began the interview about an activity that’s planned for children at a local bookstore?

Tapio: [1:03:24] Yes, there’s a movie- Finnish- Tove Janssen celebrates… I mean, her memory is celebrated this year. One hundred years. We have some book reading on Finland’s Independence Day in December in Bellingham. Other than that, we have our Independence Day celebration with movies. [Laughter]

Brend: [1:03:58] The children.

Tapio: [1:03:58] Children… children, right. Yeah.

Brend: [1:04:01] [Inaudible 1:04:01 – 1:04:02]

Tapio: [1:04:03] What’s that?

Brend: [1:04:04] The singers. To sing Finlandia. They’re going to sing in Finnish!

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Tapio: [1:04:10] Oh, I see. Yeah. My wife just brought up that this is the first time that Finlandia is going to be in Finnish during our Independence Day party. More of that, really, next year, which we are trying to even televise to Finnish TV stations- the whole thing.

Marjorie: [1:04:29] Any affiliation with the University of [Western] Washington up there?

Tapio: [1:04:32] Western Washington University is very important to us, yes. They don’t have I think that strong a Baltic language program as you have here at U-Dub, but there are exchanges with professors from Vaasa right now, and it used to be with some other universities. Some professors from there have gone to Finland also.

[1:04:57] But this is a very important area for us- music, particularly in the music area, they devote a lot of time during the festival for music. And also our local orchestra- Whatcom County Symphony Orchestra is going to play Sibelius’ Second Symphony in March. They don’t have the resources today to all symphonies as you have here in Seattle, but it’s going to be a beautiful event.

Marjorie: [1:05:26] So, you have a musical background in your family. Did you play a musical instrument?

Tapio: [1:05:30] No, unfortunately I never picked up an instrument. My father was very, very much in that field. He was in orchestra management, but also in playing… more or less a hobby for him, but it was a very important part of his life.

Gary: [1:05:53] Do you have any other organizational affiliations beyond Finlandia Foundation?

Tapio: [1:05:59] No. I was approached recently by the Lion’s Club. I haven’t felt that I have the time, really, to devote to some of these other organizations.

Gary: [1:06:11] You mentioned that you travel rather frequently to Finland?

Tapio: [1:06:16] We’ve been trying to get there, yeah, once a year.

Gary: [1:06:20] And what do you do when you’re in Finland?

Tapio: [1:06:21] Oh, just go and take it easy, you know. Vacationing, countryside, you know. I have a cousin who has a beautiful home in [inaudible 1:06:29] and also in the Loppi area of Finland. We occasionally go also to the west coast of Finland, because my grandparents from my father’s side come from Kristinestad. They were all sea captains, and they came with the big tall ships here in the 1700s, 1800s. That was an interesting period, of course, in Finland’s history. All these ships were under the Russian flag.

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[1:07:07] They traveled to South America. They didn’t have the Panama Canal at that time. It took nine months from Finland to get to here. It was an amazing trip. That is actually one area which I devoted some time to study this period of 1800-1850 of the tall ships. That’s my dream that I could write some kind of book about that. So I visited some maritime museums in Finland and also in this country. I think eventually I’ll have to go to South America, too.

[1:07:47] So there’s a lot of interesting stories. I started, really, this study in California because there are so many folks who came from Scandinavia at the time with these tall ships. The most famous, of course, is Gustave Niebaum, who is the originator of the vineyard in Napa Valley. He made a fortune. He was the first… people don’t even know, he was the first millionaire from Finland in this country.

[1:08:25] He made his money with pelts from . He was owner of Alaskan Trading Company, which later was sold to Hudson Company. And all this money he got from furs- he got a lot of them sold to the Russian tsars, but most of them were sold also in this country. With that money, he bought the vineyard in Napa Valley, which is now owned by the Coppola family. It’s very interesting.

Gary: [1:08:56] That is an interesting story that needs to be told.

Tapio: [1:08:58] Sure.

Gary: [1:08:59] Yes.

Tapio: [1:09:00] It’s a very… if you ever have a chance to go to Napa Valley, it’s a beautiful vineyard. Francis Coppola has not done much with it. But there’s a lot of stories about Finland related to Gustave Niebaum’s establishment of the whole wine industry. He was one of the first ones there. They usually have also a Finnish flag in the post. [Laughter] They always love to see Finnish people, by the way. [Laughter]

Gary: [1:09:34] What do you miss most about Finland when you’re here?

Tapio: [1:09:41] Ruisleipa. [Laughter] Finnish rye bread. Yeah. It’s unique. I mean, Finland actually inherited good rye bread from the Russians; the best recipe is from there. If you get the really fresh rye bread direct from the oven, there is nothing better in life. [Laughter] Of course, you know, the beautiful countryside, and you know, enjoying that to go either fishing or sauna, whatever.

[1:10:14] You know, your roots are there, so you feel that it is part of your life. Some of that can be transferred, you know, to culinary things. Some can be transferred to art and music and so on, but you really have to experience it in the spot, so that’s why we go to Finland as much as we can.

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Gary: [1:10:35] Did you become an American citizen?

Tapio: [1:10:38] Yes, in 1971, in Los Angeles. Yeah, it’s funny- at that time when you became a citizen, you lost Finnish citizenship. But now there’s a new law- you can get it back by an announcement. So I’m a dual citizen.

Gary: [1:10:58] You have dual citizenship.

Tapio: [1:10:59] Yes. Yes.

Gary: [1:11:03] Anything else that you feel that we ought to have included in the interview and have not?

Tapio: [1:11:09] I think we covered pretty much everything. We don’t want to go into the politics or anything of that sort [laughter].

Gary: [1:11:18] Oh, politics is a sage subject in an interview. Yes. Have you been following politics?

Tapio: [1:11:25] I haven’t been involved, except I listen to the Finnish radio station every day, and what happens in Finland, so I have close contact in that way. But Finland is one of those countries which has a coalition government, so they need six parties to have a majority in their parliament.

[1:11:45] There is a lot of turmoil right now with the right-wing and labor- you know, the prime minister being from Kokoomus, you know- the conservative party. He has got to work with social democrats, who feel a little different about their relationship with Russia, and so on.

Gary: [1:12:10] It sounds like you keep in very close contact.

Tapio: [1:12:13] Yes. I read the Finnish newspapers; I listen to the TV- not only Finnish, but other European TV stations with the time available for me. Today in this great technological era, information comes in nanoseconds. [Laughter] What happens there, you know exactly.

[1:12:35] So it’s easy to communicate with my friends as well, based on that. They are more surprised than I am, really, that I follow what happens in Finland. They always question, you know, “You are there in America. Why are you interested in these things?” Of course I am interested in my old country.

Gary: [1:12:55] We’ve talked about your going to Finland. Do you have visitors frequently from Finland, visiting you?

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Tapio: [1:13:02] Yeah, we have had some of our relatives coming to see us- my cousins, in particular. I don’t have anybody in the near future who has indicated that they want to come, but we have a lot of correspondence with a lot of different parties, and we try to really develop a good relationship with as many as we can.

Gary: [1:13:29] Were your parents able to visit you here?

Tapio: [1:13:32] Unfortunately not. My mother got old… I mean, with a lot of illnesses. Not so much anything else, but old age, and the doctor said, “Your blood pressure is too high, and you shouldn’t travel.” It was very close that she was going to make it, but she passed away at ninety. She was ninety years old. My father passed away earlier in his life. Afterwards, I thought it was unfortunate they didn’t see it. That was [sad and unfortunate].

Gary: [1:14:14] Do you have any future plans you want to tell us about, beyond your work on maritime history?

Tapio: [1:14:22] No, maritime history is my hobby [laughter] more than anything else, and I hope it comes together. And I also feel that I want to do something for this Nordic Heritage Museum. As you know, I’m a trustee nowadays here. So Finland becoming one hundred years old in three years, I think we should really concentrate on getting some major programs for Finland for that particular year established here. I’m sure that our executive director Eric Nelson is already considering a few things for the program.

Gary: [1:15:03] How did your trusteeship with the museum happen?

Tapio: [1:15:08] Well, they actually asked if I would be interested in joining. I wanted to get some more background of what has happened here in the past. We have right now from all our five countries, pretty good representation, but Finland and Iceland always have been at the minimum level. We have recommended a lot of people. We would like to see you joining as one of them. And it’s important, you know.

[1:15:45] If I represent Finland as being a native of that country, that’s great. The other lady, Sunnie Empie, she is like a third-generation Swedish-Finnish background. So I think we have many good people from Finland here. Of course, our friend Norm who passed away was many years here, and some others. It’s important that we get more representation, and this is one thing that I have brought up at some of our meetings with trustees- it should be more at some kind of equal level.

[1:16:32] I have no idea how it can be done, because Norwegians and Swedes are so strong, not only because of financial backing, but some other reasons. Vancouver has a very interesting setup with the Scandinavian center. It’s like a corporation where every country owns twenty percent. And they also are responsible for financial upkeep and maintenance of the facility.

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[1:17:05] I don’t know whether it can ever be done here, particularly with the new museum. Hopefully it’s going to come together in a couple of years- that some kind of venture capital or some kind of outside capital would make it more like a corporate setup rather than a nonprofit organization. I don’t know whether it’s something even that can even be considered at the moment, but there have been a lot of discussions about that to get better representation from other countries.

[1:17:37] I can see… this is the Nordic Heritage Museum, and it’s definitely going to get a new member soon, and that’s Greenland, when they become independent. And I don’t think Estonia would be too far, either. I don’t know how people… you know, particularly Danish and Norwegians feel about Estonia being a member, but Estonia really was established by Danes at one time in history, so… [Laughter]

[1:18:01] They are a Nordic country, but how far you go, really is something for the future generation to decide. It will be interesting to see. I know that Greenland probably will be in two years, independent. And it’s a huge country, area-wise, if anything else. [Laughter]

Gary: [1:18:20] They aren’t a large population, but a huge landmass, right?

Tapio: [1:18:23] Yeah, exactly.

Gary: [1:18:25] Do either of you have anything… questions, or things you’d like to add here?

Marjorie: [1:18:31] No, no.

Brend: [1:18:33] I’d like you to tell your audience what the two things are you wanted me to remember when we first met. Don’t ever forget it.

Tapio: [1:18:41] [Laughter] Oh, yes. We talk about that occasionally with our friends, particularly those who don’t know anything about Finland. One of those things which you should know about the country… of course, older generations remembers our experience with the war years with Russia. So that’s already one thing which is pretty well established.

[1:19:09] And sauna being an area which we have developed and tried to own it. We know that it’s not originally a Finnish invention. And the third and most important one, and I think it should come up always, is that we paid our debt to the United States. Because nobody else did. I mean, there were some areas where Greece is getting close to what we did at that time.

[1:19:35] But I mean the U.S. government thought at that time, in the fifties, sixties, that it was so great. I mean, congress made such a big issue that the interest, which was paid by the Finnish government, Finnish people, for the loan, was getting back to Finland for scholarships and grants. I

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mean, that’s something that shows how much this country admired us. Of course, this generation today knows nothing about this. That’s why we want to really bring it up in many occasions.

Brend: [1:20:18] Could you explain a little more about the sisu, and the forest, and the war with Russia- how Finland became victorious in that. That’s one of the main things you talked to me about.

Tapio: [1:20:30] Yeah, actually we are just putting together a newsletter, and we went pretty deep into our Winter War, in particular, how Finns were so successful… Let’s see, there were nine hundred sixty-five Finnish soldiers against two Russian… Soviet Union divisions- twenty-five thousand. And these nine hundred were able to change the whole war into their favor- getting all the armament tanks- anything they had [as a victory], you know.

[1:21:16] These Russian soldiers, most of them being from the Ukraine area, didn’t know how to ski, and the Finns were able to ski fifty miles during the night in the forest. Nobody in the world understood that. So it was a tremendous legend, which is even today in the history books. That was a fight between David and Goliath, and Finland in that case survived, because independence was so important.

[1:21:51] It was the whole nation behind that. It was city folks, farmers, and laborers. They all felt that they had to do that. The famous statement, which I don’t remember who did it the first time, said, “Swedes we are not, and Russians we don’t want to become.”

Gary: [1:22:13] So Finns we must be.

Tapio: [1:22:14] Yeah. So it was very, very important. Younger generations today, I think feel very strong about the independence, too, but they don’t relate much of what happened in the past. When I went to military service, I remember that really, really well- how important this feeling of independence had to be in the picture all the time.

[1:22:44] I think some of the generals- we have about eighty generals in the Finnish army today- they’re very, very well educated, all of them- but they feel that there is still that will in soldiers. It’s a mandatory service in Finland, as everybody knows. When the conscripts come to the age of eighteen years old- eighteen years old you have to go and volunteer for the service.

[1:23:17] It’s the only country in Scandinavia which has a conscripts- mandatory service, I mean. In their own way, as a semi-service, Sweden is totally voluntary, and Danes are the same way. All those other Scandinavian countries depend on NATO today, and it changes the whole pattern. Finland has the army of about twenty-five thousand soldiers- five hundred women. Yeah. They can get to the rank of captain, the women nowadays. In the reserves we have about three hundred thousand soldiers. So we are pretty good there in Scandinavia to keep peace between east and west.

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Gary: [1:24:08] Well, thank you very much.

Tapio: [1:24:10] You’re very welcome. It’s been a pleasure.

Gary: [1:24:12] It’s a wonderful interview. It will be important for succeeding generations to hear what you’ve had to say.

Tapio: [1:24:19] Thank you.

END OF RECORDING.

Transcription by Alison Goetz.

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