James F. Downs

Tape 1
James Downs was born December 20, 1926 in Pasadena, California. He discusses his grandparents and the family's origins. His mother was Methodist and his father an apostate Josephite who did not allow his son to be taken to church as a child. He discusses his father's political views and visiting relatives in Utah, his memory of Pearl Harbor, diversity in the schools, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Downs had a romance with a Chinese girl named Mary Hughes through middle school and high school. He talks about learning to read, and his love for books. Early on he wanted to be an archaeologist when he grew up. He worked in a machine shop, a movie theater, a bean-packing plant, a laundry, a bowling alley, a service station, at Railway Express and Lockheed. He discusses his early awareness of Indians.

Tape 2
Downs talks about the Depression, attending YMCA camp on Catalina Island, and learning California history on long drives to visit relatives. Downs joined the navy at age seventeen in 1944. He went through recruit training in San Diego, went to signal school, and remembers the ships he was on during the war, spending a year in Japan after the war, and being intrigued by the resilience of the Japanese people. He then went to Guam for six months.

Tape 3
Downs was discharged from the navy in 1948. He had been married at seventeen but divorced after a couple of years. He got a job at the Los Angeles Herald Express, a Hearst afternoon paper. When the Korean War started he immediately went back to the navy, and he talks about how cold it was on the Sea of Japan on an aircraft carrier. After the Korean War he went back to the Herald Express for a while and then went to Cal Poly, Pomona, and majored in animal husbandry, married his second wife, moved to Woodland Hills, and lived at the stables, taking care of the horses and hounds for a hunt club and attending the community college there. He then got a job selling advertising for the Oroville Mercury and moved to Oroville in northern California. He enrolled at Berkeley, planning on studying history. He was influenced by On the Track of Man by William Fields, and after his first anthropology class decided to major in anthropology. Downs finished his B.A. in two years, in 1958, and his Ph.D. in 1961. He worked at a PR firm. For his fieldwork, he chose to study the Navajo, because they were sheepherders, and his dissertation was on domestication of animals. Heizer gave Downs a job studying Robert Lowie's notes to see if there was anything to publish.

Tape 4
Downs discusses the Berkeley faculty. Warren d'Azevedo encouraged Downs to go to the Washoe in 1960, and Downs got $600 from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. His dissertation was the comparison between Washoe and Navajo response to domestic animals. Washoe considered livestock to be direct competitors with the Washoe, while sheepherding was central to the Navajo. Downs discusses his fieldwork with the Washoe. He went to Nevada with his future third wife and stayed in a little sheepherder's cabin in Gardnerville. He asked around in Woodfords until he found Roy James, who introduced Downs to other Washoe informants. He talked to a shaman in Dresslerville. He usually wrote his notes at night. When he didn't have a Washoe to interview he would do research at the newspaper offices or interview the banker about Washoe customers, or the county sheriff who ran the Woodfords General Store. Most of his interviews were with men not women. He did not start out with a focus; he just went to find out what Washoe were like and wound up gathering most of his information about religion, because the shaman would talk. When he went to the Navajo, he did have a focus-how the Navajo handled livestock. He discusses the Washoe land-claims issue. Downs did not get involved with that, but the Justice Department later called him for research assistance as the only white expert on Navajo animal husbandry, when the Navajo were suing over government mismanagement. Downs discusses the white people's treatment of the Washoe Indians and the discrimination in cafes and movie theaters. He describes the crowd at the Joyland Cafe and discusses his early publications.

Tape 5
Downs talks about the Society for Applied Anthropology and his founding of the National Association for Practicing Anthropology. He is director of the Thunderbird Japan campus, where he teaches business students cross-cultural communication. Downs believes that applied anthropology is focused on research and publication, whereas practicing anthropologists are more concerned with resolving problems. Downs talks about change he effected in the navy. He went to the University of Washington on a defense language fellowship and studied Japanese and Chinese. He discusses his publication on Washoe religion and talks about his fieldwork among the Navajo at Pinon, Arizona. He first camped with his wife and son at the trading post. He was referred to the Arthurs and pitched his tent in their area and got up at four in the morning to go out with them and ask questions. Pretty soon he was included in the work of herding sheep. He also had the only running automobile, so he could help with errands. Downs recalls that at first the Navajo were reluctant to offer him food, for fear he would laugh at the way Indians eat, but Downs found the food delicious. He studied the Navajo for four years, leaving the reservation in the harsh winters, and he wrote two books on Navajo livestock and animal husbandry. Downs's first professional paper was presented at the Kroeber Anthropological Society meeting in 1959, and it was on nudists and avoidance of confrontation. He has an interest in military organization. He rejoined the naval reserve in the mid- 1970s as a chief petty officer and discusses Elmo Zumwalt and the changes Zumwalt effected as head of the navy. Downs mentions working at the University of Hawaii and working with the Peace Corps. He took a sabbatical from Hawaii and went on active duty in San Diego for a year, working in race relations and in the interculture specialist school. He did briefings for ships going overseas and training for dependents going to home ports. He left the University of Hawaii again for an assignment at navy headquarters in Washington, D.C. At Annapolis he developed courses in human resources.

Tape 6
Downs discusses working at the University of Arizona and receiving a small NSF grant to work with Tibetans in India in 1966. He went to India with his wife and three children, but the project collapsed due to funding problems. He discusses the Vietnam conflict and talks about cross-cultural training of Peace Corps volunteers at Hilo College in Hawaii. Downs also discusses his first full-time teaching job at University of Rochester.

Tape 7
Downs talks about whether or not anthropology (ethnology) is a science and the related issue of obtaining grants from the National Institute for Mental Health. He discusses an Office of Naval Research conference in 1978 in Annapolis. He notes some of his experience with the Washoe and his notes and writings and how he never really lived among them, as he did with the Navajo, or joined in their labor. He discusses his theory of cultural anthropology and talks about the importance of Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture.

Tape 8
Downs continues his discussion on theory. He talks about recent gains in land for the Washoe and assimilation of native peoples in America and Japan. He discusses his trips to India. The first was a study of Tibetans and the process of pilgrimage in 1964. On his second trip he planned to do a salvage-ethnography job with the Tibetans, but that fell apart. He talks about being hired at the University of Arizona and the courses he developed, including the only civilian course on warfare ever taught in an anthropology department, as this was during the Vietnam War. He developed a course on sexual behavior, which he also taught at Stanford and the University of Hawaii. He discusses the Thunderbird, a school of international business management. Downs finds himself doing anthropology all the time, in his daily life, in his own neighborhood in Japan. He looks back over his life, his failures and successes, and his writing and publications, including fiction.