When Glenn Iwasaki was 5, his parents promised him and his older siblings they would save enough money to buy a home within five years.
Iwao and Haruye Iwasaki had been raising their three children in apartments in Nihon Machi, a small Japanese community within Salt Lake City that stood where the Salt Palace is now.In their bid for a home, the Iwasakis worked relentlessly. In five years, they made good on their promise.
The Iwasakis wanted a good home in a good neighborhood.
But they got a shock when they went with a real-estate agent to look at homes. Minorities could not live in some parts of Salt Lake City.
Real-estate agents knew exactly how far to the east and north minorities could go.
"The Realtor would not show my parents any homes above that line," Iwasaki remembers. "If my parents wanted to buy there, they had to go to the neighbors and ask them if they would mind. Well, my parents said to hell with that."
Instead, the Iwasakis bought a home behind the Capitol "as high up as we could go," he said.
That incident and a dozen smaller slights fired Iwasaki's ambition. "I wanted to excel, to succeed, essentially, to show the bastards."
He decided in elementary school that he wanted to be a lawyer and never wavered from that dream.
He graduated from the University of Utah law school in 1971 and started working as a defense attorney in private practice.
He became a Salt Lake County prosecutor in 1974 and worked there until 1978. After four years as a prosecutor, he swung back to defense work, this time with the public defender's office.
"I wanted to experience both sides, the prosecution and the defense."
He went back to the Salt Lake County Attorney's office in 1986 for another stint as a prosecutor.
When he left his county post to become a judge, Iwasaki was the team leader of the special victims unit, which prosecuted sex crimes against children and adults.But missed grabs for the brass ring taught Iwasaki that excellence isn't enough when you are a minority in a white town. He applied for a circuit court judgeship 10 years ago. "I was so naive I thought it was enough that I was qualified."
It wasn't. Iwasaki didn't know the right people - white people - who could grease the appointment process for him.
"You can't just rest on good qualifications and competence," Iwasaki said, looking back on the experience. "You have to have contacts with the right people."
That lack of contacts holds minorities back, he believes. "When I graduated from law school, I knew one lawyer here: Raymond Uno." Too many other talented minorities know only other minorities in their field, he said.
Utah is a Republican, Mormon state, he said. That means the people in power are likely white, conservative men who may not be sensitized to minority causes. To succeed, minorities have to connect with those people and win their support, he said.
After that first, failed bid for the bench, Iwasaki pursued dual goals: continued excellence and making the right contacts. This year, it paid off.