Streetscapes - Yasuo Matsui - A Career Collides With War - NYTimes.com Library of Congress LANDMARKS Yasuo Matsui was an architect of the Starrett-Lehigh Building, shown in 1932. THE mass imprisonment of Japanese in World War II remains a painful blot on our history. There were no internment camps for the Japanese on the East Coast, but you didn't need to live in the West to be touched by the hand of fear, as Yasuo Matsui found out. Even though he had lived here for four decades, designed one of New York's tallest buildings and ran a major construction company, the Japanese-born architect was rousted out of bed on the night of the Pearl Harbor attack, held at Ellis Island for two months and spent the war under house arrest. Born in 1877, Matsui came to the United States around 1902, and attended the University of California; later he worked for Ernest Flagg, Warren & Wetmore and Starrett & Van Vleck. In the late 1910s, he oversaw construction of several of projects in Japan for the George A. Fuller Construction Company. In practice on his own, in partnership with other architects, and as president of the architectural firm of F. H. Dewey & Company, Matsui designed buildings upstate, in Connecticut and in Philadelphia. But his big commissions were in New York City. The F. H. Dewey apartment house at 510 Park Avenue, typical of its type, was one of his favorites. He also did the handsome Romanesque-style office building at the northeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 48th Street. Matsui was at his peak when he was interviewed by The New York Sun in early 1930, just as his 71-story skyscraper for the Bank of Manhattan Company, at 40 Wall Street, was topped out; the principal designer was H. Craig Severance. It was at the time the tallest in the world, but The Sun's interviewer found him modest but boyishly enthusiastic. When asked about traditional Asian architecture, Matsui said he preferred the Italian Renaissance, "but sometimes goes in for modified Tudor design." New York, Matsui told the reporter, is "the greatest city in the world and it's full of beautiful things." He estimated that the useful life of skyscrapers like 40 Wall Street was at most 40 years. Asked if he had any hobbies, Matsui said, "Why, no; I plan buildings." The commission for the huge, streamlined Starrett-Lehigh Building, at Twelfth Avenue and 26th Street, came in soon after; he designed that with Cory & Cory. But the Depression killed building in New York for the next decade, and in 1931 Matsui did a $3,000 alteration of the Regency Whist Club. Matsui maintained Japanese connections; in 1933 he took visiting Japanese students to visit Gov. Alfred E. Smith. And he designed the Japanese pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. By 1941 the F.B.I. was quietly investigating people of German, Italian and Japanese descent. Three weeks before Pearl Harbor an investigator spoke to a man who lived near Matsui in White Plains who claimed that one of Matsui's relatives was commander in chief of the Japanese Army and called Matsui "highly temperamental," adding that he had "expressed nothing but disgust for the American people." This pre-Pearl Harbor research came in handy at 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 8, 1941, when Matsui was arrested and taken to Ellis Island. Matsui said he was completely loyal to the United States, had tried to become a citizen in 1912 and that his sympathies were "wholly with the United States." Case reviewers agreed that the accuser had a land dispute with Matsui, and all other interviews supported Matsui's patriotism. Matsui apparently chose not to mention a dinner he gave in 1940 at the Plaza Hotel for a diplomat and former Japanese Army officer to meet the isolationist Congressman Hamilton Fish; at the time of the dinner Matsui wrote in a letter, "I think it is wise to avoid publicity of this meeting because of present conditions." Three days after Pearl Harbor Matsui and 367 aliens of enemy citizenship in the New York area had been detained; it is not clear how many American citizens of Japanese descent, if any, were also detained. The 110,000 detainees from the West Coast sent to camps like Manzanar included both citizens and noncitizens. Matsui was paroled on Feb. 7, 1942, and during the war he was prohibited from flying or having a camera, and required to report every month on his activities. In 1943 he said that business was almost nonexistent and he was "tending grounds around my home." A case officer reported in February 1945 that Matsui was "not resentful of the fact that his race is denied citizenship" and that he was "hopeful of an early American victory." But he was not released from parole until October 1945. In 1948 Bradford Smith published "Americans from Japan" with interviews with Japanese-Americans. He had wanted to include Matsui but the architect was "shy of publicity and will not be interviewed." For much of the "50s, he worked as a designer of buildings for S & H Green Stamps, through which stamps given out at supermarkets were redeemed for prizes. Matsui died in 1962, by then a naturalized citizen. He had a married daughter I was unable to trace. A great-niece, Jean Kincaid-Ross, says her parents met him and told her that he was "a very kind and gracious host." But if they knew of his wartime experiences, they never said so. Ms. Kincaid-Ross learned of them only a few years ago, on her own.