"RENOWNED UCLA PROFESSOR HARRY H.L. KITANO: A SURVIVOR OF ONE OF THE NATION'S DARKEST CHAPTERS WHO SPENT HIS CAREER ILLUMINATING RACE RELATIONS"

The faculty, staff, and students of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center are very saddened to report that their wonderful colleague, teacher, mentor, and friend -- Professor Emeritus Harry H.L. Kitano, one of the world's leading authorities on race and ethnic relations, particularly as they related to the contemporary Japanese American and Asian American experiences -- passed away on Saturday, October 19, 2002, in Los Angeles. He was 76 years old.

Born in San Francisco on February 14, 1926, Professor Kitano was the youngest of seven children of Motoji and Kou Yuki Kitano, who had immigrated from Kyushu, Japan. He grew up in the city's Chinatown district, where his parents operated a hotel, and attended Galileo High School. The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 had a profound and everlasting impact on Kitano, who was a fifteen-year-old freshman at the time. His father was picked up soon afterwards by the FBI. Kitano and other members of his family were ordered to leave their home, and were transferred to the Santa Anita race tracks in Arcadia, California, where they lived in a horse stall for six months, and then to the Topaz concentration camp in Utah, where they remained from 1942-1945.

According to the Asian American Almanac (1995), "After his release from Topaz, Kitano traveled to Milwaukee and worked briefly as a farmhand. Although the war was over, lingering racial hostility towards Japanese Americans worried Kitano, so he changed his name to Harry Lee. He played trombone with several jazz bands in Minnesota, where he had the chance to work with black musicians. It was an eye-opening experience for Kitano."

Kitano attributed one of his most well-known personal traits to his jazz playing experiences. "Being a musician," he said in a 1997 interview with UCLA TODAY, "gives you a strange sense of humor. I do see the world in very humorous terms. I suspect that's the thing that has always been able to sustain me even in the face of indignities."

Kitano returned to California in 1946, and subsequently received his B.A. in 1948, his MSW in 1951, and his Ph.D in Psychology and Education in 1958, all from the University of California, Berkeley.

Kitano then headed to Los Angeles, where he spent his entire professorial career, from 1958 until his retirement in 1995, at UCLA, where he was a faculty member in the departments of Social Welfare and Sociology. Twice serving as the acting director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, the nation's largest and most comprehensive program of its kind, he was an active member of the Center's Faculty Advisory Committee even during his retirement years.

The author of over 150 books, articles, and reports spanning over four decades, Professor Kitano was a pioneer in the social scientific approach to understanding the contemporary Japanese American population, and in providing theoretical frameworks for understanding persistent and new patterns of racial and ethnic conflict, cooperation, and interactions. His first book, Japanese Americans: The Emergence of A Subculture (1969), was the first in-depth sociological analysis of the Japanese American experience. It remains a standard in the field, has gone through three editions, and has been translated into many languages, including Japanese. The book catapulted Kitano to celebrity status in both the academic and public arenas, and he became a well sought out speaker and commentator. He was a Visiting Professor at many institutions including the University of Bristol in England, Yamaguchi University and the International Christian University in Japan, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He also received many major grants to support his research over the years.
Kitano's last book, Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Achieved Redress (2000), with Mitchell Maki and S. Megan Berthold), provided historical understanding and analytical illumination to the confluence of factors and the actions of key elected officials and community organizations in achieving redress and a national apology for the 120,000 Japanese Americans who, like Kitano and his family, were incarcerated in American concentration camps during World War II. The award-winning book has been recognized as the most comprehensive study on how the 1988 Civil Liberties Act was passed by Congress and eventually signed by President Ronald Reagan. Kitano also undertook many of the first-ever community research studies of interracial marriages, juvenile delinquency, mental health, and alcohol abuse among the rapidly growing and diverse Asian Pacific American population.

At the time of his passing, Kitano was working with his UCLA colleague, Professor Diane de Anda, on the sixth edition of his highly popular and influential book, Race Relations, which was first published in 1974, and had been used in college classrooms across the nation.

"Harry Kitano was a very special one-of-a-kind scholar," said Professor Don T. Nakanishi, Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. "He deeply appreciated social science theorizing, and sought to introduce new concepts and frameworks in understanding complex racial and ethnic structures and relationships. And yet, he did not theorize simply for the sake of theorizing. Theories had to stand up firmly to data and to Harry's strong intuitive sense of what was really happening. He also was genuinely committed to improving professional practice and guiding sound public policies on many compelling community issues that had been long overlooked because of the misinformed notions that Asian Americans always took care of themselves and that they were a model minority without social needs and concerns. He was supremely committed to the community. He was a pioneer among scholars in the professional school disciplines like social welfare, law, and public health who are using their fields to undertake basic, applied, and policy research, as well as the training of new practitioners, to address the centrality of race, ethnicity, and gender in American society."

In 1990, in recognition of his path-breaking contributions in developing the field of Japanese American Studies and his stellar record in teaching and professional service, Professor Kitano was appointed as the first recipient of the Endowed Chair in Japanese American Studies at UCLA, the only academic chair of its kind in American higher education, which was established through the generosity and commitment of Japanese American alumni and friends of the university.

"Harry Kitano was one of a the most influential and natural teachers at UCLA, " said Professor James Lubben, chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Asian American Studies Center. "For more than 30 years, students as well as faculty colleagues sought his sage advice often delivered with a dose of wit and humor. He was my most influential mentor and dear friend at UCLA. Harry welcomed me into the field Asian American Studies, and enabled my scholarship in that growing community. He freely offered his strong shoulders upon which many social workers and Asian American scholars could seek a more civil society for all. Harry Kitano was most generous with his time and practical advice. His scholarship and community activism will continue to live on through his many intellectual offspring."

On May 6, 1997, Kitano and other Japanese American students who were removed from San Francisco public high schools as a result of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 on February, 19, 1942, were finally awarded their high school diplomas. Kitano was the keynote speaker for the special ceremony organized by the San Francisco Board of Education. With a chuckle, Kitano remarked, :"I do things backwards. I got a Ph.D. first and then I got my high school diploma."

Kitano is survived by his wife, Lynn; children Keith, Kimberly (David Roe), Kraig, Kerrily, and Christine; grandson Conor Hogan; sisters Kiyoko Yamashita, Sadako Kawaguchi, Chizuko Iiyama, andTamio Kitano; and many nieces, and nephews.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that any donations be made to: the "HARRY KITANO SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENT/UCLA FOUNDATION." A scholarship endowment to support UCLA undergraduate and graduate students, in perpetuity, who are interested in Asian American Studies, will be established in Professor Kitano's name, and administered by the Asian American Studies Center. Please send cards to the family or donations for the endowment to:

HARRY KITANO SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENT/UCLA FOUNDATION
c/o UCLA Asian American Studies Center
P.O. Box 951546, 3230 Campbell Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546

For more information, please contact Don Nakanishi, Director, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, (310) 825-2974, or dtn@ucla.edu