On Yuji Ichioka, Japanese American Scholar and Activist
By Ben Kobashigawa
(Japanese .pdf also available)
It was very sad and unexpected news when I heard that Yuji Ichioka died last October. He was a political activist, pioneer scholar of Japanese American history, and friend of the Okinawan community. I did not attend the UCLA memorial on Oct 19, but I and my family did go to the one at UC Berkeley on October 30, 2003. Some three hundred people came.
I first met Yuji in 1983 when I returned from Edinburgh, where I did my graduate studies, to finish working on the translation of the History of the Okinawans in North America. To my surprise, he was quite aware of the unique role of Okinawans in the Japanese American community, but had no contacts among the Okinawans. He understood immediately the importance of the Okinawa Club’s wish to publish an English language version. It was through his enthusiastic support that the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA decided to help publish the book.
Yuji had great respect for the Okinawan group and kept an active interest in new developments over the years. I met with him whenever I came down to Los Angeles to talk about my work and exchange news about the Okinawan community. He was, for me, both sensei and sempai in teaching and doing research on Japanese and Okinawan Americans. He befriended my father, Dick Jiro Kobashigawa, and thought the political activities of the prewar Okinawan issei were important historically. He read every issue of Takeo Kaneshiro’s Godaishu. In his view, of all the Japanese Americans, Okinawans were really outstanding in their pride of community.
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