Background

Harry Kitano was born on February 14, 1926, in San Francisco, California. He was the youngest of seven children to Motoji and Kou Kitano, both Japanese immigrants. During World War II, Harry and his family were among the many Japanese Americans who were unjustly sent to internment camps by the United States government. By the end of the war, wary of lingering hostility toward Japanese Americans, Kitano changed his name to Harry Lee.

Education

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Harry Kitano was a student at Galileo High School. Also, he attended Topaz High School, where he was a member of the student council, student social committee, the Topaz High band, and played starting fullback for the football team. In his senior year, he served as senior class president, was voted "most popular boy," and was a commencement speaker at graduation. Besides, Kitano graduated from the University of California. He received a Bachelor of Arts in 1948, a Master of Social Work in 1951, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1958.

Career

Harry Kitano was an expert in race relations in America, especially about the Japanese-American experience. After World War II, he worked as a farmhand and musician before enrolling at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1944, at the age of eighteen, Kitano received governmental clearance to leave Topaz. The War Relocation Authority found him a job making silos in Port Washington. It was there that he answered several ads in Down Beat magazine and found a job playing trombone for a dance band in Worthington. Kitano spent the next few years as a musician traveling through Minnesota, Iowa, and the Dakotas.

After Harry Kitano's return in 1958, the University of California Los Angeles hired him, as a faculty member, in the Departments of Social Welfare and Sociology. Throughout his tenure, Professor Kitano's University service was extensive and diverse. He served as an acting director of the Asian American Study Center in 1971-1972 and 1988-1989. He also was an academic affirmative action officer in 1977-1982. Besides, Kitano held the position of a co-director of the University of California Los Angeles Alcohol Research Center in 1979-1981 and acting chair of the Department of Social Welfare in 1997-1998. Also, in 1990, Harry Kitano became an incumbent of the Endowed Chair in Japanese American Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. Beyond the University of California Los Angeles, he was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii in 1971, International Christian University in Japan in 1972-1973, the University of Bristol in England, in 1979, Whittier College in 1982, and Yamaguchi University in Japan in 1992.

Although Kitano retired in 1995, he remained very active in his emeritus status both in the Departments and the broader University. He also served the advisory boards of the Japanese American National Museum, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Skirball Institute of American Values, among others.

In addition to his teaching career, Harry Kitano was a writer. He was the author of over 150 books and articles. Kitano first gained national attention in 1969 with his book Japanese Americans: The Evolution of a Subculture, which was the first book to discuss the Japanese-American experience from a sociological point of view. He was also the author of several other books, including Race Relations, Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, co-edited with Roger Daniels and Sandra Taylor, and Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Achieved Redress, with Mitchell Maki and Megan Berthold. The book, Achieving the Impossible Dream, described the successful efforts to bring about the Congressional passage of the 1988 Civil Liberties American Act, which granted redress and a national apology for the incarceration in concentration camps of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. At the time of his passing, Harry Kitano was working on the sixth edition of Race Relations.

Achievements

• Harry Kitano was well known as a writer and educator. He was the first Japanese American professor in the social sciences to receive tenure at the University of California Los Angeles. Also, in 1990, Kitano became the first incumbent of the Endowed Chair in Japanese American Studies at the University of California Los Angeles, the only academic Chair of its kind in an American University, which was created by Japanese American alumni and friends of the University. Besides, Harry Kitano was the recipient of many honors and awards in recognition of his contributions to the broader community including Nisei of the Biennium and Nikkei of the Year, both by the Japanese American Citizen's League and Outstanding Volunteer, Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Achieving the Impossible Dream

    (Nearly fifty years after being incarcerated by their own ...)

    1999
  • The Child-Care Center

    (Excerpt from The Child-Care Center: A Study of the Intera...)

    1963
  • Japanese Americans 1969
  • Race relations 1974
  • Asian Americans 1988
  • Generations and Identity 1993
  • Japanese Americans and Internment 1994

Politics

Harry Kitano was committed to guiding sound public policies on many compelling community issues that had long overlooked because of the misinformed notions that Asian Americans were a model minority without social needs and concerns.

Views

Quotations: "I enjoyed life as a musician. It was fun to play with professional musicians of varying quality, to travel from town to town on one-nighters, especially after having been cooped up in a camp for several years, to eat out at restaurants with big steaks, and to live an independent and carefree life."

"I felt proud that I had survived the camps and had experienced a unique event in American history. I was also proud to be associated with a university that recognized the enormity of the event, and was willing to assume sponsorship."

Membership

• 

  American Sociological Association , United States

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Mitchell Maki: "He was very adept at being able to describe how things once were, how things are now, and most importantly, how things could be. It was that vision of how things could be, his vision of a fair, democratic, multicultural society that was so inspirational to many of us."

Connections

Harry Kitano married Lynn Chai Kitano in 1984. They had a daughter, Christine. Also, Kitano had two sons and two daughters by a previous marriage Keith, Kimberly, Kraig, and Kerrily.

Father:

Motoji Kitano

Mother:

Kou Kitano

Kou Kitano's maiden name was Yuki.

Wife:

Lynn Chai Kitano

Lynn Chai Kitano was Harry Kitano's second wife.

Daughter:

Christine Kitano

Daughter:

Keith Kitano

Daughter:

Kimberly Kitano

Son:

Kraig Kitano

Son:

Kerrily Kitano

Sister:

Kiyoko Yamashita

Sister:

Sadako Kawaguchi

Sister:

Chizuko Iiyama

Brother:

Tamio Kitano

colleague:

Roger Daniels

Roger Daniels is an American writer and professor of History Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati.

colleague:

Sandra Carol Taylor

Sandra Taylor was an American professor in the history department at the University of Utah, and also she was the author of many articles and several books.

colleague:

Mitchell Takeshi Maki

Mitchell Maki is an American writer and educator. He is a Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at California State University Dominguez Hills. Mitchell also serves on the Board of Governors and the Scholarly Advisory Council of the Japanese American National Museum.

colleague:

S. Megan Berthold

Megan Berthold is an American writer and educator. She is an Associate Professor at the UConn School of Social Work and a member of the Human Rights Institute's Gladstein Committee.