From DiscoverNikkei.org
Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa
Academic and politician (1906-1992)
Gift of the Willie Funakoshi Family.
Born in Vancouver, Canada to Japanese immigrant parents, Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa was a college professor who achieved national recognition in the United States as a semanticist, college president and U.S. Senator from California. He received his B.A. in English (1927) from the University of Manitoba and his M.A. in English (1928) from McGill University in Montreal. Moving to the United States in 1930, he served as a graduate assistant at the University of Wisconsin, where he received his Ph.D. (1935) in English and American Literature and taught English there until 1939. From 1939 to 1947, he was an associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. S.I. Hayakawa was an important semanticist widely recognized for his best selling book Language in Thought and Action published in 1949.
In 1950, Hayakawa moved to San Francisco State College where he served as the first Japanese American on the faculty. During the student unrest in the 1960’s, he gained national prominence for his dedication to academics and outspoken efforts to maintain order on campus during tumultuous times. He was named president of the college during the student strikes of 1968.
Turning to politics at the age of 70, S. I. Hayakawa was elected the Republican Senator to Congress in 1976 and served until 1983. During his term he became known for his efforts to establish English as a national language. Having written about the problems created by language barriers, he introduced the English Language Amendment.
S. I. Hayakawa was a resident of Mill Valley, California until his death in 1992 of Alzheimer's disease.
-- Biography from U.S. English with its permission.
- Profile (Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress)
- Profile (Wikipedia)
- Biography (U.S. English)
- In 1983 Hayakawa -- born in Canada and a naturalized U.S. citizen since 1955 -- founded U.S. English, the oldest, largest citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States.
- Oral history: "S. I. Hayakawa and Margedant Peters Hayakawa: From Semantics to the U. S. Senate, ETC., ETC." The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Last Update on September 21, 2007