From DiscoverNikkei.org

Contents

Science & Technology

Science

  • Syun-Ichi Asakofu (b.1930), geophysicist.
    • Charles P. Wahlforth, "Syun-Ichi Asakofu Profile". Originally published in the Anchorage Daily News, October 19, 1997.
    • Faculty profile (International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks)
    • Audio interview: University of Alaska Geophysical Institute. One of a series of oral history interviews recorded in celebration of the Institute's 50th anniversary celebration in 1998.
  • Tetsuya Theodore ("Ted") Fujita (1920-1998), meteorologist. Developer of the Fujita scale for measuring the intensity of tornadoes.
    • Obituary (The Tornado Project)
    • Profile of Fujita by his son, Michigan State University professor Kazuya Fujita. Includes extensive biographical notes.
  • Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist, author, professor.
  • Jokichi Takamine (1854-1922)

Technology

Shimomura is perhaps most famous for his involvement in tracking down computer outlaw Kevin Mitnick in 1995. He described his experience in Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw -- By The Man Who Did It, written with John Markoff (Hyperion, January 1996).
Describes the effort, during World War II, to develop an alternate source of rubber. Dr. Robert Emerson, a plant physiologist at CalTech, organized a team of Japanese-American scientists interned at Manzanar to develop the rubber-yielding desert shrub, guayule, for this purpose. Led by UC Berkeley nuclear physicist Dr. Morganlander Shimpe Nishimura, the Manzanar Guayule Research Team achieved stunning successes under the most adverse circumstances, but their efforts were copied -- and credit taken -- by the USDA's larger Emergency Rubber Project. Dr. Kageyama has compiled a slide show of images from the Guayule Project.
The Gallery of the Open Frontier database (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) contains numerous National Archive images of the guayule propagation effort at Manzanar.

Medical Science

Describes medical researchers from Hamamatsu, Japan, visiting Brazil to understand its medical systems, in order to help the large population of Brazilian Nikkei living in Hamamatsu.
"Nikkeis buscam novas saídas para tratar a doença e com a ajuda de especialistas muitos deles conseguiram superar o problema. De acordo com o psiquiatra Edson Hirata, 90% dos pacientes em tratamento voltam à vida normal."
Bilingual (English/Japanese) resource produced by the Department of Public Health, Seattle & King County. Includes tips for healthy meal planning.


Doctors, Medical Scientists, & Health Practitioners

"The separate but unequal politics of health affecting American minority women."
Caption: "Black and white photograph of a group of Japanese American midwives and some children. The back row is dressed in white and the second row in black. This is the Association of Japanese Midwives."
A cropped version of the same image has also been published by the Lawrence Journal-World, with further details of the sitters.

Individuals

  • Takeru Higuchi (1918-1987), pharmaceutical chemist.
Mark D. Hersey, "It's All in the Delivery". Dept. of History, University of Kansas. This Week in KU History: October 17, 1987. Profile of Prof. Takeru Higuchi, Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at University of Kansas, considered "the father of physical pharmacy."
  • Ruby Inouye, medical doctor.
Kathy George, "Seattle's Japantown remembered". Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 22, 2004. Seattle's Japantown as remembered by one of its residents, Dr. Ruby Inouye, the first Japanese American woman to practice medicine in Seattle.
  • Tod H. Mikuriya (1933-2007), psychiatrist.
Valerie J. Nelson, "Tod H. Mikuriya, 73; psychiatrist who championed legal medical marijuana". Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2007.
  • Irene Ayako Uchida (b.1917), Canadian geneticist renowned for her research into effects of radiation on human chromosomes, and on Down syndrome. (Canadian Museum of Nature, "The Geee! in Genome")


Medical Studies

  • Japanese American Community Diabetes Study begins with a three year research about the occurrence of diabetes among Japanese Americans, which is 4 times more than Japanese in Japan and twice as much as in the white population of the United States.
"This module reviews the demographics, history, health risks, and traditional health views of Japanese American elders. Suggestions for issues to consider in assessment and treatment are also included. The module is designed to use in conjunction with the Core Curriculum in Ethnogeriatrics."
Reports findings of research at the National Institutes of Health, assessing the alcohol consumption of 3556 Japanese-American men and its impact on their long- and short-term memory skills. Originally published as: D. Galanis, et al., "A longitudinal study of drinking and cognitive performance in elderly Japanese American men: the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study." American Journal of Public Health, 2000, vol. 90, pp. 1254-1259.
Cites findings that ethnicity is a risk factor for hypertension, including the fact that three quarters of older Japanese American men are hypertensive.
  • James N. Yamazaki, "The Early History of the Nagasaki Laboratory". (English | 日本語). Originally published in Radiation Effects Research Foundation 4, no. 3 (1992).
Yamazaki, a Japanese-American pediatrician, was Physician-in-charge at the ABCC Nagasaki Laboratory from 1949-1951, studying the effects of nuclear radiation on children. He published his memoirs, Children of the Atomic Bomb: An American Physician's Memoir of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Marshall Islands, co-written with Louis B. Fleming, in 1995. In them, Yamazaki describes his personal story as a Japanese American whose parents were interned in Arkansas while he fought for America in the Battle of the Bulge.
Studies on the health status and life style factors in Japanese immigrants in Brazil. Research result in Bolivia is also available.
"This study was performed to estimate human T-cell leukemia-lymphoma virus type-I (HTLV-I) infection and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in Japanese immigrant colonies in Bolivia, where no seroepidemiological study of HTLV-I or HIV has ever been reported, among 647 healthy adults and children of Japanese descent and Bolivian natives living in the same colonies."
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