Miyakawa, Tetsuo Scott

Miyakawa was born Nov. 23, 1906 in Los Angeles, CA; BS, Cornell, 1929; Ph. D, Columbia Univ.; taught at Boston Univ., 1946-72; his efforts to collect documentary materials related to the history of Japanese Americans and Japanese immigration to the US resulted in the inauguration of the Japanese American Research Project (JARP) at UCLA in 1962; director, JARP, 1962-65; taught at Univ. of MA, Boston, 1972-78; died Aug. 2, 1981.

Biography

Miyakawa was born November 23, 1906 in Los Angeles, California; BS, Cornell, 1929; Ph.D, Columbia University; taught at Boston University, 1946-72; his efforts to collect documentary materials related to the history of Japanese Americans and Japanese immigration to the United States resulted in the inauguration of the Japanese American Research Project (JARP) at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1962; director, JARP, 1962-65; taught at University of Massachusetts, Boston, 1972-78; died August 2, 1981.

Additional Biographical Narratives

The papers of Professor Miyakawa (1906-81) reflect his long career in the academic world, and his scholarly involvement in documenting the Japanese American experience.

He joined the faculty of Boston University in 1946 and after his retirement in 1972 as an Emeritus Professor, became first a Visiting Professor and then Chair of the Sociology Department of the University of Massachusetts at Boston until his second retirement to the position of Emeritus Professor in 1978.

His commitment to Japanese American history prompted him to play a leading role in organizing the Japanese American Research Project at UCLA, which established at the UCLA Library the largest body of documentation in the United States for the study of Japanese immigration to and settlement in America. For additional materials relating to and acquired by the Project, see the Department of Special Collections registers for Collection 2010. The papers also include material for Professor Miyakawa's unfinished book, The New York Japanese and the Development of the US-Japan Trade.

by Michiko Yoneda, 1981

T. Scott Miyakawa (1906-1981). A scholar and teacher. A native of Los Angeles, California. Tetsuo Scott Miyakawa was born as the eldest son of Miyakawa Yukio and Rimu. He had two siblings, Kikuko Miyakawa Packness and Tatsuo Arthur Miyakawa. In 1931 he graduated from Cornell University with a BS in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. From 1931 to 1941 he served as an English-speaking assistant to the Japanese manager of the South Manchurian Railway Office in New York City. During the wartime years, he was active as a member of the New York Emergency Committee for Japanese Americans and the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). In 1951 he obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University. Most of his teaching career was spent at Boston University where he taught sociology from 1946 to 1972. As co-founder of the JACL-sponsored Japanese American Research Project at UCLA, he served as its initial director from 1962 to 1965. He was the author of Protestants and Pioneers: Individualism and Conformity on the American Frontier, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964 ; Pioneers of Japanese-American Trade, Tokyo: Morimura, 1970 ; and co-editor of East Across the Pacific: Historical and Sociological Studies of Japanese Immigration and Assimilation, Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Press, 1972.

The T. Scott Miyakawa Papers include personal memorabilia, incomplete manuscript on the East Coast Issei and the development of Japan America trade in the late nineteenth century, papers on his father's Japanese-English dictionary project, and miscellaneous photographs. These papers supplement the previously donated T. Scott Miyakawa Papers.

by Yuji Ichioka and Eiichiro Azuma, 1995