Biography
Harry Kitano was born in San Francisco, California, 14 February 1926 to Motoji and Kou Yuki Kitano. Raised in San Francisco's Chinatown, Kitano attended Galileo High School. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Kitano family was sent to the Assembly Center at the Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia, California. Six months later, the family was sent to an internment camp in Topaz, Utah where they remained until 1945. After the war, Kitano attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his BA (1948), M.S.W. (1951) and his Ph.D. (1958). He taught at UCLA from 1958 until his retirement in 1995, teaching in the departments of Social Welfare and Sociology. He served twice as Acting Director of the American Asian Studies Center and also as Co-Director of the UCLA Alcohol Research Center. He was the first to hold the endowed chair for Japanese American Studies at UCLA, established in 1990.
Kitano's first book, Japanese Americans: The Emergence of a Subculture, was a pioneering sociological study in the field of Asian American studies, and specifically the Japanese American experience. His Race Relations, first published in 1974, became a standard textbook. At the time of his death, he was preparing for the publication of the sixth edition. He co-authored Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities with Roger Daniels, Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress with Mitchell T. Maki and S. Megan Berthold, American Racism with Roger Daniels . He directed research into issues affecting the growing Asian American population, including interracial marriage, mental health, juvenile delinquency and alcohol abuse. He published numerous reports and articles in the fields of social welfare and public health. He mentored and advised students and colleagues for over 30 years.
From the guide to the Harry H. L. Kitano Papers, ca. 1960-, (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections.)
