Yuji Ichioka, an internationally renowned historian and a UCLA Asian American studies and history professor, died Sept. 1. He was 66.

“Our Asian American Studies Center and the fields of U.S. history, Asian American studies, and immigrant studies will forever benefit from professor Ichioka’s path-breaking intellectual contributions, his courageous leadership, and his fiery social commitment,� said Don T. Nakanishi, the center’s director and professor. “He was a giant presence.�

Ichioka was born on June 23, 1936 in San Francisco. During part of his childhood, Ichioka and his family were interned at the Topaz Relocation Center during World War II.

Ichioka, who dedicated much of his life to social justice and scholarly research in the United States, Japan and Latin America, created the term “Asian American� in the late 1960s, according to Nakanishi. While at the University of California, Berkeley, where he organized the Asian American Political Alliance in 1968, he was an activist for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. Ichioka was a key founder of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, where he taught its first Asian American studies class in 1969. For nearly 33 years, Ichioka was a senior researcher at the center and an adjunct professor in the UCLA history department.

Colleagues described Ichioka as a dedicated instructor who mentored both undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom went on to become leading researchers and university professors.

Nakanishi described Ichioka as the “preeminent scholar of Japanese American history.� Ichioka authored the seminal book, “The Issei: The World of the First-Generation Japanese Immigrant, 1885-1924,� which was nominated for the 1988 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and awarded the 1989 U.S. Book Award of the National Association for Asian American Studies.

Ichioka, an historian of the Japanese American internment during World War II, testified at the Congressional hearings that resulted in the official presidential apology and redress of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
Ichioka emphasized the importance of using both Japanese- and English-language sources to recover what he labeled the "buried past" of Japanese American history. Over three decades, his extensive collaborative work in compiling the Japanese American Research Project Collection at UCLA, the largest and most significant historical archive on Japanese Americans in the United States. His numerous articles and books, including “A Buried Past,� provided the foundation for the field of Japanese American studies.

Ichioka also served on the editorial board of UCLA’s Amerasia Journal, the leading international journal in Asian American Studies. In 1971, Ichioka observed that like the history of many other racial minorities in the U.S. "much of Japanese American history remains unwritten." He saw his mission to help write that history, which involved "the debunking of old distortions and myths, the uncovering of hitherto neglected or unknown facts, and the construction of a new interpretation of that past."

Because of Ichioka's pioneering scholarship and vision, his dedication to teaching, and his commitment to make known the long legacy of working peoples’ resistance to injustice, new interpretations of the past were made possible, Nakanishi said.

Ichioka was not a "scholar in the ivory tower," but throughout his life was active with
social justice issues.

For his lifetime work in Asian Pacific labor history, Ichioka received the 2002 International Longshoreman and Warehouseman’s Union (ILWU) Yoneda Award at the annual
conference of the Southwest Labor Studies Association.

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center plans to establish The Yuji Ichioka Endowed Chair In Social Justice Studies to continue the activist scholarly work of Ichioka. Such an endowed chair would recognize and support the research, teaching, and community service activities of leading scholars who are pursuing research that provides new analysis of the significant historic and contemporary role of racial, ethnic, and gendered minorities in American life.

Ichioka is survived by his wife, Emma Gee.

A private family service and a later public memorial, celebrating his life and work, will be held. The family requests that any donations be made to: “The Yuji Ichioka Endowed Chair In Social Justice Studies.� Cards or donations can be sent to: Yuji Ichioka Fund c/o UCLA Asian American Studies Center, P.O. Box 951546, 3232 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90032-1546.