UW geographer receives Japan's highest honor

UW emeritus professor George Kakiuchi received one of Japan's highest honors Friday for a lifetime of building relations between the United States and the country of his family's heritage.

The scarlet and gold Imperial Order of the Rising Sun is one of Japan's highest honors and is only given to a few foreigners each year. Kakiuchi, 77, is one of this year's nine American recipients. Four other professors at the UW have received the award in the past.

"Professor Kakiuchi's research has influenced many Japanese geographers," said Japanese Consul General Fumiko Saiga at the presentation ceremony. "It was through the field of geography that he made his great contribution to fostering exchanges between Japan and the United States -- exchanges of friendship, knowledge and culture."

As a young man, Kakiuchi was forced along with his family to leave their home in Lincoln, Calif., for the interment camps at Tule Lake, Calif., and Minidoka, Idaho -- simply because he was a second-generation Japanese.

"My parents would be honored if they were alive," said Kakiuchi, whose parents continued to live in California after the war.

The first time Kakiuchi went to Japan was in 1947 when he was assigned to be a U.S. Army translator during the occupation of Japan.

"My main job was interpreting POWs returning from Russia," Kakiuchi explained.

After attending the University of Michigan for both his bachelor's and master's degree, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study at the Tokyo University of Education.

Kakiuchi vividly remembered the cold winter of 1953 -- how none of the buildings had central heating and how many windows were still broken from the war.

Often, both the students and the professor had to huddle around pot-bellied stoves during lectures.

"In those days it was more of a prison than a university," said Kakiuchi. "As graduate students, we studied and suffered together, and that probably established a camaraderie between us."

For 32 years, Kakiuchi taught in the UW geography department, rising from being an assistant professor to serving on the UW Fulbright Committee and as a member of the East Asia studies group. During his career at the UW, he often worked with Japanese exchange students and returned to teach in Tokyo as a Fulbright lecturer in 1963-64.

Much of Kakiuchi's research in Japan has been on the transition of rural areas from subsistence farming 200 years ago to the growing of cash crops in modern farm cooperatives. One of Japan's major changes has been the massive migration of people from the countryside into major cities, which has had an effect on rural school districts, infrastructure and even health care.

"Land use is becoming just like the United States," Kakiuchi said. "People keep moving to urban areas and the land is becoming commercially oriented."

Currently, Kakiuchi lives in Seattle with his wife Kayoko, whom he met while she was working in the UW public-affairs office.

Although he expressed great pride in being recognized for his work, Kakiuchi said the best legacies of his work are the friendships he has made with students and teachers across the Pacific.

"I think my greatest contribution has been in establishing rapport," said Kakiuchi. "My friendships have extended over decades."