Hosokawa, Bill 1915-2007 (William Hosokawa, William K. Hosokawa, William Kumpai Hosokawa)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 30, 1915, in Seattle, WA; died November 9, 2007, in Sequim, WA. Journalist, columnist, newspaper editor, and author. Hosokawa, the son of Japanese immigrants to America, chose a hard career path for an Asian American in the 1940s. He decided to become a journalist despite warnings that no American newspaper would hire him at the time. It was true, and he ended up as a reporter for English-language newspapers in China and Singapore until the escalation of World War II in the Pacific convinced him to return to his homeland. He had barely unpacked his bags when he was rounded up with family and friends and sent to one of the U.S. detention camps for Asian Americans, where he spent the war years as a virtual prisoner of war. After the war Hosokawa applied for a job at the Denver Post, which was allegedly one of the most anti-Japanese newspapers in the United States at the time, and somehow managed to win a position there. He stayed with that paper for nearly forty years, retiring in 1983 as associate editor and editorial page editor. He then spent several years as an ombudsman for the Rocky Mountain News and more than twenty years as the honorary consul of Japan in Colorado. Hosokawa's tenacity and his journalistic integrity earned him many awards over the years, from the Lowell Thomas Award of the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists to the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun. He was active in the Japanese American community, including his work for fifty years as a columnist for the Pacific Citizen. Hosokawa wrote several books to acquaint American readers with Japanese American culture and his own legacy. His 1969 book, Nisei: The Quiet Americans—part history, part memoir—was intended to explain what it was like to grow up as nisei (an American-born child of Japanese parents) from the 1800s to the present day. The book was described as a balanced account that neither downplayed nor sensationalized the discrimination faced by these individuals, whose physical appearances would for many generations preclude their assimilation into American society. Hosokawa wrote several other books as well, from histories like East to America: A History of the Japanese in America (1980) and Colorado's Japanese Americans: From 1886 to the Present (2005). His memoirs include the collected columns published in Thirty-five Years in the Frying Pan (1978) and Out of the Frying Pan: Reflections of a Japanese American (1998).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Hosokawa, Bill, Nisei: The Quiet Americans, University Press of Colorado (Niwot, CO), 1969, revised edition, 2002.

Hosokawa, Bill, Thirty-five Years in the Frying Pan, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1978.

Hosokawa, Bill, Out of the Frying Pan: Reflections of a Japanese American, University Press of Colorado (Niwot, CO), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2007, p. B12.

Washington Post, November 13, 2007, p. B7.