Translate| California Library Hall of Fame: Hiroshi Kashiwagi |
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The headline “Tule Lake Icon Passes,” in the NICHI BEI WEEKLY, announced the death of Hiroshi Kashiwagi, noted Japanese American author, poet, actor, civil rights activist, and librarian. He was a leading voice in protesting the unconstitutional imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II, about which he wrote seven plays and four books. Born in 1922 and raised in Loomis, near Sacramento, Kashiwagi was incarcerated in the Tule Lake concentration camp as a young man during the war. After the war, he worked as a Japanese interpreter while earning a BA in Asian languages from UCLA, in 1952, and MLS from UC Berkeley in 1966. Graduating from library school, he became one of only two Asian Americans on the staff of San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), where he worked for 20 years. His most enduring legacy was the creation of the west coast’s largest collection of Japanese language materials at SFPL’s Western Addition Branch, located near San Francisco’s Japantown neighborhood. Despite experiencing professional discrimination in the late 1960s, Kashiwagi advocated for a new standard of service that put SFPL well on the way to becoming the dynamic, modern library it is today. In 2005, his book, SWIMMING IN THE AMERICAN: A MEMOIR AND SELECTED WRITINGS, was named an American Book Award winner, and in 2011 he was invited to participate in “An Evening of Poetry and Prose” at the Obama White House. In Kashiwagi’s 2013 memoir, STARTING FROM LOOMIS AND OTHER STORIES, he pays tribute to the challenges and satisfactions of being a librarian, from working with diverse community members to building a one-of-a-kind collection. In June 2010, the San Francisco Library Commission placed a plaque at the Western Addition Branch, commemorating Kashiwagi’s contributions to the city as well as “his leadership in establishing and developing the Japanese Language Collection.”