Tod Hiro Mikuriya was born in 1933 in Bucks County, Pa., to the former Anna Schwenk, a German immigrant, and Tadafumi Mikuriya, a Japanese samurai. His mother taught special education and his father was a civil engineer who often designed bridges.
Growing up, he attended Quaker schools and paid his way through college by folk singing. He graduated from Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1956 with a bachelor's degree in psychology and served as an Army medic before earning a medical degree from Temple University in Philadelphia in 1962.
While at Temple, he came across a reference to the medical use of marijuana in a pharmacological text, which triggered his lifelong interest, Gardner said.
Mikuriya specialized in psychiatry at Oregon State Hospital in Salem and completed his training at Mendocino State Hospital. By 1970, he had moved to Berkeley and entered private practice.
"He was eclectic and had an adventurer's spirit and was very, very curious," said his sister Mary Jane Mikuriya.
That spirit could extend to traveling, piloting his own plane, racing cars or experimenting with cooking. He once turned a meal blue with food coloring "just to see what it would be like psychologically," his sister said.
Dr. Tod, as his patients called him, had a gentle manner and wore a white lab coat with an embroidered logo that revealed his specialty. It showed the snake and staff of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, atop a marijuana leaf.
In addition to Mary Jane, Mikuriya is survived by another sister, Beverly, a doctor in Pennsylvania; a son, Tadafumi "Sean"; and a daughter, Hero.
A memorial service will be held at 4:30 p.m. today at Quaker Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St., Berkeley.
Memorial contributions may be made to Reed College, www.reed.edu.
valerie.nelson@latimes.com
