Bill Hosokawa, a former Denver Post editor who was incarcerated in a World War II relocation camp because of his heritage and bucked the prejudice of the era to build a distinguished career as a journalist and chronicler of the Japanese American experience, has died. He was 92.
A longtime Denver resident, Hosokawa died of natural causes Nov. 9 in Sequim, Wash., where he had moved recently to be closer to family members, said his daughter, Christie Harveson.
Hosokawa was for many years the highest-ranking Asian American journalist in the nation. Hired at the Denver Post in 1946, he spent 38 years there as a reporter, editor and columnist. He later worked at the Rocky Mountain News, where he served as ombudsman from 1985 to 1992, when he retired.
Hosokawa obituary: The obituary of journalist Bill Hosokawa in Sunday's California section referred to his book "Nisei: The Quiet Americans" as a novel; it was nonfiction.
He also served for 25 years as Japan's honorary consul general in Colorado.
He wrote 10 books, including "Nisei: The Quiet Americans" (1969), which explained the struggles faced by Japanese immigrants and their children and awakened many Japanese Americans to their heritage.
But the novel offended younger activists exposed to Asian American empowerment movements in the 1960s and '70s, who said the book's "Quiet Americans" subtitle contributed to the stereotype of Asians as passive, model minorities.
"It was an important book," said Lane Hirabayashi, the George and Sakaye Aratani professor of the Japanese American internment, redress, and community at UCLA. "It was heralded by many because it was written by a Japanese American about the Japanese American experience. At the same time, it was a controversial book in its own way."
In the book, Hosokawa described the lives of second-generation Japanese Americans such as himself. He was born in Seattle in 1915, the son of immigrants from Hiroshima who came to the West Coast in the early 1900s. After graduating from high school in 1932, he enrolled at the University of Washington, where he majored in journalism.
One day Hosokawa's faculty advisor asked him why he persisted in studying journalism.
"I don't think there's a newspaper publisher in the country who would hire a Japanese boy," the professor said, adding that he thought Hosokawa "would be smart to transfer" to another field.
When Hosokawa graduated in 1937 with a bachelor's degree in journalism, his professor's prophecy appeared to come true: He had to go abroad to find work in his chosen profession. From 1939 to 1941 he was a reporter and editor in Asia, working for the English-language Singapore Herald and Shanghai Times. He also wrote for the Far Eastern Economic Review.
