Franklin Odo

Franklin Odo was born on May 6, 1939, in Honolulu, Hawai`i to Kibei parents Masaru and Masako Odo, both of whom had mostly been raised in Hiroshima Prefecture. His father Masaru had been born in Kaua`i and gone to college for a year in Tokyo before returning to Hawai`i, while his mother Masako had been born in Colorado and lived in a largely rural area near what is now Shōbara. When Masako's family left Japan, they had planned to go to Brazil, but were allowed to disembark in Hawai`i thanks to an executive order by President Franklin Roosevelt. Later, she would name her first son after him. Masaru and Masako met and married in Honolulu and ran a small grocery store in the Liliha neighborhood of Honolulu when Franklin was born, but moved east to the Koko Head area in 1943—an area that was then rural but is now the sprawling residential development Hawaii Kai—where they operated a truck farm. Young Franklin grew up balancing schoolwork and extracurricular activities with work on the farm. Three younger siblings eventually followed. ^[2]

Franklin attended Wai`alae and Lili`uokalani Elementary Schools and Kaimuki Intermediate and High Schools, taking the bus to school, but walking over two miles back. An excellent student, he also played football and baseball, was involved in student government—including serving as student body president as a senior—and was an Eagle Scout, all of which had the added benefit of limiting his work on the family farm. Determined to get off of the farm, he was inspired to apply to Ivy League schools by a student from the class before him who went to Harvard and ended up enrolling at Princeton in the fall of 1957. ^[3]

As one of only a handful of non-white students in the all-male class of about 725 students, Odo struggled academically at first in the new milieu. He worked in the dining hall and as a night watchman and also managed to get into one of the top ranked eating clubs, where he dined with Mellons and Rockefellers, while improving his study habits and grades. A summer spent in Italy influenced him to explore his own background, leading to the study of Chinese language and Asian history. Upon his 1961 graduation, he took advantage of Cold War era federal funding to continue his studies of Chinese and Japanese at Harvard, finishing a master's in East Asian regional studies in 1963 and entering a Ph.D. program at Princeton in 1964 after a year in Japan. While in Japan, he met Enid Reid, an Oberlin student also studying in Tokyo. Having grown up in a Quaker environment, Reid had been a freedom rider in 1962 and had been beaten and jailed in Mississippi; Odo recalled that she "had a sense of civil rights and activism that I didn't," and credits her for influencing his later activism. They married in 1964. ^[4]

While still finishing his dissertation on a feudal domain in Tokugawa era Japan, he got a job teaching Asian Studies at Occidental College in 1968. But in the process, he became increasingly politicized, even joining students in a hunger strike over U.S. bombing in Laos and Cambodia. "Towns and cities were burning up so I stopped and I said I've been to some of the finest institutions in this country... and I don't know anything about why this is taking place," he said in a 2018 oral history." In 1971, he left his tenure track faculty position to become a lecturer and curriculum coordinator at the newly formed Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, teaching early Asian American Studies classes and co-editing the pioneering 1971 anthology Roots , the first Asian American Studies reader. After two years, he left the temporary position at UCLA to join the faculty at California State University at Long Beach, while finally finishing his dissertation—which he worked on with less and less enthusiasm—in 1975. In the meantime, he and Enid had three children, two boys and a girl. ^[5]

After five years at Long Beach, he got the opportunity to return to Hawai`i when a position at the University of Hawai`i opened up. Much like UCLA and other universities on the West Coast, the University of Hawai`i had started an ethnic studies program in 1970 that had evolved from an experimental to a permanent program and was looking for a director in 1977. Despite having tenure at Long Beach, Odo took the non-tenured position and moved the family to Hawai`i. Over the next sixteen years, he led the growth of the Ethnic Studies Program—sometimes working directly with the state legislature and governor's office—increasing the number of tenure track positions and putting the program on the road to eventually offering a B.A. degree. He also taught classes on Japanese American history while doing research that eventually led to books on the Varsity Victory Volunteers and holehole bushi (sugar plantation work songs). He also served as president of the Association for Asian American Studies for a two-year term. ^[6]

Beyond his work at the university, Odo was involved in a wide range of projects in the local community. He was a founding board member of the Honolulu chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League and chaired their research committee on redress , testifying about the Hawai`i experience at the Seattle hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians . Soon after his arrival, the got involved in the project to create what became Waipahu Cultural Garden Park (now Hawaii's Plantation Village), a living history museum in Waipahu. That involvement likely led to his appointment to board of the State Foundation of Culture and the Arts by Governor [[George Ariyoshi], on which he served for eight years, including two as its chair. Later, he was one of the leading proponents for state history museum. Odo served as a humanities scholar on projects involving hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) in Hawai`i, the Kanyaku Imin Centennial Committee, and the Picture Bride feature film. He was also part of the Uchinanchu Celebration Commission and the only non-Okinawan in Hawai`i to be named "Uchinaa Goodwill Ambassador" by the Okinawa Prefectural Government. ^[7]

While teaching via a series of short-term appointments at East Coast institutions including Hunter College, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1995–96, Odo was asked by the Smithsonian Institution to be a consultant on efforts to add more Asian Pacific American content to the offerings of its museums. Out of that came an appointment to become the founding director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in July 1997. Over the next thirteen years, Odo worked with curators at the various Smithsonian museums to increase API collections, programs and exhibitions, while also raising money to hire additional staff. During his time there, he was able to put together major projects on each of the six main API groups. ^[8]

After leaving the Smithsonian in 2010, Odo became the acting chief of the Asian Division at the Library of Congress and also a senior advisor to the National Park Service's National Historic Landmarks Program. While serving in the latter capacity, he edited Finding a Path Forward: Asian American Pacific Islander National Historic Landmarks Theme Study , an anthology of works on Asian American history and communities in 2017. He took an appointment at Amherst College in 2015 as the John Woodruff Simpson Lecturer and later as the John J. McCloy '16 Visiting Professor of American Institutions and International Diplomacy in the Department of American Studies, the irony of holding the latter chair named after one the architects of the mass exclusion of Japanese Americans not being lost on him. He continued to teach at Amherst until 2022. ^[9]

Franklin Odo passed away on September 28, 2022, at the age of 83. Among his honors and awards was the JACL President's Award in 2008, an award from the Organization of Chinese Americans also in 2008, and lifetime achievement award from the Association for Asian American Studies in 2012. After his passing Amherst's Asian American Alumni Fellowship Network announced a senior thesis prize in his name, and the University of Hawai`i Foundation established a fund in his name. ^[10]

Odo, Franklin. Oral history by Joe Rossi, August 14, 1990 . "Honolulu, The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts: An Oral History Collection." Center for Oral History, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

———. Oral History by Karen Umemoto, Oct. 30, 2018 , Providence, Rhode Island. The Collective Memories Project, UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Chinen, Karleen. " Aloha `Oe Dr. Franklin Odo: Remembering a Brilliant Scholar and a Special Mentor and Friend. " Hawaii Herald , Dec. 16, 2022.

Dower, Linsey. " Franklin Odo, Renowned Japanese American Scholar, Historian and Activist Dies at 83. " Honolulu Star Advertiser , Oct. 7, 2022.

" Obituary: Renowned Asian American Studies Scholar and Author Franklin Odo. " Rafu Shimpo, Oct. 6, 2022.

"The Japanese American Centennial in Hawaii: A Critical Look at Ethnic Celebration." The Hawaiian Journal of History 19 (1985): 1-16.

[and Kazuko Sinoto]. A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawaii, 1885-1924 . Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1985.

No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai`i during World War II . Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003.

Voices from the Canefields: Folksongs from Japanese Immigrant Workers in Hawai`i . New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

[with Amy Tachiki, Eddie Wong, and Buck Wong] Roots: An Asian American Reader . Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1971.

The Columbia Documentary History of the Asian American Experience . New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

Finding a Path Forward: Asian American Pacific Islander National Historic Landmarks Theme Study . Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, October 2017.