Harry Minoru Urata (浦田ハリー實) (1917 – October 23, 2009) was a music teacher best known for preserving the '' Holehole bushi'', a type of

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

sung by Japanese immigrants in Hawaii's sugar plantations.

Early life and education

Urata was born in

Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

in 1917. After his father died in a car accident, Urata was sent to Japan in 1924 to be raised by his relatives in

Kumamoto prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Kumamoto Prefecture has a population of 1,748,134 () and has a geographic area of . Kumamoto Prefecture borders Fukuoka Prefecture to the north, Ōita Prefecture t ...

. He briefly also lived in Japan-occupied Korea, and was admitted to

Waseda University Waseda University (Japanese: ), abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the Tōkyō Professional School by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the fifth Prime Minister of Japan, prime ministe ...

after high school. However, he did not have a chance to study there because in 1937 he returned to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

at his mother's insistence, as the threat of war in Japan increased. After returning to Hawaii in 1937, Urata became a teacher at a Japanese language school. He also enrolled in the Mid-Pacific Institute to learn English. Soon after he was admitted into the

University of Hawaii A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

, Pearl Harbor was attacked and

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

began in the Pacific. In March 1943, he was arrested by the FBI and imprisoned at the Honouliuli Internment Camp. While there, he befriended Kenpu Kawazoe, a journalist who sparked Urata's interest in the ''Holehole bushi.'' Urata was later transferred to the

Tule Lake War Relocation Center The Tule Lake War Relocation Center, also known as the Tule Lake Segregation Center, was an Internment of Japanese Americans, American concentration camp located in Modoc County, California, Modoc and Siskiyou County, California, Siskiyou count ...

Career

After he was released from Tule Lake, Urata returned to Hawaii in December 1945. He sold newspapers for a while, then was hired to do Japanese music programming at KULA, a local radio station. He also reformed his pre-war music group, the Shinko Orchestra, to play for weddings and parties. He then studied with

Masao Koga was a Japanese composer, mandolinist, and guitarist of the Shōwa era who was dubbed "Japan's Irving Berlin" by Universal Press Syndicate. His melancholy style, based upon Nakayama Shimpei's '' yonanuki'' scale, was popularly known in Japan ...

in Japan for a year and a half before starting his own music studio, where he taught hundreds of students. Urata worked with Raymond Hattori in 1960 to create a score for the ''Holehole bushi''. However, because they had based their score on one person's rendition of the genre, many singers were upset. Urata decided to gather more recordings of ''Holehole bushi''. He released a record of them in 1967. He collected recordings until the 1980s, when he gave his collection to

Franklin Odo Franklin S. Odo (May 6, 1939 – September 28, 2022) was a Japanese American author, scholar, activist, and historian. Odo served as the director of the Asian Pacific American Program at the Smithsonian Institution from the program's inception ...

, who in turn gave it to the

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage The Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage (CFCH) is one of three cultural centers within the Smithsonian Institution in the United States. Its motto is "culture of, by, and for the people", and it aims to encourage understanding and cultural sust ...

. Urata died on October 23, 2009. Before he died he was presented with awards from the governments of both the United States and Japan.

References

External links

Urata's collection of audio recordings
1917 births 2009 deaths People from Honolulu Japanese-American internees American musicians of Japanese descent 20th-century Japanese musicians American folklorists Waseda University alumni {{DEFAULTSORT:Urata, Harry Minoru