Roy Hidemichi Akagi was a Japanese-American scholar and historian. He was born in

Yokohama, Japan is the second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a population of 3.7 million in 2023. It lies on Tokyo B ...

in 1892.National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at San Francisco, California; NAI Number: 4498993; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85; Ship Name Korea Maru, Arrival Date: 6 December 1929.

Biography

He studied American History at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, graduating in 1918. He later obtained a master's degree in history from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

(1920) and a PhD from

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

. As a professional historian he published a number of books and articles on American history and also about Japan. In January 1940 he took up the post of the American Representative of the

South Manchurian Railway Company The South Manchuria Railway (; ), officially , Mantetsu () or Mantie () for short, was a large of the Empire of Japan whose primary function was the operation of railways on the Dalian– Fengtian (Mukden)–Changchun (called Xinjing from ...

, based in New York.

Personal life and death

Akagi died in 1943 and was survived by his wife, Skiza (third daughter of social reformer Abe Isoo), his son Hideya (born Philadelphia), and his daughter Futaba (born New York).Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02643; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: 31-804

Involvement in the Japanese Students Christian Association

Akagi was involved in a branch of

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It has nearly 90,000 staff, some 920,000 volunteers and 12,000 branches w ...

aimed at

Japanese-American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in ranking to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...

Christians. In 1926, he authored a pamphlet for the Japanese Students Christian Association called "The second generation problem: Some suggestions toward its solution." He was listed as "Secretary of YMCA" in a passenger list of a ship from Yokohama in 1929.

Select works

* ''The Town Proprietors of the New England Colonies'' (1924)(reprinted 1963) * ''Japanese Civilization: A Syllabus'' (1927) * ''Japan's Foreign Relations, 1542-1936: A Short History'' (1937) * ''Future of American Trade with Manchukuko'' (1940) * ''The Postage Stamps of Manchoukuo''(1941)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Akagi, Roy 1892 births People from Yokohama Japanese emigrants to the United States UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni University of Chicago alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni 1943 deaths People from Manchukuo 20th-century American historians