Mesa Psychology Professor, Yoshito Kawahara has survived life in an internment camp,
received two national honors and has dedicated much of his time to the community, but he’s
most proud of his 32 years of teaching at Mesa College.
Kawahara was chosen by his alma mater, Indiana University, to receive a national award and
recognition for his work in the Asian American Psychological Association, the Asian American
community and his research on culturally based values.
“To receive a distinguished alumni award from Indiana University was almost overwhelming,”
said Kawahara. “It was quite awe-inspiring for me to go back to Indiana University, a place that
was awe-inspiring for me when I was there as a graduate student.”
He had a chance to meet with some of his former professors and friends that were still in Indiana.
“It was an experience that I think went beyond my fondest expectations in terms of making a real connection to my past,” Kawahara said.
The award was given to him by the Asian Alumni Association, Asian Cultural Center, and a group of Asian American student associations at Indiana University that felt a need to recognize one of their own.
Kawahara’s colleagues in the AAPA heard about the award and they nominated Kawahara and wrote several letters of recommendations for him.
“My friends and colleagues all told me that I was an important and historical figure for the AAPA and that they were very happy that I was being recognized by my university,” said Kawahara.
At the ceremony Kawahara spoke about his time at Indiana University and how grateful he is to have gotten such a prestigious education. He also spoke about his time in an internment camp and his achievements.
“This shows that the opportunities for achievement, and to be honored for these achievements, are still a part of this country,” said Kawahara. “This country has always been known as a land of opportunity and I certainly thought of myself within that same vein, going from a concentration (internment) camp to being honored with a distinguished alumni award.”
Kawahara’s family, along with 125, 000 other Japanese Americans, were sent to internment camps after Pearl Harbor was attacked in Dec. 1945. Kawahara spent almost three years behind barbed wire fences at the camp.
Kawahara said he is not bitter about his time in an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyo. during World War II, but he did learn the importance of the U.S. Constitution and hopes that people will learn from the violations that occurred in the camps.
“If we have any life lesson to be taken from the camps, it’s that the Constitution really is extremely valuable, it’s very precious and we should not allow it to ever be violated or diminished because the future greatness of this country and the protection of our personal rights and civil rights are there because of that Constitution and in the long run eventually I think my life is a reflection of the strength of that Constitution,” said Kawahara.
In December Dr. Wade Pickren, a historian of the American Psychological Association, interviewed Kawahara. The 90-minute interview was made into a DVD and placed in the historical archives of the APA.
“To me that was a very happy coincidence that I would be interviewed by the APA and almost at the same time be named the distinguished alumni of Indiana University,” said Kawahara.
Kawahara has been a member of the Asian American Psychological Association since the 1970s.
Since 1990 he has had different positions in the association, such as membership officer, vice president and newsletter editor.
Since 1975 Kawahara has volunteered time to work with the Union of Pan Asian Communities. UPAC has developed several community-based agencies to help Asian Americans and other people who need psychological or work training that might improve their lives.
Kawahara has also been a part of the Mesa College Outreach Program, which gets involved in the community to make it a better place.
“We reached out to different aspects of the community around us to see where Mesa could develop educational services to help the community around us,” said Kawahara.
Kawahara is co-director of Mesa College’s “Bridges to the Baccalaureate,” a program that places about 12 underrepresented students in research labs and gives them a salary each year. The program is in its second of three years of funding by the National Institute of Health.
“The Bridges students were able to earn money and at the same time learn how to strengthen their science and research background,” Kawahara said.
He has also put a lot of his time into his research on cultural relationships between European Americans and Asian Americans.
“One of the important things I learned is that Asian Americans and European Americans are not from different planets, that we are not the far different in our cultural values,” said Kawahara. “Our sense of our histories may be different, we may look at each other as being different people but in fact our cultural values are not that different. I think that’s a hopeful sign about ethnic relationships between all ethnic groups.”
Kawahara has been a teacher to thousands and thousands of students over the years.
“Definitely a big accomplishment is to have been able to teach at Mesa College for 32 years with the thought that I hope for most of these students that I have been a genuine educator for them,” said Kawahara.
Kawahara’s experience at Mesa has taught him how to be a more efficient teacher and how to relate better with his students.
Kawahara said that his students are most successful when they are motivated and when the challenges of Kawahara’s class are meaningful. Kawahara has had former students become professors, deans and executives at companies.
“I’m always surprised at how much Mesa College students can really accomplish,” said Kawahara. “As I’ve followed some of my former students they have been astounding.”
Kawahara has been voted in as chair of Behavior Sciences by his colleagues 25 percent of his time at Mesa.
“Being Department Chair is a lot of work but I think it’s a badge of honor to have been voted in by my colleagues,” Kawahara said.
Kawahara is going to become a a part-time instructor at Mesa in the Fall semester. He will be teaching two classes and hopes to continue that for the next 10 years.
“I’ll have a lot of free time that I don’t have right now that I can devote exclusively to enjoy the teaching experience with my students and so I will look forward to these years as perhaps being the most enjoyable teaching years of my life,” Kawahara said.
He admits that things at Mesa have always been great, but now he believes Mesa is heading in a very promising direction.
“Mesa is in wonderful hands right now as I think through the administration at the district level and at the campus level, these are some of the finest people that I ever had the opportunity to work with,” said Kawahara.
Kawahara is optimistic about the Social and Behavioral Sciences building that will be built at Mesa.
“As this new building is completed this department is going to be greater than its ever been,” Kawahara said. “I think that nothing is going to be able to match Mesa College as a liberal arts educational institution, within the context of our being a two year institution and I am very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish in the past 32 years.”
Kawahara has spent months looking for inspiration for his next career.
“I had been hoping that with my retirement I could start another career as opposed to thinking of just traveling, meandering around and becoming a couch potato,” Kawahara said. “I had always assumed that there would be something else after I retire from teaching.
He has yet to find any inspiration but he said he might want to continue his research activities and find interesting projects to research.
Kawahara is also thinking about the possibility of becoming an author of a book, possibly a short story.
“I also had taken seriously that there is at least one good story in everybody upon which one could base a book and so I have been wondering if I have a story that would be compelling to other people,” said Kawahara.