The Amazing Tashiro Family

This is the story of the Tashiro clan of Cincinnati, New England, North Carolina, and Seattle. Though oddly unheard of today, the Tashiros rank high in the category of diverse and accomplished Japanese American families, whose members distinguished themselves in medicine, science, sports, architecture, and the arts.
Stories from this series

Kazuo Tashiro and Mitsuko Tashiro Laforet: Brother and Sister Doctors
Sept. 24, 2024 • Greg Robinson
This is the final instalment of my series of articles on the remarkable Tashiro family. Today I will speak about Kazuo and Mitsuko Tashiro, who stemmed from the Cincinnati branch of the family. Like their father Shiro and their elder brother Kiyo, Kazuo and Mitsuko both studied medicine, and distinguished themselves as physicians. The elder of the two, Kazuo Tashiro, was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 12, 1918. As a small child, he moved to Cincinnati, where he attended …

Part 8: Kiyo Tashiro—Physician and Athlete
Aug. 28, 2024 • Greg Robinson
This is the latest installment of my series on the remarkable Tashiro family. In my next columns, I will discuss the children of the eminent biochemist Shiro Tashiro, who themselves became physicians. As mentioned previously, in 1915 Dr. Shiro Tashiro travelled to Hawaii to do research. While in Honolulu, he became acquainted with a local hotel owner named Kawasaki, who arranged for the young doctor to marry his teenage Nisei daughter Shizuka Kawasaki. According to Shizuka’s granddaughter Cathy Tashiro, her …

Part 7 (2): Shiro Tashiro—Groundbreaking Biologist
July 25, 2024 • Greg Robinson
Read Part 1 Throughout the prewar years, Dr. Shiro Tashiro ranked among the most renowned Americans. In a sign of his prominence as author and educator, he was included in the Who’s Who in America directory in 1936-1937, the only Japanese American to be so honored. His research was in contention for the Nobel Prize in different fields. Yet following the outbreak of the Pacific War, Shiro Tashiro became an enemy alien, and was thereby restricted in his movements and …

Part 7 (1): Shiro Tashiro—Groundbreaking Biologist
July 11, 2024 • Greg Robinson
In previous Discover Nikkei columns, I have told the story of Aijiro and Nao Tashiro and their five remarkable children. In these next installments, I wish to explore the career of Aijiro’s younger brother Shiro Tashiro, a brilliant biochemist, and his three children. Shirosuke Tashiro was born on February 12, 1882 in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima, Japan. (He was thus still a young boy when Aijiro, 16 years his senior, left Japan). As Shiro later described it, his family was marginalized in …

Part 6: Sabro and Arthur Tashiro - Multitalented Brothers
April 12, 2024 • Greg Robinson
In this column, I will round out my history of the amazing family of Aijiro and Nao Tashiro by discussing the lives of their younger sons Sabro (AKA Saburo or Sab) and Arthur. Sabro Tashiro was born in New Haven, Connecticut in February 1910, and moved with his family to Seattle after the end of World War I. During the summer of 1925 and 1926, he worked at an American salmon cannery in Tenakee, Alaska, alongside Swedish, German, Greek, and …

Part 5: Nao Tashiro—Issei Woman Teacher and Witness
April 5, 2024 • Greg Robinson
I have embarked on a series of columns on the prolific and talented Tashiro family. I have already posted columns on Aijiro “Frank” Tashiro and three of his children, Kenji (AKA Ken), Aiko, and Aiji. Here I propose to add a study of Nao Tashiro, the wife of Aijiro and mother of their children. Nao Tashiro was born Onaozan “Nao” Hasegawa in Echigo Province (as it was then called) in northeastern Honshu, Japan. Her father was an educated Japanese of …
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See exciting new changes to Discover Nikkei. Find out what’s new and what’s coming soon! Learn MoreGreg Robinson, a native New Yorker, is Professor of History at l'Université du Québec À Montréal, a French-language institution in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of the books By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Harvard University Press, 2001), A Tragedy of Democracy; Japanese Confinement in North America (Columbia University Press, 2009), After Camp: Portraits in Postwar Japanese Life and Politics (University of California Press, 2012), Pacific Citizens: Larry and Guyo Tajiri and Japanese American Journalism in the World War II Era (University of Illinois Press, 2012), and The Great Unknown: Japanese American Sketches (University Press of Colorado, 2016), as well as coeditor of the anthology Miné Okubo: Following Her Own Road (University of Washington Press, 2008). Robinson is also coeditor of the volume John Okada - The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press, 2018).
His historical column “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great,” is a well-known feature of the Nichi Bei Weekly newspaper. Robinson’s latest book is an anthology of his Nichi Bei columns and stories published on Discover Nikkei, The Unsung Great: Portraits of Extraordinary Japanese Americans (University of Washington Press, 2020). It was recognized with an Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in History Honorable Mention in 2022. He can be reached at robinson.greg@uqam.ca.
Updated March 2022
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