Dr. Tamie Tsuchiyama, pioneer anthropologist

In 1947, Kaua‘i’s Tamie Tsuchiyama became the first graduate of Kaua‘i High School (Class of 1933) to earn a Ph.D. and the first person of her gender among the Niseis of Hawai‘i to receive the esteemed honor. 

Tsuchiyama was also the first Japanese-American and the first Asian-American to earn a doctoral degree in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and one of the first, if not the very first, Asian-American to have completed a doctoral program in anthropology in the United States.

Born on Kaua‘i in 1915 to parents that grew vegetables and rice in Nawiliwili Valley, she was a bright and inquisitive little girl, eager to start at Lihu‘e Grammar School. After high school, she attended the University of Hawai‘i, UCLA and Berkeley.

When World War II interrupted her graduate studies at Berkeley, she volunteered for anthropological work under the direction of the University of California among the Japanese-American internees at the Poston, Ariz., relocation camp and from 1942 through 1944 suffered the hardships of an internee while gathering data.

Afterwards, her personal shyness and reserve did not prevent her from enlisting in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), where her knowledge of German, French and Spanish hastened her assignment to Japanese language school and military intelligence duty translating official Japanese documents.

Honorably discharged in 1946, she completed work for her Ph.D. and served in occupied Japan as a social science field research analyst from 1947 through 1951, translating documents and evaluating the balance sheets of Japanese firms established in Manchuria.  

Although no anthropology positions opened for her thereafter, her spirit and resolve remained unshaken. She obtained a bachelor of library science degree and became director of the Oriental Library at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Tamie Tsuchiyama passed away in Texas in 1984.