The Reverend Daisuke Kitagawa, 1910-1970
The Reverend Daisuke Kitagawa, c. 1962
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Viewpoint Interview
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Interview with the Reverend Daisuke Kitagawa, 1965
The ordained ministry of Reverend Daisuke Kitagawa, a leading voice in the area of racial justice and understanding, spanned a 31 year period and crossed several continents in the pursuit of his life long commitment to Ecumenism and Christian social ministry. Born in Taihoku, Japan on October 23, 1910, Kitagawa graduated from Rikkyo University in 1933. He emigrated to the United States in 1937, and attended General Theological Seminary. Together with his brother Joseph, the Kitagawas were transitional figures in an Americanized Japanese community.
Daisuke Kitagawa began his ministry in 1938 at St. Peter’s Mission in Seattle and St. Paul’s Mission in Taylor in the Diocese of Olympia. With the removal of Japanese Americans to the relocation camps in January 1940, Kitagawa became priest-in-charge of Episcopalians in the Tule Lake Relocation Center in Newell, California where he observed critically, but without bitterness, the camp’s devastating impact on the young Japanese (the Kibei). The experience forged his lasting belief in the universal Church's agency in a vital gospel ministry of social and cultural healing. His internment gave him a global perspective on racism that transcended domestic black/white issues. For him, the missionary obligation to oppose racism was the same at home and abroad. In dialogue with blacks, whites, and Asians, he analyzed racial issues around the world.
By war’s end, Kitagawa had arrived in Minneapolis where he married Fujiko Sugimoto in 1944. He ministered to evacuated communicants as well as the bi-lingual soldiers being turned out by the Military Intelligence Service School. He had his earliest experiences in inter-denominational cooperation when he was appointed director of the Minneapolis Council of Churches which organized the Christian church’s response to the thousands of Japanese Americans who were released from nearby Centers. While in Minneapolis, Kitagawa organized The Rainbow Club which served to help Japanese American families who were facing racial prejudice settle in the area.
Kitagawa remained in Minneapolis until 1954, when he resumed doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. In 1956 he began the first of his two associations with the World Council of Churches (WCC) serving in the Department of Church and Society in the Division of Studies and as Secretary of Racial and Ethnic Relations from 1960 to 1962. In 1962 Kitagawa took up service with the national Church, serving as executive secretary of the Division of Domestic Mission. Six years later, he was appointed the executive secretary of the Unity and International Mission program in the Division of World Mission and Evangelism of WCC.
The author of several books, including The Pastor and the Race Issue, Race Relations and Christian Mission, and Issei and Nissei: The Internment Years, Daisuke Kitagawa died in Switzerland on Good Friday, 1970.
His personal papers are located at The Archives of the Episcopal Church. [Sources]
