Kasai Family papers, 1904-1972

Printable guide [HTML]
Request items

Summary

Creators:
Kasai, Henry Yoshihiko
Abstract:
The collection consists of the personal and business records of Henry Yoshihiko Kasai. Included are documents and records from Mr. Kasai's involvement in community and civil organizations in Utah and records regarding his internment during World War II. Also among the material are business records of the Kasai Insurance Agency.
Extent:
4 Linear Feet (1 flat box)
Language:
Materials are in English.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Kasai Family Papers (Collection 2010). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Background

Scope and content:

The collection documents the activities of Henry Yoshihiko Kasai and, to a lesser extent, his wife. Alice Kasai. Included are documents and records related to Mr. Kasai's personal and business affairs. Among the material are correspondence, photographs, printed material, newspaper clippings, articles, and business records. Of particular interest are documents related to Mr. Kasai's immigration to the United States and his internment during World War II.

Biographical / historical:

Yoshihiko ("Henry") Kasai was born September 25, 1890 at Kawaguchi-mura, Minamitsuru-gun, Tamanashi-ken, Japan to Kisaku Kasai (father ) and Mura Kasai (mother).

In May 1904, Mr. Kasai left Japan in order to attend school in the United States. He arrived in San Francisco on June 8, 1904 aboard the "Kaptic-Maru." He began his elementary school education in Mountain View, California, but joined his father and uncle in September 1906 in Idaho, where they were engaged in farming sugar beets. He attended Idaho Falls High School and graduated in 1913.

In 1915, Mr. Kasai became a life insurance agent for the New York Life Insurance Company covering the states of Idaho and Utah and worked on providing insurance for the local Japanese communities. By 1916 Mr. Kasai was a successful agent living in Utah and was becoming integrally involved in the Salt Lake City community.

In 1937 Mr. Kasai married his wife, Alice, with whom he had six children. Mrs. Kasai was born in Seattle, Washington, but re-entered the United States in 1922 as a Kibei (Japanese Americans born in the U.S. who returned to America after being educated in Japan) from Saga Ken Miyake-Gun, Minobara-Mura.

During World War II, Mr. Kasai was interned for two years, first in Missoula, Montana, then in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, next in Camp Livingston, Louisiana, and, finally, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

By 1945 he had returned to Salt Lake City, Utah and had resumed his leadership role in community activities, particularly as an emissary between the American and Japanese cultures. In 1954, Mr. Kasai became an American citizen.

Processing information:

The material in the Kasai family papers form a part of the Japanese American Research Project (Coll. 2010). During intial processing, the papers were given a high-level arrangement, but were not described in any detail. In 2006, the items were inventoried, housed in folders, and arranged into series to enhance access to the collection.

Processed by Yoko Shimojo, with assistance from Elizabeth Sheehan, Winter 2006, in the Center For Primary Research and Training (CFPRT)

Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.

We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.

Arrangement:

Arranged in the following series:

  1. Baseball clubs, 1935-1964, subseries A-C by club
  2. Cultural Exchange, 1950-1965
  3. Japanese American Citizens League, 1933-1964
  4. Japanese Association of Utah, 1926-1940
  5. Salt Lake City Nisei Victory Committee, 1943-1947
  6. Sino-Japanese Relations, 1929-1943
  7. Yoshiko Kasai, 1904-1972, subseries A-B.

Physical location:
Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Terms of access:

Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Kasai Family Papers (Collection 2010). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Location of this collection:
A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
Contact:
(310) 825-4988
AskLSC@library.ucla.edu
Website