4 Million Dollar Endowment Gift is Designed to Enhance Japanese Studies at UCLA in Several Areas
On December 21, 2005, UCLA received a gift of Four Million Dollars from the Paul I. Terasaki Foundation for the Center for Japanese Studies in the UCLA International and Asia Institutes. The Terasakis' current gift brings their total support of the Center to Five Million Dollars. This is the largest gift ever made to a country specific center at UCLA and will result in the creation of the Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies at UCLA.
As Fred Notehelfer, the Director of the Center for Japanese Studies, observed, "Paul and Hisako Terasaki have long been strong supporters of Japanese Studies at UCLA, and for this reason it gives me great pleasure to announce the establishment of the newly named center that will bear their name and will assure UCLA's place in the field of Japanese Studies nationally."
The Terasaki endowment gift is designed to enhance UCLA's Japanese Studies program in several areas. One part of this gift is to go toward the establishment of the Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Chair in Contemporary Japanese Studies, a newly established scholarly position to deal with issues confronting Japan today. The second portion will go to fund Postdoctoral and Graduate Fellowships that will bring to UCLA some of the best emerging talent in Japanese studies in the US and Japan and will support their research. The third part is designed to provide programmatic support for a cross spectrum of Center activities, including building relationships with other universities and think tanks. The final quarter of the gift is designed to support outreach activities of the center, including education at the K-12 level and community efforts that focus on contemporary Japan and the Japanese-American community.
UCLA's Center for Japanese Studies was established in 1991. It has been the recipient of generous support from the Terasaki's, George and Sakaye Aratani, Herbert and Helen Kawahara, the Nikkei Bruins, and numerous individuals. The Center supports a wide range of activities relating to Japan including extensive fellowship support for graduate students working in Japanese Studies in a variety of fields, research support for UCLA faculty members working on Japan, annual conferences dealing with Japanese subjects, a colloquium series that brings to Los Angeles some of the leading figures in Japanese studies nationally, as well as media and library support. Its Director, Fred Notehelfer, will be retiring at the end of this academic year after fifteen years of building the center's program.
Paul I. Terasaki was born in Boyle Heights in 1929 and graduated from UCLA in 1950. He was interned at Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona during World War II. He served as Professor of Surgery at UCLA from 1969-1999. In 1964 he developed the micro lympho-cytotoxicity test which was adopted in 1970 as the international standard method of tissue typing. He and his corporation, One Lambda, have played a central role in the development of tissue typing and transplantation surgery. He has been honored by many awards and prizes including the Medawar Prize from the International Transplant Society, the Karl Landsteiner and Emily Cooly Award from the American Association of Blood Banks, and the Philip Levine Award from the American Society of Clinical Pathologists. In 1973 he received the Professional Achievement Award from the UCLA Alumni Association and in 1993 the UCLA Medical Science Award.