Charles Kikuchi (1917- ) worked for the California State Employment Service, surveying Nisei occupations. He was recruited by Berkeley sociologist Dorothy Swaine Thomas for the Japanese Evacuation and Relocation Study (JERS). He began to keep a diary and completed field surveys at the Tanforan Assembly Center in Northern California and at the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona and in 1943 chronicled camp resident settlement in Chicago. He was drafted into the United States Army just before the bombing of Hiroshima. The collection consists of Charles Kikuchi's diaries, correspondence, and related printed material about Japanese Americans and their relocation during World War II. Many diaries include clippings and programs related to the career of Kikuchi's wife, Yuriko Amemiya, a professional dancer and a member of Martha Graham's dance group.

Kikuchi was born in 1917 in the San Francisco Bay Area; his father was an Issei barbershop owner; he was placed in an orphanage when he was 8 years old; in 1934 he headed for San Francisco; BA, San Francisco State College, 1939; anonymously published an autobiographical essay, A Young American with a Japanese Face, in Louis Adamic's anthology titled, From Many Lands (1939); worked for the California State Employment Service, surveying Nisei occupations; attended School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley, and received certificate in social work in 1942; recruited by Berkeley sociologist Dorothy Swaine Thomas for the Japanese Evacuation and Relocation Study (JERS); Kikuchi began to keep a diary and completed field surveys at the Tanforan Assembly Center in Northern California and at the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona; began chronicling camp resident settlement in Chicago, 1943; he was drafted into the United States Army just before the bombing of Hiroshima; received master's degree in social work, New York University (NYU), 1947; worked as a social worker with the Veterans Administration, New York; married Yuriko Amemiya, a professional dancer, in 1946; died September 25, 1988.

58 boxes (29 linear ft.) 4 oversize boxes

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