Melvin Inamasu

Melvin Inamasu was born and raised on the island of Maui. His interest in science eventually led him to a degree in medicine from the John A. Burns School of Medicine. After additional training in internal medicine and medical oncology, He spent the next 33 years in private practice in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, caring for cancer patients and adults with general medical problems. Since retiring from patient care in 2014, he's been a volunteer at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i and is currently an interviewer for their collection of oral history conversations, preserving the evolving history of Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i.

Updated December 2022

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Honoring the Legacy – Warren Nishimoto

  • By Melvin Inamasu,  Violet H. Harada
  • 18 Dec 2022
Warren Nishimoto retired in 2017 after 37 years as director of the Center for Oral History at the University of Hawai‘i. During the nearly four decades of his leadership, the Center produced over 850 interviews focusing on the working class in Hawai‘i. He is quick to acknowledge that the arduous and precise work of interviewing subjects and transcribing the interviews was spearheaded by master researcher and interviewer Michiko Kodama-Nishimoto, his wife, and longtime staffers Cynthia Oshiro, who transcribed the majority of the interviews, and interviewer and researcher Holly Ya…

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