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In Memoriam: Nadine Hata, 1941-2005
William A. Weber
Editor Emeritus, The History Teacher
| NADINE HATA, professor emerita of history and vice-president emerita of Academic Affairs at El Camino College, in Torrance, California, is being remembered in a wide variety of fields since her death from cancer on February 25. In historical terms, she played a key set of roles within the process by which professional associations took on teaching as a major mission and welcomed members from a wider range of institutions than had traditionally been common. In personal terms, she served as colleague and friend with a care and a passion that has made her sorely missed for those who worked with her. |
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Born in March 1941 in Honolulu, Hawaii, her father a shopkeeper and her mother a seamstress, Nadine attended the University of Hawaii, majoring in Asian studies. She went on to an M. A. in Far Eastern studies at the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in history at the University of Southern California. Her work in the History Department at El Camino College after 1970 led to a career as dean of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and vice-president of Academic Affairs. |
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Historians from community colleges have provided one of the most vigorous sources of leadership within the history profession in the last twenty years, led in large part by Nadine. After being elected to the Teaching Division of the American Historical Association in 1983, she The History Teacher Volume 38 Number 3 May 2005 served on the National Advisory Board of the Society of History Education, helped form the Committee on Community Colleges of the Organization of American Historians, and was elected as a member of the AHA Council 1998. Her leadership led her down many important paths. For example, she participated in a task force for introductory history courses in community colleges funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, directed a project on "Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and TransOceanic Exchanges" funded by the Ford Foundation, and served on the steering committee of the National History Project of the National Council on Education and the Disciplines. |
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Nadine wrote extensively on "Asian-Pacific Angelinos," as she liked to call the subject, and upon the historical preservation movement in California generally. In 1995 appeared The Historic Preservation Movement in California, 1940–1976, published by the State of California Department of Parks and Recreation. She likewise served on numerous boards concerned with conservancy in this field, such as the Japanese-American National Museum. She and her husband Donald Hata, professor of history at California State University, Dominguez Hills, worked together on a series of publications about Japanese-American life, among them The Japanese-Americans and World War II: Exclusion, Internment and Redress (Harlan Davidson, 1995). |
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Nadine was awarded numerous awards, among them the Fellows Award of the Historical Society of Southern California in 2000. In 2004 she received the John W. Rice Award for Equity and Diversity from the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges. Lee W. Formwalt, executive director of the Organization of American Historians, published an appreciation of Nadine and Don in the February 2004 OAH Newsletter. |
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