Obituary

As seen in the Worcester Telegram, 6.18.07

Norio Higano, M.D died on Saturday June 16th at his home in Westborough after a long illness. Born in Seattle in 1921, Dr. Higano graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington in 1943 and received his M.D. from the St. Louis University School of Medicine in 1945. He was a member of both Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha honor societies. He completed his internal medicine internship at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, NY and residency at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA. He went on to complete a research fellowship under Dr. C. Sidney Burwell at Harvard University. In 1952, he joined The Research Laboratory at The Memorial Hospital in Worcester and later founded the Nuclear Medicine Laboratory there. He taught physical diagnosis to the first class of 16 students at University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1970 and to many classes thereafter. He retired from practice in 1998.

Dr. Higano is survived by his wife of 58 years, Dorothy Taylor Higano; two daughters, Dr. Celestia Higano, her husband Dr. Jack Singer of Seattle and Priscilla Rohrer, her husband Jon of Philadelphia; a son, Dr. Stuart Higano, his wife Karen of St. Louis; seven grandchildren; a sister, Dr. Aiko Higano Kodama of Seattle and her two sons William of Las Vegas and Kenneth of Chicago. His parents, Ura and Hanji Higano and sister Shizuko Miyamoto preceded him in death. A private service was held. The family encourages you to share your memories and comments with them at http://higanomemorial.blogspot.com. Memorials may be made to Doctors Without Borders (333 Seventh Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10001-5004, http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org).

Edited to add: An important footnote to this obituary is the story of Norio's hasty migration from Seattle to St. Louis during WWII. After the Pearl Harbor bombing, Norio's parents and sister—like the 110,000+ Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast, 70,000 of whom were U.S. citizens—were forced out of their home and interned in a concentration camp for the duration of the war.

Shortly before the official evacuation orders came in March 1942, Norio's parents urged him to leave Seattle so that he could continue his studies. He had already been accepted to medical school but had not yet completed his B.A.—fortunately, one of his undergraduate professors told him that his first year of medical school could count as his final year of undergraduate work. And so Norio said goodbye to his family and began a new life in the Midwest.

Norio's parents and sister, Shiz, were incarcerated at Camp Harmony and Minidoka Relocation Center until 1945; Norio's other sister, Aiko, was attending medical school in Japan. Recalling the hectic days before evacuation, Shiz wrote, "It was certainly a relief to see him depart since we were uncertain about our future."


Young Norio

For further reading:

The Higano Family Papers: a collection of letters that Norio and his family exchanged during the war (archived by the University of Washington)

"The Stolen Years": University of Washington Alumni Magazine cover story on Japanese Internment, for which Norio was interviewed.