Early Life
Ronald Takaki was raised in a low-income area of Oahu, Hawaii. He was the descendant of Japanese immigrants who worked on the sugar plantations. He was raised by his mother and Chinese stepfather following his father's death at age seven. As a young boy, Takaki cared more for surfing than academics, earning the nickname "10-toes Takaki." During high school a Japanese American teacher encouraged him to pursue college and wrote him a letter of recommendation for the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.
His undergraduate experiences there caused him to begin asking the kinds of questions which evolved into the foundation of his career. As one of only two Asian Americans on campus, he gained a new awareness of his ethnic identity. He was awarded a bachelor's degree in history in 1961.
His graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley led to a Masters degree in 1962 and a Ph.D in American history in 1967. His dissertation was on the subject of American slavery, focusing on the rationale for slavery. This work later became his first book: A Pro-Slavery Crusade: the Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
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