Early Years
Asoh was born in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, the second of four children of a well-off businessman whose postings took the family to various places in Japan and also to Taiwan. While in Taiwan, the young Yutaka fell ill with malaria and was sent to the estate of his paternal grandfather, a wealthy landowner in Saitama Prefecture, to convalesce and attend school. He would gain his first exposure to the United States in mid-1929, while he was preparing to enter his father's alma mater of Keio University. At that time, he got a job as ship's clerk and assistant purser on the freighter Londonmaru, carrying a cargo of raw silk to Victoria, British Columbia and Vancouver, as well as 20 passengers to Seattle. By several reports, he spent the next four months traveling around the Pacific Northwest while the ship was being loaded with lumber for her return voyage.
In 1935, he graduated from Keio University and landed a job with Nissan. In 1937, he married Masako Katayama and took her family name, as there were no sons in her family and he had two other brothers to carry on the Asoh name.
Read more about this topic: Yutaka Katayama
Famous quotes related to early years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)