Dr. Otsuka grew up on Maui and has been a member of DKICP’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences since 2010. He commemorated the scholarship to his grandfather, Mr. Nagakatsu Kumao Otsuka and his father, Dr. Raymond Masashi Otsuka.
His grandfather was born in 1865 into a samurai family. He came to the U.S. in 1890 and settled in Wailuku, Maui in 1905 to become the official Japanese court interpreter and founder of The Maui Record, a Japanese/English/Fillipino newspaper. Active as a community leader, Mr. N.K. Otsuka was involved with creating the volunteer fire department, Japanese school, and was elected as president of the newly formed Wailuku Japanese Association.
His adopted son and father of Anthony, R. M. Otsuka, was born in 1910. He received his medical degree from Rush University Medical Center and interned at Cook County Hospital, both in Chicago. He returned to Maui and became the X-ray physician at Maui Memorial Hospital and several Maui clinics, while maintaining a dermatology practice from 1953 until his death in 1965. According to his obituary, his classmates at Maui High School remembered him as “an accomplished pianist and organist.” An avid supporter of physical fitness, he founded the Maui Barbell Club with Olympian Tommy Kono.
Anthony Otsuka proved himself to be a chip off the block. He went to Kihei Elementary school and distinguished himself at H. P. Baldwin High School to the extent of receiving a scholarship from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in 1972. In choosing a career in Science, Anthony recalls, “I was influenced by scientific writers such as Isaac Asimov and chemist Bruno Zimm, and the general effects of the Sputnik era.”
He received his PhD at the University of California, San Diego, and was awarded an NIH-funded postdoctoral position at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England where he worked with Sydney Brenner, who later received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002.
“For me, work in the lab was business as usual. Both my PhD advisor, John Abelson, and Sydney had the philosophy that the way to make competent and independent scientists was to throw them in the lab and let them sink or swim. All his postdocs had the freedom to create their own projects and benefit from the active scientific minds around them.”
- Anthony, R. M. Otsuka
He accepted faculty positions at UC Berkeley and later Illinois State University where he rose to the rank of full professor. Today, at DKICP in Hilo, he looks forward to retiring in December this year and spending his time playing the piano, writing music, and studying Japanese and Chinese. He also has a passion for photography and video recording.
“I created this scholarship to give back to the people of Hawai‘i and to further the education of our young people. The decision to create a scholarship was inspired by Dean Pezzuto’s speech at the DKICP building groundbreaking ceremony, in which he said, ‘I believe in the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy.’ I realized that I, too, believe in our College and its vital role in improving the health care of our citizens.”
- Anthony, R. M. Otsuka
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