Franklin S. Odo (1939–2022)

We mourn the loss and commemorate Dr. Franklin Odo, a prominent scholar, activist and long-time friend and supporter of Visual Communications, who passed away on September 28.

Born to kibei parents in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1939, Franklin moved to the mainland in 1959 to attend Princeton University, where he received his B.A. in History in 1961 and Ph.D in Japanese history in 1975, after completing his M.A. in East Asian Regional Studies at Harvard University. He taught at Occidental College, UCLA and California State University, Long Beach during his early career. An early participant in the Ethnic Studies Movement, Franklin was appointed president of the Associations of Asian American Studies from 1989 to 1991, became the founding director of Smithsonian Asian Asian Pacific American Center in 1997 until his retirement in 2010, and was also the first Asian Pacific American curator at the National Museum of American History. 

Franklin and his wife Enid Odo and their son david at an anti-war march in 1972. Photography by Eddie Wong from VC Archives.

The copyright page of In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian America.

Franklin’s relationship with VC can be traced back to as early as 1969 — a year before VC’s founding — when Franklin was co-editing the first anthology focusing on Asian Americans, Roots: An Asian American Reader, with one of VC’s founders, Eddie Wong, along with Amy Tachiki and Buck Wong. Published in 1971, the book was a project of the newly established UCLA Asian American Studies Center, containing a mix of poetry, political, personal and scholarly essays and was being taught as the standard textbook for Asian American Studies courses for many years throughout the nation. In 1976, Franklin spearheaded the pioneering photographic history book, In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian America, published by VC. Written and edited by Franklin with production support by a large crew that included Bob Nakamura in photography assistance among many others, and project direction by Alan Ohashi, the book set a crucial template for VC in bringing the rich stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to light during a period of technological transformations and organizational transitions. Franklin continued to author and edit numerous other seminal works exploring Asian Pacific American experiences later on, such as No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai’i During World War II (2004), The Columbia Documentary History of the Asian American Experience (2002), and Voices From The Canefields: Folksongs From Japanese Immigrant Workers In Hawaii (2013), but these early works instrumental to the nascent Ethnic Studies Movement were significant in helping lay the foundation of what would become the Asian Pacific American movement today. 

We offer our condolences to Franklin’s family. Franklin’s contributions and impacts are far-reaching, his legacy is an imposing one we'll all have to live up to and carry onward.

A copy of In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian America from VC Archives office. The book is currently out of print.