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Harry T. Oshima, 1918-1998
Professor, UH-Manoa Economics, 1961 - 1974
Obituary from the Honolulu Star Bulletin, 18 March 1998
Harry T. Oshima of Manoa, internationally known University of Hawaii professor of economics, died Sunday. He was 80.
He also was a fellow in the Economic Research Center at the University of Hawaii and East-West Center in 1968-71.
"He was one of the first economists to specialize in national income," said his wife, Chiye. "When he was with the United Nations, he helped develop the methodology of calculating national income. He was a protege of Simon Kuznets, who won a Nobel Prize in economics some years back."
During World War II, he served with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., she said.
Oshima contributed more than a hundred articles on economics to academic and professional journals and served in a number of editing capacities.
One of his last articles, "The Role of Social Values in the Growth of Asian Economies," appeared in the Journal of Asia Pacific Economies in 1996.
His higher education began at the University of Hawaii, where he earned a bachelor's in 1940.
His early career included work in New York with the National Bureau of Economic Research and United Nations Statistical Office.
Fascinated by Asian and Pacific Rim economies, he produced a dissertation on national income statistics of Asian countries while earning a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia in 1956.
The thesis evaluated the accuracy and usefulness of the income data. He found that small-scale family production for subsistence was the main characteristic of the postwar Asian economic structure with a system of exchange principally local rather than national.
In the case of Japan, the most developed country in Asia, he found its income statistics the most reliable. He concluded the study with a number of suggestions how other Asian countries might improve the reliability of their income data.
He was a lecturer and research associate at Stanford in years 1954-57 and assistant professor of economics at the University of Washington, 1957-59. He was a visiting research associate at a university in Tokyo, 1959-61, and economics professor at the University of Hawaii, 1961-73.
His service included representative of the Rockefeller Foundation for the Philippines, 1972-83, and he was a recipient of a number of awards and grants.
He spent time in research and teaching in Singapore in years 1966-69, also serving as consultant and senior fellow in the Economic Research Center at the University of Hawaii and East-West Center, 1968-71.
In the early 1980s, he was a visiting professor in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. In the 1990s, he was a visiting professor at the University of the Philippines and visiting fellow at the East-West Center.
Oshima was born in Honolulu. Other survivors are sons Neal and Evin; sisters Doris Kasahara, Yoshie Ueki and Hisae Oshima, and three grandchildren.
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