Liz Vetrano/The Ithacan LARRY SHINAGAWA is the first permanent director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity.

Larry Shinagawa knows about racism and discrimination, and not just from the sociology books he read at the University of California-Berkeley or the classes he later taught at Sonoma State University (Calif.).

Shinagawa, the first permanent director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, said he has learned the importance of respecting others who are different. His second-generation Japanese-American family struggled with nationalism during World War II, and he was exposed to diversity while living at an Air Force base in Okinawa, Japan.

The racism that was so apparent during times of war continued to affect him even in peacetime, he said.

“One of the reasons I got into multicultural and ethnic studies was because most of my friends were children of service people, and as a result, many of them were multiracial, and there was all sorts of diversity,“ Shinagawa said. “I felt really comfortable in that kind of environment, and once my parents retired from the military, I went to a school which was much more homogenous, and that was a culture shock — that’s where I experienced racism and discrimination the most.”

Shinagawa was born in Japan in 1958 and lived there until 1965 when his father, who was part of the Air Force personnel, was transferred to the United States. He said he lived all across the United States and throughout Asia as a “military brat.”

At age 17, Shinagawa learned some disturbing things about his family’s past when he studied World War II in a high school history class. After sitting through lectures on carpet bombings and internment camps, he asked his father if their family, like many of Japanese, German or Italian descent, had faced discrimination.

He learned that his mother was 18 years old when allied forces firebombed her native Tokyo on March 9, 1945, killing hundreds of thousands of residents. Several of his uncles were deported from America’s shores after the U.S. government questioned their patriotism, and his grandfather died in an internment camp in California.

“It was a time when each person had to prove their loyalty to the U.S.,” Shinagawa said. “I’m very non-judgmental because it was a tense war-time setting. But we have to have compassion and understanding. We have to walk a mile in their shoes.”

Later in life, Shinagawa enrolled at Berkeley, where he completed his undergraduate work in ethnic studies and sociology. He said his years there were exciting because of the progressive social movements.

“It was an exciting time in which a lot of things were developing, one of which was ethnic studies,” he said. “That inspired me to think about developing ethnic studies elsewhere — that it was important to have it at other locations, in particular, state universities and comprehensive colleges, like ours.”

After completing his master’s degree, Shinagawa stayed in California as a sociology professor at Sonoma State University, later becoming the chairman of the department in 1993. He earned his doctorate at Berkeley in 1994.

While in California, Shinagawa said he used his academic knowledge to enact social change. He worked with grants from the Ford Foundation, U.S. Department of Justice and North Asia Pacific Consortium to bring bilingual ballots to election centers throughout California cities where English is a second language for a large portion of residents — such as Chinatown and the fruit district of Oakland.

The only two objects on the otherwise bare walls of his office demonstrate his background and his commitment to social change. One is a painting by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai’s “In the Well of the Great Wave of Kanagwa.” The other is a large poster of Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

New to the college this academic year, Shinagawa hasn’t even had the chance to install his bookshelves, where he said he’d like to keep several of his favorite books on social issues. He said he plans to collaborate with the Center for Teacher Education; Office of Multicultural Affairs; Department of Organizational Communication, Learning and Design; and the Department of Sociology to create a multicultural major and five minors in the college’s curriculum.

Roger Richardson, assistant vice president for student affairs and campus life, said he had a good first impression of Shinagawa and looks forward to his contributions.

“He’s a collaborator, when he’s had an opportunity to meet with me and other colleagues,” Richardson said. “He’s a very personable, likable individual when students have [met] with him. I think he brings with him all the components for a successful future of the CRE.”

Shinagawa said his wife and four children, ages 6, 8, 13 and 19, are slowly adapting to Ithaca. Although he does not currently teach any classes, Shinagawa said, he will be bringing his knowledge to two sociology courses in the spring: Introduction to Multicultural Studies and Asian American Experiences.