At the close of a daylong conference on April 11 marking his retirement, Samuel H. Yamashita, Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History, rose to offer final remarks. As he spoke, a nearby table sat lined with books. The volumes were authored not by the celebrated scholar himself, but by his former students—a subtle, yet powerful, testament to the reach of a Pomona College professor whose influence extends far beyond the four walls of his classroom.
“Watching my students become colleagues has been among the greatest rewards of my years at the College. Their accomplishments remind me that teaching is not simply the transmission of knowledge. It is the pleasure of helping young people begin authentic intellectual lives,” Yamashita said during his remarks.
Earlier that day, Yamashita’s former students, colleagues and friends gathered at Hahn Hall for 47 Years of Asian Studies in the Humanities. Sponsored by Pomona’s History Department, with help from former students Madeline Hsu ’89 and Hongdeng Gao ’15, the conference brought alumni scholars from across the globe back to campus to reflect on Asian history, literature and policy as well as the impact of Yamashita’s mentorship.
Gao, now an assistant professor of history at Williams College, says Yamashita played a formative role in shaping her career, and organizing the conference felt like a natural extension of that influence.
“I was deeply moved and inspired by the way Sam stays connected with his current and former students and connects us with each other,” Gao says. “I wanted to express my deep gratitude toward Sam’s mentorship and by bringing his former students together, like what he had done for us over the past four decades, we got to recognize Sam and what he has done for us.”
Educational Pathway Led to Pomona
A third-generation Japanese American, Yamashita grew up in Kailua, Hawaii, before attending a boarding school in Honolulu that he says set him on a more disciplined academic path. He went on to graduate from Macalester College and received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, supporting his graduate study at the University of Michigan as well as language study and research in Tokyo. He began his teaching career at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and later held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies before joining Pomona’s faculty in 1983.
While Yamashita was one of only five faculty members of color when he arrived at Pomona, he was drawn to the College by its longstanding commitment to language study and global scholarship.
In his time at Pomona, Yamashita led the development of the Asian Studies program, one of the first in the nation. While his research reshaped understanding of modern Japanese history, former students said the most lasting influence came through office-hour conversations and shared meals. Yamashita has long enjoyed introducing history and culture to his students through cuisine, and his dinner tables often turned into intellectual feasts as well as culinary ones.
Those moments helped him earn the Wig Distinguished Professorship Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor bestowed upon faculty by the College, not once, but six times.
“A chosen vocation of passion means you do something you live for, not something you merely do,” Yamashita said at the event.
Changing the Lives of Students
Former students of Yamashita across generations describe turning points—moments when he went beyond the curriculum to open new paths.
One of his earliest students from Hobart College, Jonathan Skaff, now professor of history and director of international studies at Shippenburg University, says Yamashita changed the trajectory of his life.
“My parents were urging me toward medicine or law, but then Sam came into my life and quietly nudged me to explore Chinese history. That changed everything,” Skaff says. “I might be better off financially if I’d listened to my parents, but I’m much richer in my life and experiences for having listened to Sam.”
Jonathan Van Harmelen ’17 says Yamashita encouraged his interest in Japanese American history and urged him to pursue graduate study. Van Harmelen is now a visiting assistant professor of history at Oberlin College, a columnist for the Japanese American National Museum’s “Discover Nikkei” project and editor of the Southern California Quarterly journal.
“His mentoring profoundly shaped the way I view history as a discipline. To me, he is a model of what a good historian should be,” he says.
Conference co-organizer Madeline Hsu, now an award-winning author and a professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Maryland, says she learned that she had been the first of Yamashita’s students to earn a doctorate, with roughly a dozen others following in her wake.
“My upbringing led me to identify with literary characters like Harry Potter or Jane Eyre—figures for whom school was the first place they felt valued as individuals and encouraged to cultivate their unique talents,” Hsu says. “For me, Sam has been that kind of presence, like Dumbledore or Miss Temple, prioritizing my intellectual growth and guiding me toward an academic career. This conference was a way to celebrate and recognize the profound role he has played in helping so many of us find our way to deeply meaningful lives as teachers and scholars.”