Memorial service for Dr. Hayato Kihara, 85, an Oakland born Nisei and veteran of the Military Intelligence Service during WWII who passed away at the Venturan Convalescent Center on December 26, will be held on Saturday, January 19, 12:30PM at Fukui Mortuary Chapel, 707 E. Temple St., L.A. with Rev. Cliff Ishigaki officiating. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to the Japanese American National Museum, Japanese American Historical Society, or the Japanese American Citizens League.

Dr. Kihara was invited in 1963 to establish a Biochemistry Laboratory as part of the new Research Center at Pacific State Hospital in Pomona (now the Tarjan Research Center at the Lanterman Developmental Center). He developed a highly productive laboratory for the biochemical study of human genetic conditions resulting in mental retardation. He was one of the pioneers in the use of cultured skin fibroblasts for such studies. His team investigated a number of lysosomal storage diseases and the Lanterman laboratory became a leading center for the study of metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD). Methods were developed modeling the lipid storage characteristic of this condition and clearing of such deposits by replacement of the missing enzyme. This provided the basic groundwork for treating this disease by enzyme and gene replacement therapies, approaches that are now undergoing preliminary testing with human patients.

In 1973 the Lanterman Research Center became part of the UCLA Mental Retardation Research Center and the Department of Psychiatry, but remained as an off-campus research facility. Dr. Kihara served as the head of the Lanterman Biochemistry Laboratory until his retirement in 1987.

Dr. Kihara was born in 1922 of Japanese immigrant parents in San Leandro, California and was a student at UC Berkeley at the start of World War II. In the spring of 1942 the family was interned at a government relocation camp in Topaz Utah. Towards the end of the war, Dr. Kihara was released from internment to finish college at the University of Texas. He then served in Japan & Korea - first with the Military Intelligence Service, later as a civilian employee of the Occupation Authority. After the war he completed his doctoral training in biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin and then went on to do postdoctoral work at the University of Texas and UC Berkeley.

Dr. Kihara and his family resided for more than forty years in the Los Angeles area, where he was active in Japanese-American veterans' and community affairs. After retirement he served as a volunteer tutor, and teacher of ESL and citizenship classes.

Preceded in death by a sister and two brothers as well as by his wife Doris, who passed away in 1996, he is survived by a sister, Hanaye Kaneshige of Maui, Hawaii, by daughters and sons-in-law, Betty and Bob Ehrle of Oxnard & Elaine Kihara and Dr. David Sweet of Santa Cruz, and by granddaughter Lisa Button of Claremont.