Henry Moritsugu is a native of Vancouver, Canada, from which as a child he was removed with his family, following Pearl Harbor, into internment in the British Columbia Rockies. The family managed to move east to Ontario during the war.

Moritsugu's journalism career began at a Japanese community newspaper, The New Canadian, based in Toronto, which was in need of an English section editor. This first step was encouraged by his brother Frank, then a magazine editor, now a retired Canadian member of our New York chapter. Henry's 40-plus years in daily newspapers began in news and sports reporting in the frozen north, Kirkland Lake, Ont., and continued into copy editing at the Montreal Star, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Newsday, where he continues to do page layout and contribute to final editing.

Moritsugu, who has attended every AAJA national convention since the inaugural one, LA in 1987, was the fourth president of the New York chapter, following Jeannie Park, Helen Zia and Wendy Lin. Cindy Hsu relieved him of that chore after four years and she was succeeded by Henry's son, Ken (now of Knight Ridder's D.C. bureau), and then our current leader, Pradnya Joshi. AAJA put Henry out to pasture in 1999 with a "lifetime" award.

He tries to stay out of the way of his wife, Ruiko, by looking for a tennis game at every opportunity. He was recently talked into joining the advisory board of the new Center for Japanese Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.