Hikida, Dr. Hideaki Robert Born: 1922 Passed: 1985 Occupation: Tomato researcher
Hikida, Dr. Hideaki: Hideaki Robert “Bob� Hikida was born in 1922 in Ocean Falls, BC, where his father worked at the pulp and paper mill. In 1927, the family moved to farmland they had purchased in Strawberry Hill. Bob attended Strawberry Hill Elementary School and then Cloverdale High School, where he was president of the Aero Club. In 1940, he registered at UBC, where he aspired to study aeronautical engineering. Bob was in his second year at UBC when the evacuation order was issued in 1942. With his parents and three sisters, Bob relocated to a sugar beet farm in Homewood, Manitoba. The family worked at the farm for the harvest, then Bob and two of his sisters moved to Winnipeg, where he worked at McKenzie Seeds and enrolled at the University of Manitoba. He graduated from the University of Manitoba with an M.S. in agriculture in 1948. Bob married Shizue Susanne Oseki in Vancouver in 1955; they had three children. After earning a Ph.D. in plant pathology from the University of Oregon, he joined Campbell Soup Company, where he conducted tomato research in Canada and the U.S. as well as Peru, Brazil and Mexico. Bob was living in Davis, California when he died from a stroke in 1985, at the age of sixty-three. He is remembered as a hardworking, dedicated father and husband who was passionate about photography, education and cultural exchange. 1
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