Hiro Nishikawa is a native of San Francisco and a sansei (third generation American of Japanese ancestry). During WWII as a four year old, he and his family were sent to Poston, AZ concentration camp and incarcerated for the duration of the war. Afterwards his family settled in Gilroy, CA where he finished high school. He received a B.A. in biochemistry at Univ.Calif.-Berkeley and later a Ph.D. at Oregon State Univ. in Corvallis.
He was engaged for nearly 30 years in biotech pharmaceutical drug discovery and development. After an earlier tenure with Roche in NJ, he retired in 1998 from GlaxoSmithKline biopharm in King of Prussia, PA.
Hiro became involved with the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in 1997 and was president of the Philadelphia Chapter from 2001-5. He was elected Gov. of the JACL Eastern District Council and served 2005-2007. A long time avid photographer and lover of classical music, he has also been an avid student of Japanese American history. Since 2003 he has been active in the chapter Speakers Bureau, giving PowerPoint talks to college classes and high school students as well as general audiences about the history of Japanese Americans incarcerated in WWII concentration camps, as well as immigration to the U.S. In 2011-12 he served on the JACL Power of Words handbook committee. In the past 15 years, he has been active in social action and racial justice causes at the Main Line Unitarian Church in Devon, PA. More recently he is involved in comprehensive immigration reform with PICC and UUPLAN (Unitarian Universalist Pennsyl. Legislative Action Network.)
He is active on the boards of the Philadelphia JACL, PICC (Pennsylvania Immigration & Citizens Coalition), and the Faraway Homeowners Association (FHA). He was previously on the boards of the Asian Arts Initiative (AAI, Philadelphia), the Japanese Association of Greater Philadelphia (JAGP) and the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia (JASGP). Also he is a longtime supporter (Friend) of the Curtis Institute of Music, the Leopold Mozart Academy, the Kimmel Center, the Philadelphia Orchestra, National Constitution Center, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
He and wife Sumie have a grown daughter and son both married, who have respectively presented with a grandson and two granddaughters.