Irene Hirano Inouye (née Yasutake; October 7, 1948 – April 7, 2020) was the founding President of the U.S.-Japan Council, a position she held ever since she helped create the organization in 2009 until her death. Hirano Inouye focused on building positive relations between the United States and Japan, and was also a leader in philanthropy, community engagement, and advancing social causes. She served on a number of prominent non-profit boards, and was chair of the Ford Foundation's board of trustees. She previously served as president and founding chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles from 1988 to 2008, which is affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.
Career
Early non-profit career
Hirano dedicated her professional life to non-profit work supporting a number of important communities. She started her work in the field of public administration as the Executive Director of the T.H.E. Clinic, a non-profit community health facility for low and moderate income women and families. She worked at the clinic for thirteen years, during which time she discovered that there was a need for the public to understand the differences in the needs of people based on gender and cultural backgrounds.
Museum leadership and arts engagement
In 1988, Hirano became the director and president of the Japanese American National Museum. The Japanese American National Museum is the first museum in the United States dedicated to sharing the experience of Americans of Japanese ancestry as an integral part of U.S. history. Since the opening of its historic site in 1992, the museum has continued to fulfill its mission through historical exhibitions, and through partnerships with other communities and museums. It has been at the forefront of preserving, researching and educating about the internment experience during World War II, as well as related issues such as Japanese American military service in World War II, redress, and broader civil rights. The National Museum opened its 85,000 square-foot Pavilion to the public in January 1999.
In 1994, she was appointed by President Clinton to the Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
Strengthening U.S.-Japan relations
Hirano Inouye served as President of the U.S.-Japan Council, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo. The U.S.-Japan Council was established in 2009 as an organization dedicated to building people-to-people relationships between the two countries.
Hirano Inouye created the Council with other Japanese American leaders to provide opportunities for Japanese Americans to reconnect to Japan. She saw the importance of connecting Japanese American communities and younger Nikkei generations to the land of their ancestry as an important way to strengthen U.S.-Japan relations. Having led U.S. delegations to Japan under the Japanese Government's Japanese American Leadership Delegation for several years, she recognized the untapped potential within the Japanese American community to actively support people-to-people connections that were the foundation of the bilateral relationship. She saw that although many Japanese Americans had been addressing U.S.-Japan relations in their various professions, the time had come to create an organization of leaders who are dedicated to working on U.S.-Japan relations. As such, she brought together leaders from all different fields who are either working in or committed to building that relationship. There are many Japanese Americans in very high positions in various sectors. The Council's role is to connect them with each other, with their counterparts in Japan, and with other diverse leaders with the same mission and vision.
The Council has grown in size and expanded its activities to include diverse participants, and signature programs such as the Japanese American Leadership Delegation, the Asian American Leadership Delegation, the Emerging Leaders Program, and well-attended Annual Conferences that gather government, business, and civil society leaders from both countries.