Susumu Ito

Who is Susumu Ito?

Susumu Ito is an American cell biologist and soldier born in Stockton, California.

He was in auto mechanic school when he was drafted into the military in 1940, two years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He worked as a mechanic, but was eventually assigned to the all Japanese-American 442nd Regiment, which became the most decorated unit for its size in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was an artillery spotter and rose to the rank of lieutenant. Ito participated in the famous rescue of the "Lost Battalion", a unit of the 36th Texas Division which had been cut off and surrounded by the Germans. Though the 442nd suffered extremely heavy casualties in the engagement, Ito emerged unscathed. His unit, the 552nd Field Artillery, later liberated a subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp.

After the war, he attended university on the G.I. Bill, eventually earning a PhD in Biology from Cornell University. Ito’s research career was stimulated by a summer in Woods Hole at the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1951, where he met scientists such as Otto Loewi, and particularly Katsuma Dan.