Haskins "Chuck" Kazunori Kashima loved his work and loved that it dovetailed with a favorite hobby, travel. An expert in otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine), Kashima, '54, toured the globe for decades as a visiting professor from the Johns Hopkins University medical school. Particularly adept in treating throat cancer, Kashima is credited with saving the lives and livelihoods of several radio and television broadcasters during his career.
Kashima died in Lutherville, Md., on November 11 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 78.
Kashima was born in 1932 to Japanese immigrants in San Francisco. After the United States entered World War II, the government moved his family to the internment camps in Topaz, Utah, and Tule Lake, Calif. After the war, Kashima's family moved to Palo Alto, where he picked up his studies first at Palo Alto High School and then at Stanford, where he joined the premed track as an undergraduate. He attended Yale University medical school, did his residency at Washington University and worked at the National Institutes of Health and Georgetown University.
Teaching was an abiding passion for Kashima, who arrived at Johns Hopkins in 1969. Though he had a tough reputation, his students honored him with a teaching award, "which was something he appreciated very much," says his son Matthew, an otolaryngologist at Johns Hopkins. "Many of his residents still approach me to tell me how important he was to their education." Kashima also took an educational approach with his patients, ensuring that they understood their sometimes-rare diseases and treatments. He conducted pioneering research on human papillomavirus.
Kashima is survived by his wife, Joyce; his children, Lisa Poling and Matthew and Mark Kashima; and eight grandchildren.
Scott Bland, ’10, is a reporter at National Journal.
