James Sakoda

James Sakoda (April 21, 1916 – June 12, 2005) was a Japanese-American psychologist who worked on computational modeling.^[1][2]

Sakoda was born in Lancaster, California in 1916.^[3]

During World War II, Sakoda spent time incarcerated at the Tule Lake and Minidoka internment camps.^[3] He documented the experiences of Japanese Americans in internment camps, using what may be the first "agent-based model."^[1][2] In 1949, he published a dissertation based on his research.^[1] As a result, he earned a psychology Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, that year.^[4]

After the war, Sakoda pursued a career in psychology and teaching. He taught at Brooklyn College,^[1] before joining the psychology department at the University of Connecticut in 1958.^[4] In 1962, he joined the sociology department at Brown University and became the director of the Social Science Computer Laboratory.^[4]

Sakoda was a well-known figure in the field of origami and published two books on the subject. These were first published in 1969 and 1992 and were republished in 1997 and 1999, respectively.^[5][6][7]