Betty Kobayashi Issenman
ethnologist
Betty Kobayashi Issenman (12 January 1921 – 10 March 2020) was a Canadian ethnologist. As an independent researcher, she was an expert in Inuit clothing.
Early life and education
Kobayashi was born in Winnipeg and raised in Montreal, the daughter of Mary Campbell Jamieson and Harry Shinsuke Kobayashi. Her ancestors were Scottish and Japanese. Her father served in the Canadian military during World War I, and was a close friend of the family of S. I. Hayakawa in Winnipeg. She spoke in favor of a boycott on Japanese goods as a delegate to the Canadian Youth Congress in 1938.
She graduated from McGill University in 1940, and from the Montreal School of Social Work in 1942. She earned a master's degree from the University of Montreal later in life. During World War II, her father's business was seized while he was in Japan, her brother served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and she and her sister were fingerprinted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Career
Issenman worked as a social worker and a costume designer.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107996819. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 2020, 1938 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Betty Kobayashi Issenman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.