Plucked from a high school classroom and confined to internment camps in Honouliuli and Tule Lake, Calif., during World War II, Harry Urata would spend the rest of his life preserving and cultivating the arts and culture of his parents' native land in the country of his birth.

For his efforts, Urata, an influential ethnomusicologist and founder of the Urata Music Studio in Pälama, would be recognized on both ends of the Pacific with an Imperial Award from the emperor of Japan and a designation as a National Living Treasure from the U.S. government.

Urata, 91, died Oct. 23, leaving behind four generations of music students and a unique archive of the Japanese immigrant experience in Hawai'i that might otherwise have vanished.

Urata's love of music was evident early on. According to a biography prepared for the 2001 Pan-Pacific Festival, Urata and his friends organized small orchestras to play at local gatherings, eventually forming the Shinko Orchestra in 1938.

Urata was a boarding student at Mid-Pacific Institute in 1941 when FBI agents appeared at his class on democracy to execute a warrant of arrest.

Urata, one of a generation of kibei who were born in the United States but educated in Japan, would spend two years imprisoned in Honouliuli and Tule Lake, Calif., as part of the massive internment of Japanese-American citizens on the West Coast and Hawai'i.

After a brief stint as a Japanese instructor in Minnesota, Urata returned home where he reformed his orchestra and translated his knowledge of music into a 55-year career as head of the Urata Music Studio.

Urata also devoted much time and effort to gathering "holehole bushi" — folk tunes set to traditional Japanese melodies that reflected the experience of immigrant plantation workers in Hawai'i. Urata's scholarship is preserved at the Smithsonian Institute.

Urata is survived by his wife, Michiko; brother, Wallace; and sister, Doris.