Looking back at The Montage’s profile of Ron Mirikitani
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Managing Editor
As The Montage celebrates its 60th anniversary this school year, it’s notable that archived digital copies that can be viewed by readers on The Montage’s “Issuu” page only date back to 2010. The rest are not lost to time, however. Print copies, both loose and binded, still exist. They date all the way back to the very first issue in 1964 and can be accessed in the Library.
As we approach the next volume of issues, The Montage would like to take you back in time to some of our past issues throughout the coming school year. This month, we’re taking a look back at former staffer Dalila Kahvedzic’s profile of someone who was once a longtime Meramec presence.
Ron Mirikitani was a tenured instructor and wrestling coach at Meramec, and in 2015, Montage Art & Life Editor Dalila Kahvedzic profiled him extensively in that year’s March 12 issue.
Mirikitani, who was born in an internment camp during World War II, explained how the challenges he faced led him to pursue a career teaching personal defense.
“It was never popular to be Japanese back then so I had different confrontations and my father just started teaching me how to protect myself,” Mirikitani said. “I saw a lot of injustices there.”
Some of those injustices included Mirkitani’s parents’ farm being seized, as well as the forced closure of his grandparents barber shop.
“It was not a good situation back then,” he said.
Mirkitani said that those kinds of experiences remained with him as he began his career teaching at Meramec four decades prior, and informed the kind of instructor he’d become.
At the time of the interview, he taught karate, personal defense and judo at Meramec.
“I enjoy all three of these classes,” Mirikitani told Kahvedzic. “Judo is a lot of grabbing and throwing there and Karate is a lot of kicking and punching and blocking; they’re all interesting.”
Mirikitani has not taught at STLCC since 2018. However, he is currently listed as an assistant varsity wrestling coach for the Webster Groves School District.
