Richard Yoshijiro Mine Papers

Richard Yoshijiro Mine (1894-1981) was born in the coastal town of Nagahama, in the Ehime Prefecture of Japan, and immigrated to the United States in 1919. He received an advanced degree from the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Shortly after graduating in 1922, Mine received an honorable mention for his design entry into the international competition for a new Chicago Tribune office building. His “Michigan Avenue Elevation” rendering, along with several other drawings, was donated to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1979. Mine married his wife, Ellen Elizabeth Corner, in 1922 and the couple had two children, Richard and Elizabeth.
Mine was working in the Buick division of General Motors in Flint, Michigan when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. One week after the World War II began, Mine was interrogated by the FBI and fired from his job at Buick. He relocated to Chicago where he worked at the prestigious architecture firms Holabird and Root and then at Schmidt, Garden and Erickson. He concluded his architectural career with a stint at Kraft Food Company. In 1974, Mine moved to Boulder, Colorado and lived there until he passed in 1981.

Source: Mine, Richard Yoshijiro