Jitsuo Morikawa

Jitsuo Morikawa (1912 – July 20, 1987), was a Japanese-American Baptist pastor and denominational leader. He was a pastor at the First Baptist Church in Chicago and interim senior minister of Riverside Church in Manhattan, and an executive at American Baptist Churches USA.

Morikawa was married to Hazel and had two sons. He died July 20, 1987, of stomach cancer at University of Michigan Hospital.

He then served for 19 years at the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania headquarters of American Baptist Churches, many of them as associate executive secretary. He was a vice president of that organization in 1984 and 1985.

He was named interim senior minister of Riverside Church in Manhattan in 1976 and afterward served at Baptist churches in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and at First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Morikawa became one of the key organizing members of Jubilee Advance.

He was the main key role that proclaimed to the resettlement of the Japanese Americans in Hyde Park-Kenwood during the early World War II and had served as pastor in Euro- American congregation together also involving in the first African-American membership in the First Baptist. In 1955, he served as Director of Evangelism of the American Baptist Church leaving the first Baptist till 1956.

Later he was released by some Baptist leaders and from 1944 to 1956 was pastor at First Baptist Church of Chicago. He was the first Japanese among two non-Americans to be installed as pastor in Chicago Baptist church by Eric L. Titus. He was made assistant pastor of Chicago Baptist church before the Japanese America Baptist congregation was formed, before he was installed he was associated member with the Chicago Federation of Churches. Kichitaro Yamamoto along with Morikawa became pastor of Baptist.

He became a Christian at age of 16, and was ordained in 1937 at a Baptist church in Pasadena, California.