James Sakoda

James Sakoda (April 21, 1916 – June 12, 2005) was a Japanese-American psychologist and pioneer in computational modeling.

Career
Sakoda was born in Lancaster, California in 1916.

During World War II, Sakoda spent time incarcerated at the Tule Lake and Minidoka internment camps. He documented the experiences of Japanese Americans in internment camps, using what may be the first "agent-based model." In 1949, he published a dissertation based on his research. As a result, he earned a psychology Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, that year.

After the war, Sakoda pursued a career in psychology and teaching. He taught at Brooklyn College, before joining the psychology department at the University of Connecticut in 1958. In 1962, he joined the sociology department at Brown University and became the director of the Social Science Computer Laboratory.

Sakoda was a well-known figure in the field of origami and published two books on the subject. These were first published in 1969 and 1992 and were republished in 1997 and 1999, respectively.