Dr. Matsuoka was born in Seattle in 1928, the son of immigrant Japanese vegetable farmers who lived in Bellevue. Shortly after World War II started Dr. Matsuoka and his entire family were interned by the U.S. Government, eventually landing in Chinook, Montana. There they were allowed to work on a local farm which resulted in the young man missing some school each fall when he helped with the sugar beet harvest. Still he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class in 1946 from Chinook High School and joined the U.S. Air Force. Following his discharge in 1948, he attended the University of Minnesota earning a B.A in microbiology in 1952.

For the next three years he worked at the Montana State Veterinary Research Laboratory where he was associated with such notable veterinarians as Drs. Hadley Marsh, John Safford, and Everitt Tunnicliff. In 1955, he applied to Washington State College’s College of Veterinary Medicine and was accepted for the Class of 1959. Following his graduation, he again worked for Montana in both their diagnostic laboratories and the state veterinary research laboratory in Bozeman.

In 1963, Eli Lilly Research Laboratories in Greenfield, Indiana, recruited him to bring his knowledge and experience to their corporate arena. He stayed with Lilly until his retirement in 1992. His first work combined inactivated bacteria and viruses in a novel approach that was successful for treating respiratory disease in calves. This work resulted in at least two of his earliest professional publications and set the stage for decades of collaborative effort with scientists both within and outside of Lilly. While at Lilly, he helped the company develop and market some of the world standards for antibiotics for treating respiratory illnesses in animals. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was leadership of a diverse group of scientists and administrators that resulted in the development of Micotil, a trademarked antibiotic. Micotil was a first-line treatment product used on feedlot cattle to treat and control bovine respiratory disease or Shipping Fever.  He also led the effort to produce a second trademark product, Pulmotil, an antibiotic used to treat and control respiratory diseases in pigs.

Later, he led the effort to produce a key ingredient in the product Coban, used to control coccidiosis in poultry and in Rumensin, a product that increases feed efficiency in cattle. The ingredient was monensin, and he later showed an extraordinary sensitivity of horses to the compound leading to two peer reviewed publications.

Tylosin, an injectable used to control pneumonia in pigs, and as an oral product used to control pneumonia in calves was the focus of his research not long after. Again this research in the so-called corporate laboratory resulted in at least two publications shared by the entire scientific community. In horses however, the drug was shown by our recipient and his team to cause a severe colic and thus the species boundaries were well established once again.

Dr. Matsuoka grew up in a time of war and duress many of us will never experience. His family was uprooted and relocated yet he succeeded as if it never happened. His brothers and sisters all went on to college, too.

The CVM honored Dr. Matsuoka's past work and accomplishments in an awards ceremony at WSU on April 4, 2003.

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