Susumu Tabata was born in 1925 in Steveston, BC, to a father who was an engineer on a fish packing boat. After Pearl Harbour was attacked, his father was sent to a road camp and was separated from the family. The rest of the Tabata family went to Kaslo where they lived in a hotel under somtimes harsh conditions. In Kaslo students were given the opportunity to go to high school. After internment Susumu worked in a sawmill for a year, and in 1947 he was able to obtain an RCMP permit to attend the University of British Columbia. He earned a Masters degree in oceanography, and then worked in Nanaimo for 15 years. Later he attended the University of Tokyo, completing his PhD. He married a Caucasian woman in 1959, a rare inter-racial marriage for that time.