Sumi Adachi
OBITUARY
Sumi Adachi, a woman of remarkable intellect and curiosity, passed away peacefully on March 14, 2026, in Chula Vista, California, after a short illness. She was 88 years old. Across a life that spanned continents, cultures, and decades of discovery, Sumi embodied the belief that the pursuit of knowledge and the embrace of the wider world are among the highest callings a person can follow.
Born on November 12, 1937, in Osaka, Japan, Sumi grew up navigating the turbulent backdrop of World War II — a formative experience that would quietly shape the questions she spent her lifetime seeking to answer. She came from a deeply academic family, and her sharp mind opened doors early: she was accepted to one of Japan’s most prestigious women’s universities in Tokyo, a distinction that set the stage for a life defined by achievement and inquiry.
Her earliest professional ambitions took her to NHK, Japan’s national public television network, where she found her voice as a reporter. But the world beyond Japan beckoned. Awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship, Sumi crossed the Pacific to Cornell University, where she earned her Master’s degree in psychopathology — and where she met her first husband, Lee Rovner. After a year living in Brussels, Belgium, she made her way to the San Diego area of Southern California, the place she would call home for the rest of her life.
In San Diego, Sumi built a life that was as rich as it was varied. She was deeply woven into her adopted community, maintaining cherished friendships across the scientific world and among artists and creatives alike — a reflection of her rare ability to move with equal ease through the worlds of fact and imagination. She counted amongst her friends the likes of Francis Crick, Jose Hernandez, and Joyce Cutler Shaw. She raised her family in the San Diego area, put down roots, and found her place.
Later in life, Sumi turned to writing — and the subject she chose speaks volumes about who she was. Haunted and fascinated by the events she had lived through as a child, she devoted herself to exploring the scientific, political, and human forces behind the creation and use of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That she, a child of wartime Japan, would spend her later years bearing witness to those events through the careful lens of a scholar and author is a testament to her extraordinary courage and intellect. Her work was published across four non-fiction books, all written in Japanese, ensuring that these vital stories reached the readers who needed them most.
In her later years, Sumi traveled the world alongside her third husband, Dan McLeod, with the same open-hearted wonder she had carried since girlhood. Together they ventured to India, Oman, the rainforests of Brazil, and far beyond — each journey another chapter in a life that never stopped reaching toward the horizon.
Sumi is survived by her daughter, Mika Sovak, and grandson, Zach Banks in the United States; her sister Kiko Wall in the United Kingdom; and her sister Yasuko Shibutani in Japan. She leaves behind not only those who loved her, but a legacy of scholarship, courage, and boundless curiosity that will endure long after her.