Kiyoshi “Kan” Mizoguchi, JA1BK, a well-known DXer, DXpeditioner, CQ DX Hall of Fame member, and former Director of International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Region 3 passed away in May 2026 at the age of 93. He was a member of the ARRL Maxim Society at the Fellow Class.
First licensed in 1952, Mizoguchi became involved in the creation of IARU Region 3, which covers most of Asia and the Pacific, and served as a Director from 1968 to 1975.
His interest in DXing included both chasing and being the DX, and he is credited with identifying new entities and helping put them on the air for the first time. Some of those places include the Marquesas, the Australs, the Chesterfield Islands, Ducie Island, and Swain’s Island.
Mizoguchi built a competitive DXing station and achieved success as a DXer, reflected in his award achievements in the ARRL DX Century Club – DXCC. He reached 383 countries in the Mixed DXCC category, 382 on phone (within the top ten in the world), and 354 on CW. He was on the Top of the Honor Roll with all 340 current entities on Mixed, Phone, and CW. He is perhaps best known for his impressive total of 271 countries on the 6-meter band – 8th place in the world and 1st in Asia.
Mizoguchi also reached 3,252 countries in the popular DXCC Challenge – 9th in the world. As he gained interest in the Challenge, Mizoguchi began chasing down missing confirmations from his old logs and learned that many other stations’ logs had been discarded or lost. He sought a way to try to save some logs, especially those from unique or rare operations, and, in 2014, funded the DX Log Archive, operated by ARRL, which collects, catalogs, and digitizes such logs (Major ARRL Second Century Campaign Gift from JA1BK Will Support DX Log Archive, ARRL News, 8/24/2014).
Mizoguchi was a frequent presenter at DX conventions and was inducted into the CQ DX Hall of Fame in 1987. Bill Kennamer, K5FUV, who retired from the ARRL staff in 2000, wrote: “I first met Kan over 30 years ago, and we had a close friendship over many of those years. We operated several DXpeditions and attended several conventions together. He was behind many of the major DXpeditions over the years, giving strong financial support, and he was a strong financial supporter of ARRL. He gave all of us ‘new ones’ at various times over the years, and he will be missed.”
Mizoguchi earned an engineering degree from Tokyo University in the early 1950s and started a company with the rights to import all semiconductor manufacturing machinery in Japan. He retired from that company at age 60 and gave the company to his employees. He then started a one-man engineering design firm called Kan Technosonics which operated for several years. Mizoguchi is survived by his wife Reiko and daughter Keiko.
Thanks to Dave Patton, KW9A, for the information in this article.