Kazuhiko "Kazu" Sano, a painter and illustrator who designed nearly 20 commemorative postage stamps for the United States Postal Service, died May 31, 2011, in Mill Valley, California. He was 58 and had fought cancer for the last two years. He was born in 1952 in Tokyo, Japan and had lived in the San Francisco area for more than 35 years, where he taught at the Academy of Art University.

Sano's first work for the U.S. Postal Service Kazu was to produce 12 designs for the Celebrate the Century® 1970s pane (1999). The subjects of those commemorative stamps ranged from disco to the Pittsburgh Steelers. More recently, his stamp designs have included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2007), Charles W. Chesnutt and Frank Sinatra (both issued in 2008), and Gary Cooper and Bob Hope (2009).

His most well-known work apart from postage stamps was the poster for Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi.

Sano is survived by his wife, Chisako, a son and a daughter, and his mother.

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