Imagine being a college student suddenly forced to end your education and then being incarcerated behind barbed wire for no crime of your own. That’s what happened to an estimated 700 Universitity of California students of Japanese descent during World War II.
UCLA is searching for Japanese Americans from the early 1940s who were forced to interrupt their education at the southern California campus when discriminatory federal orders sent them to internment camps. An estimated 200 Japanese Americans were attending UCLA at the time. On May 15, the university will bestow honorary degrees on these former students, many of whom are in their 80s and 90s, with others already deceased.
The University of California Board of Regents voted last July to suspend its moratorium on honorary degrees in order to recognize the students.
“It’s never too late to join with others throughout the nation in recognizing that the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II was wrong,” said Don Nakanishi, who is chairman of UCLA’s honorary degree task force, professor emeritus and director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.
By honoring these former students, Nakanishi said, “We acknowledge the many diverse contributions they made to campus life in student government, athletics and academics and formally welcome them back to our academic communities.”
The ceremony at UCLA, which is the fourth of the UC campuses to bestow these honorary degrees, will take place on the same day as the campus’s annual Alumni Day.
UCLA is encouraging family members and others to help identify students who were unable to graduate because of internment and is asking that information be sent to Patricia Lippert, associate director of special events and protocol at UCLA: tricial@support.ucla.edu or 310-794-8604.
Incidentally, the anniversary of Presiden Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066, which forced 120,000 Japanese American citizens and legal residents into internment camps, is Feb. 19.
