nwasianweekly.com
March 8, 2008

Image provided by “Interrupted Lives,” University of Washington Libraries

Fuyo Kai (Hibiscus Club) was a Japanese American student club for women, founded in 1922 in response to exclusion from the traditional sororities.

College grads, at last

By Staff

The University of Washington

The University of Washington’s board of regents on Feb. 21 approved the awarding of honorary bachelor’s degrees to Japanese American students who were enrolled at the time that President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, Feb. 19, 1942, which led to the mass exclusion and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, including those at the UW.

The regents’ action culminated efforts that were begun a number of years ago involving many different individuals and organizations. It is estimated that at the time of the executive order, more than 440 Japanese American students were enrolled at the UW.

“Every year, we have a day of remembrance,” said Tetsuden Kashima, professor of American ethnic studies, “commemorating the incarceration.” Kashima presented the proposed action at the regents meeting, along with Associate Professor Gail Namura.

Nomura, who came to the UW in 1999, recalls a conversation she had with a Japanese American who had come to her office after viewing a UWTV telecast of Gordon Hirabayashi’s Day of Remembrance talk in 2000.

Hirabayashi, who was in his senior year at the UW in 1942, challenged the constitutionality of the exclusion order by refusing to get on the bus to be sent away to the detention camp at Puyallup. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against his constitutional challenge in 1943, four decades later Hirabayashi’s case was reopened when evidence of governmental misconduct in the original trial was uncovered, and in 1987 a federal appeals court vacated his wartime conviction.

Nomura said, “In my conversation with that Japanese American who had come to talk with me, I discovered that he was a former student who was forced to leave the UW in spring quarter of 1942, just one course shy of graduation. When I tried to look into procedures to review his case, it proved to be extremely difficult to find the necessary information in order to file the appeal to get this person the degree he should have received if he had not been forced to leave UW.” She and Kashima realized that trying to remedy the situation person by person was unworkable.

Theresa Mudrock, a history librarian, worked with the UW Nikkei Alumni Association, which used its social networks to help fill out the details of what happened to each UW student. Members worked tirelessly during the last two years contacting people and compiling this information. Additional assistance in the ongoing research is being provided by the UW Alumni Association under the leadership of Kyle Funakoshi, associate director for volunteer programs.

The UW’s Registrar’s Office also contributed, going through the student records from that era, all hand-written, and helped answer the questions posed by the UW Nikkei Alumni Association — the enrollment history of each student, credits allowed at the time of evacuation, information about the evacuation itself, and whether the student re-enrolled at the end of the war.

A long-time UW student, Yuki Sato, also helped with the research. Sato had worked slowly but doggedly on a UW degree, taking just one course a quarter for 19 years, beginning when she retired. She received a bachelor’s degree in American ethnic studies in 2001, at the age of 82. Her senior thesis project was an examination of the fate of some of the Nisei students of 1941-2, who were in fact her contemporaries. Sato continues to volunteer, doing archival research on her contemporaries, and continues to take UW classes through the Access program.

As the project to award honorary degrees reached fruition, the response from the community, Kashima said, was two words: at last. “There are strong positive feelings among many about the UW,” he said, “not just for doing this, but for the compassion that university leadership showed at the time of the incarceration, and the efforts of many faculty members and administrators to welcome these students back to campus when the war ended.”

The ceremony awarding the honorary bachelor degrees to the UW Japanese American students of 1941-42 will be held at 1:45 p.m. May 18 at Kane Hall 120 on the University of Washington campus.

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