May 8, 2008
UW to honor WW II-era Japanese American students May 18
There were 440 of them, all American citizens and the largest group of minority students on the UW campus in 1941. But the college careers of these Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) ended with a tragic twist. They were forced by Executive Order 9066 to depart Seattle by noon on May 16, 1942, for incarceration camps, leaving behind educational dreams as casualties of World War II.
The UW will pay tribute to these students on Sunday, May 18, when President Mark Emmert presents honorary degrees to those who were forced to leave the UW almost 66 years ago to the day. The event — called “The Long Journey Home: Honoring UW Nikkei Students from 1941–42” — will be held at 2 p.m. in Kane Hall. The public is invited to attend, but advance registration is required at www.UWalum.com. And if you can’t attend, you can watch it live on UWTV, at http://www.uwtv.org/.
While some of these Nisei returned to the UW or received their degrees from other colleges after the war, many were unable to finish their education at the UW despite the best efforts of college administrators and faculty at the time. UW officials testified against the controversial proposal to send American citizens to internment camps.
The move to honor these one-time UW students was prompted in part by research conducted by the UW Libraries as well as articles and books published by UW staff and faculty. In a two-part series of articles that appeared in the December 2005 and March 2006 issues of Columns, the UW alumni magazine, former editor Tom Griffin wrote a comprehensive account of what happened to the Nisei students at the time. His series, “The Stolen Years,” recounted the stories of some individual UW students who were wrenched from their academic careers and placed in camps that functioned essentially as prisons for the duration of the war.
In 2003, the UW Press published Judgment Without Trial by Tetsuden Kashima, UW professor of American Ethnic Studies. The book traces the initial idea for rounding up Japanese people back to the 1920s and also points out in detail the disparity in camp experiences for those detained. The book was spurred in part by personal experience, as the Kashima family was ordered to report to an assembly center at a racetrack south of San Francisco in 1942. Several months later, the family was sent to the War Relocation Authority’s camp at Topaz, Utah, for the duration of the war.
The May 18 event is being put together by the UW’s American Ethnic Studies Department in partnership with the College of Arts and Sciences, UW Alumni Association, Office of the Registrar, UW Libraries, Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, and Office of the Provost, and several community organizations led by the Nikkei Association.
For more information or to register to attend, go to www.UWalum.com or call the UW Alumni Association at 206-543-0540. To read “The Stolen Years,” go to www.UWalum.com and click on “Publications.”
