Manzanar Committee » CSU

San Diego State University Awards Honorary Degrees To Former Japanese American Students

Gann Matsuda — Tue, 18 May 2010 18:13:30 +0000

On May 17, 2010, San Diego State University honored its former Japanese American students who were forced to leave the campus due to their imprisonment in American concentration camps during World War II by awarding them honorary degrees (see California State University System To Grant Honorary Degrees To Japanese American Internees).

43 former students were identified as being eligible to receive an honorary degree from SDSU. More than twenty received the degree at the ceremony, some by family members representing relatives who had already passed away.

Here’s a roundup of some of the media coverage:

Honorary Degrees: An Education – San Diego State University Grants Honorary Degrees To Nisei
Honorary Degree Ceremony Puts It All iIn Perspective
Japanese Americans Given Honorary Degrees Six Decades Later (also includes an audio report)
Colleges Award Diplomas To WWII Internees

KSWB-TV 5 in San Diego reported on the ceremony:

SDSU also interviewed Yoshimine, who received his honorary degree at the ceremony:

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Tagged: California Nisei College Diploma Project, California State University, Carl Yoshimine, civil rights, concentration camp, CSU, discrimination, internment, Japanese American, Japanese American Internment, KPBS, KSWB, racism, San Diego, San Diego State University, San Diego Union-Tribune, SDSU

Fresno State: Public Help Sought To Contact Japanese American Alumni

Gann Matsuda — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:09:23 +0000

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The following is a press release from California State University, Fresno (Fresno State).

HONORARY DEGREES: Fresno State will hold a special Commencement ceremony and luncheon on May 20, 2010, for Japanese Americans receiving honorary degrees and their families. The event will begin at 11:00 AM in the Satellite Student Union on campus.

California State University, Fresno is trying to locate 87 Japanese American former students who may be eligible for honorary degrees because their college studies were interrupted by Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942.

The order, in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, sent thousands of Japanese Americans to prison camps, hundreds of whom were residents of the San Joaquin Valley.

In September 2009, California State University trustees approved participation in the California Nisei College Diploma Project, agreeing to recognize Japanese American students at CSU campuses in 1941 and 1942 with honorary degrees.

Three months later, Fresno State awarded the first such honorary degree from a CSU campus to John Hiroshi Otomo of Selma. Now, the University is trying to find classmates (or their relatives, if the former students are deceased) to confer additional honorary degrees.

Fresno State will hold a special Commencement ceremony and luncheon on May 20, 2010, for Japanese Americans receiving honorary degrees and their families. The event will begin at 11:00 AM in the Satellite Student Union on campus.

“We have the names, but we need addresses and phone numbers, so we can invite the alumni or their families to a special ceremony on campus May 20,” said Dr. Paul Oliaro, Vice President for Student Affairs at Fresno State, who is heading up the university’s Nisei Diploma Project effort.

William Secrest, Local History Librarian at the Fresno County Library, and Tiffany Polfer, a master’s degree candidate in History, helped develop the list. They checked college yearbooks, articles in The Collegian campus newspaper and other sources for names.

Their information was confirmed through microfilmed enrollment records under the supervision of Vivian Franco, Fresno State’s Director of Admissions, Records and Evaluations. Because those records are not computerized, the task of validating names from Secrest and Polfer’s research required manually poring over alphabetical lists, which yielded the 87 names.

Oliaro said, “We want to make certain that as many of our eligible alumni as possible can join us for this historic day. However, CSU concerns about privacy laws make locating these former students a challenge.”

“We hope people who know of a Japanese American student at Fresno State in 1941 or 1942 will share with us any contact information from the past or present so we can follow up,” Oliaro added.

Fresno State also is partnering with the Japanese American Citizens League regional office in Fresno, Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California in San Francisco and other organizations to publicize its search.

The University encourages people with contact information for Japanese American alumni eligible for honorary degrees to fill out the questionnaire online or by contacting Oliaro at (559) 278-2541 or poliaro@csufresno.edu.

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California State University campuses throughout California will award honorary degrees to their former Japanese American students who were forced to leave their respective campuses during World War II, per California Assembly Bill 37, which was signed into law in October 2009. If you, or someone you know might be eligible, click on: California State University System To Grant Honorary Degrees To Japanese American Internees.

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Tagged: California Nisei College Diploma Project, California State University, civil rights, CSU, Dr. Paul Oliaro, Fresno, Fresno State, Japanese American, Japanese American Internment, John Hiroshi Otomo, John Otomo, Paul Oliaro, San Joaquin Valley

San Jose State University To Honor Former Japanese American Students

Gann Matsuda — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:49:37 +0000

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Like other California State University and California Community College campuses, San Jose State University is searching for their former Japanese American students who were forced to leave the University due to their imprisonment in American concentration camps during World War II so they (or surviving family members) can be awarded an honorary degree from the University.

You can read more about their search (they need your help!) at: Nisei Diploma Project.

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Tagged: California State University, Caliornia Nisei College Diploma Project, civil rights, CSU, Japanese American, Japanese American Internment, San Jose State University, SJSU

California State University Searches For Former Japanese American Students

Gann Matsuda — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:25:25 +0000

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The following is a press release from the California State University system.

LONG BEACH, CA — Do you know of a Japanese American student who was removed from a California State University campus in 1941-42 and incarcerated in a camp?

Six California State University campuses are searching for 250 Japanese American students who were forcibly removed from CSU campuses during World War II and relocated to prison camps, interrupting their academic careers.

The CSU campuses plan to award these Nisei students Special Honorary Bachelor of Humane Letters degrees as part of the CSU’s Nisei Honorary Degree Project. The CSU project is a result of Assembly Member Warren Furutani’s bill, Assembly Bill 37, which called upon the CSU, University of California and the community colleges to award the degrees.

“By awarding these degrees, the California State University hopes to help heal the wounds of injustice suffered by these Japanese Americans, to honor their academic intentions and to welcome them back to the CSU as alumni,” said CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed.

A new CSU website, http://www.calstate.edu/nisei has been launched to help in the search and provide application forms for the Nisei and/or their families. The CSU also has established a dedicated e-mail address, nisei@calstate.edu and a dedicated phone number, (562) 951-4723 for people who need additional information.

The six CSU campuses where students attended and that will grant the honorary degrees are: Fresno, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, San Luis Obispo and Pomona (which was a branch of San Luis Obispo during those years). CSU Dominguez Hills is assisting is the search for students, and will host a ceremony at its campus if there are Los Angeles-area Nisei who cannot travel to their former campuses.

In addition, the CSU Chancellor’s Office has formed an Honorary Nisei Committee of prominent Californians who support the CSU’s efforts. They are:

Assembly Member Warren Furutani, Author of AB 37
James Hirabayashi, Founding curator of the Japanese American National Museum
Congressman Mike Honda
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Author of Farewell to Manzanar
Helen Kawagoe, Board of Governors, Japanese American National Museum and Carson City Clerk
Dale Minami, Attorney who chaired the federal Civil Liberties Public Education Program
Norm Mineta, Former Congressman and U.S. Secretary of Transportation
Paul Osaki, Executive Director, Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California
Joan Otomo-Corgel, CSU Trustee Emeritus and Fresno State alumna whose father is a Fresno honoree
Margaret Iwanaga Penrose, President and Chief Executive Officer, Union of Pan Asian Communities
Kevin Starr, California State Librarian Emeritus and Administrator of the CA Civil Liberties Public Education Program
Bob H. Suzuki, Former President of Cal Poly Pomona
George Takei, Actor and Former Chairman of the Japanese American National Museum
Yoshihiro Uchida, Former Olympic and judo coach at SJSU
Jan Yanehiro, San Francisco Bay Area broadcast newscaster and host of community-interest programs
Akemi Kikumura Yano, Executive Director of the Japanese American National Museum

The new Nisei website also has dates of the campuses’ commencement ceremonies, and links to the people at each of the campuses who are coordinating the efforts there.

The campuses are working with their local Japanese American community organizations to help locate their former students using lists that they have compiled from old registrar’s records, yearbooks, alumni and library records, and other sources. The Chancellor’s Office is also working closely with the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC) which has a grant to help the state’s higher educational institutions in locating the former students.

As the former students are located and celebrated at the campus commencement ceremonies, the CSU will post many of their stories on the http://www.calstate.edu/nisei web site.

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Tagged: California State University, Caliornia Nisei College Diploma Project, Charles B. Reed, civil rights, CSU, Japanese American, Japanese American Internment, Warren Furutani

SDSU: A Wonderful Gesture

Gann Matsuda — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:40:41 +0000

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The following story originally appeared in the March 2010 edition of the San Diego State University Alumni E-Newsletter. It is reprinted here with permission. Original story: A Wonderful Gesture.

by Tobin Vaughn, Editor

SDSU: Former Student to Receive Honorary Degree

Carl Yoshimine (highlighted) shown in the 1942 Del Sudoeste Yearbook at San Diego State College, now San Diego State University.

Monday, December 8, 1941 was a day Carl Yoshimine has never forgotten. It isn’t so much the details he recalls as the strange feeling he couldn’t seem to shake.

“Emotionally, it was awkward,” he remembers.

The day before, he had been as shocked as everyone by news that the Japanese navy had attacked Pearl Harbor. This was the first day of classes since the attack and much of the country was still coming to grips with the stunning developments that would plunge America into World War II. When he arrived on campus from his family’s home in Ocean Beach, the first semester freshman encountered a subdued student body.

“Everybody was in small groups. All the students were kind of shocked and they were talking with each other,” Yoshimine recalls. “And I guess because of my ancestry – I’m of Japanese ancestry — I just felt kind of awkward. I wasn’t responsible for any of it and I didn’t feel guilty, but it was just an awkward day for me.”

As Yoshimine remembers it, none of his classmates were hostile or accusatory. He has no memory of a negative incident at San Diego State.

“Not on campus,” he insists. “There were other incidents after that when we were in public places. There were some remarks that were not very pleasant, but never on campus.”

As months passed, Yoshimine fell back into the routine of studying business and economics; classes the teenager thought would provide the best background for a solid career. But he came to discover a new favorite subject.

“I enjoyed history,” he recalls. “At the time there was Dr. (A.P.) Nasatir and I thought he was someone with a very good grasp of the South American culture and I really enjoyed his classes.”

Before Yoshimine could change educational directions, however, a government decree would alter the course of his life. Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, authorized the U.S. military to relocate Japanese Americans, including Yoshimine and his family, from along the Pacific coast to inland internment camps.

“And So We Got On The Train”

Word came suddenly in April, 1942. “We received that order and so we had to move. We had to leave our homes,” the San Diego native and Point Loma High School graduate remembers. He and his family were told to report to the downtown train station.

In April 1942, Japanese Americans were among those evacuated by train from the coast to inland relocation centers.

“According to the order, you were only to take what you could carry, so we each packed a suitcase and then we packed a duffel bag because it was too difficult to carry two suitcases. It was just the basic things that we would need—mostly clothing and necessities. We heard that we may go to some area that, weather-wise, was not like San Diego. It seems strange now because nowadays everyone is wearing jeans and Levis and things like that, but in those days I hadn’t even seen what Levis were like, but we went and bought Levis to be equipped for a harsher climate.

“We couldn’t take furniture. It was so limited we just left everything. We didn’t have that much time. We would just take out our furniture in front of our house and have people buy it or just give it away. My older brother, Masao, turned in our personal car to the Dodge dealer, which was about two or three blocks from the Santa Fe Station in San Diego and then he walked back to the station. And so we got on the train.”

“We Had To Do What We Had To Do”

Just like that. Was there any thought of organizing a protest or at least laying plans to someday return and claim their property?

“I think things in that era were such that when certain laws were put in place you just were obedient and did it,” Yoshimine explains. “I don’t think the frame of mind of people was thinking ahead. They just were so intense at the time. I didn’t feel that anyone said, ‘We’ll come back’ or anything like that. It didn’t enter my mind. We had to do what we had to do. It wasn’t fatalistic. It’s just the way it was then and what else could you do?”

Yoshimine, his brother and parents ended up in a camp in the desert called Poston III, one of a trio of camps at the Poston Relocation Center near Parker, Arizona. There, his father, who had driven a produce route in San Diego, was director of food and eventually became camp director of Poston III. Yoshimine and his brother, both with some college education, became teachers of the camp’s younger students.

After about a year in the camp and before the war was over, Yoshimine relocated to Wilmore, Kentucky where his San Diego State credits transferred to Asbury College. It was what many of his friends in the camps were doing as they could not return to the coast.

On the train trip from Cincinnati down through Kentucky, The young man from California had his first experience with the American South.

“The train was full and I was naïve, so I went to another car,” Yoshimine recounts. “They told me I had to move out of that car because it was a segregated car and I had gone into the wrong section. It was a Jim Crow car and so I learned about that in an uncomfortable way.”

Moving On

Despite the discriminatory challenges they encountered, the Yoshimine’s went on with their lives. Brother Masao volunteered for the counterintelligence corps and served with the U.S. Army in Japan. Yoshimine graduated with a degree in history. Wanting to share his Christian faith, he then went on to Asbury Theological Seminary for his master’s degree in religious education. He later attended divinity school in Berkeley and got another degree.

Yoshimine married, had three sons, and became a pastor in the Pacific Coast Free Methodist Conference. For 43 years he preached on Sundays to congregations throughout his native California before retiring in 1994. He and his wife, Miko, now live in Anaheim.

Carl Yoshimine
Photo courtesy Carl Yoshimine

A few weeks ago, Carl Yoshimine received a letter from San Diego State University. His was one of 43 names of former San Diego State students who may qualify for honorary degrees under the California Nisei College Diploma Project. The project, approved by state lawmakers, seeks to bestow honorary degrees to American college students of Japanese descent who, like Yoshimine, were sent to internment camps during World War II.

After an extensive search to locate them, Yoshimine is one of three diploma-eligible students to contact SDSU along with the family members of some of the others. Their input is sought to plan a May ceremony on campus for awarding the degrees.

“I thought it was just a wonderful gesture and I really appreciated that move,” Yoshimine says of the honorary degree. He’s looking forward to returning to the campus he hasn’t seen since the day he left in 1942.

“I’m sorry I haven’t (visited),” he says. “I follow the basketball and the football teams in the newspaper and I still know the fight song.”

He begins to sing the words familiar to Aztecs everywhere:

“‘Fight on, and on, ye Aztec men. Sons of Montezuma we will win again.’ See? I know the song!” he proudly proves.

Molding Character

When he finally returns to campus in May, Yoshimine says he will gladly accept his honorary degree from SDSU.

“I feel it’s an important event because it’s not only honoring a particular group of people, but it’s honoring what education in the United States stands for and the integrity of what an education should be and the fulfillment of a person as an individual seeking to fulfill their dreams,” he says.

Later this month, Yoshimine will celebrate his 86th birthday. Looking back, does he feel cheated by having his education interrupted and his life and his family’s lives turned upside down? On the contrary.

“To me, every circumstance molds a person’s character,” he explains. “Going to the relocation center, for me, helped me find a stronger faith, which has put me in a more positive outlook rather than a discouraging or negative approach.

“I think carrying excess baggage or bitterness narrows your perspective of life. It doesn’t expand you as a person. To carry something with bitterness and hurt scars you as an individual for not being able to overcome it. And to live in that state is something that is unhealthy as far as I’m concerned.”

Spoken like the Aztec Carl Yoshimine once was and soon again will be.

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Tagged: Asbury College, California State University, Carl Yonemine, civil rights, concentration camp, CSU, Japanese American, Japanese American Internment, Manzanar, Poston, San Diego, San Diego State University, San Diego State University Alumni Association, SDSU, Tobin Vaughn