(NAME-MCE) Honoring dreams of education

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Legislation is moving in Oregon to award honorary degrees to those
Japanese Americans who were forced to leave the state's public
universities during World War II before they could complete their
academic programs.

Complete story below.  For better format and pictures, go to website.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1175311522306640.xml&coll=7

Honoring dreams of education

A bill in the Oregon House could grant honorary degrees to Japanese
Americans whose quest was shattered by war

Saturday, March 31, 2007
STEVEN CARTER  The Oregonian Newspaper

It's been more than 65 years, but Alice Y. Sumida remembers the day
clearly -- the outrage she felt when imperial Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor, and the nagging fear that it meant she would not be able to
continue her education.

In December 1941, Sumida was an 18-year-old freshman at the University
of Oregon. The first in her family to go college, she had her sights
set on becoming a nurse. Then World War II interrupted.

"I cried on my house mother's shoulder," she recalls. "I didn't know
what was going to happen."

What happened was that Sumida, like other Japanese Americans on Oregon
campuses at the time, could not continue at the schools. Some were
ordered to internment camps; others were able to transfer to
universities away from the West Coast.

Now, a bill up for a vote Monday on the floor of the Oregon House of
Representatives would grant honorary degrees to Japanese Americans who
were in college in the state and forced to relocation camps because of
the war. The bill has widespread support, including from the Oregon
University System, and is expected to become law.

Jim Azumano, who testified at a hearing on the bill, says no one knows
for sure how many former students might qualify for the degrees, or
how many are still alive.

Among the most prominent is Portland businessman Sam Naito, who
pleaded -- to no avail -- with the University of Oregon administration
to be allowed to finish the spring term in 1942. He transferred and
graduated from the University of Utah.

Plans for college

Sumida grew up in Portland as Alice Y. Kawasaki. Her father was often
away as a railroad worker, her mother ran the Tokio Sukiyaki House in
Old Town with her uncle. She went to the old Atkinson Grade School in
Northwest Portland. Vic Atiyeh, who later became Oregon's governor,
was her classmate and neighbor.

After school and on Saturday mornings, she and her sisters attended
Japanese school to learn to read and write Japanese. Her mother and
father encouraged her to follow her dreams, and they set aside money
for college.

She remembers how big the University of Oregon campus seemed when she
arrived in September 1941.

When the United States entered the war three months later, Atiyeh,
also a freshman, gave her a ride back to Portland, she said. She never
went back to Eugene.

"Everything was so uncertain," she remembers. "People's attitudes
changed. We had the restaurant business, but we had to close it,
because the customers stopped coming."

Sumida, her mother and father and two sisters eventually wound up at
the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho. Sumida packed only what would
fit in the matching set of luggage her parents had given her for high
school graduation.

Sumida vowed to get away from Minidoka's barbed wire and watchtowers.
Through a friend, she landed a job taking care of an elderly woman in
Chicago, getting permission to travel to Illinois. After 30
rejections, she was accepted in a hospital-based nursing program in
Rochester, N.Y. She finished her training in 1947, after the war had
ended, and came back to Portland.

Career in nursing

Sumida, a widow now, lives in Southeast Portland, not far from the
home where she raised four children. She turned 84 Friday, and is
retired from a 45-year career in nursing. She got a bachelor of arts
degree from Linfield College in 1976, attending classes at night and
on weekends. She has six grandchildren, exercises regularly and
occasionally speaks to civic groups and schoolchildren about her life.

Naito, president of the company that operates the Made in Oregon
stores, says he won't apply for an honorary degree from UO if the bill
becomes law. The experience of being booted off campus was too
painful.

Sumida says she will.

"It means a lot to me. It was a time in my life when I was looking
forward to getting a college degree. It would give me an opportunity
to finish what I wanted to do."

Steven Carter: 503.221.8521  stevencarter at news.oregonian.com