Members of the Japanese National Honor Society at Los Gatos High School are trying to track down Japanese-Americans who attended the high school and had their academic experience cut short. These former students were forced to relocate with their families to internment camps in 1942, and consequently were not able to participate in graduation ceremonies.

The honor society is working with the California Nisei High School Diploma Project, which is helping schools find Japanese-American students from the World War II era. Current students want to see their older counterparts come back to the high school campus and walk across a stage to receive their diploma.

"We're trying to amend a past wrong," said Andria Payne, who is the club's co-president.

The members of the honor society were inspired to find the former students after reading a newspaper article about graduation ceremonies in other areas in which 80-year-olds were honored.

The Los Gatos students went to old yearbooks to get names and found there were only a few Japanese-Americans attending the school during the early 1940s. They blanketed local religious and community organizations with announcements about their project in hopes that somebody would know a former interned student. They also coordinated with the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California, who led them to May Yamamoto, class of 1942, at Los Gatos. Yamamoto, 81, lived next to the Hakone Gardens in Saratoga when she went to school at Los Gatos. She likes what she hears about the students' diploma project.

"I think for us, there's a feeling of completion," Yamamoto said of the retroactive diplomas.

Yamamoto said her principal allowed her to take accelerated courses so she could finish high school before relocating to Heart Mountain, Wyo., in May 1942. Her Los Gatos diploma was mailed to her in Wyoming.

"We didn't know when we were going to leave," she said. "We had four days' notice."

Yamamoto said she would attend this year's graduation but only if there were other graduates her age. She's too shy to have the attention all on herself, she said.

And so the pressure is on for the current students. The next task is to locate Yamamoto's classmates, including Natsu Ota and twins Frank and Francis Itaya.

To do their investigation, the students are going to town records to find the last known addresses for the older graduates. Finding the women will be more challenging since many of them would have changed their names when they married. Students are finding that for this particular project, the Internet can't help them. They'll need old-fashioned detective work, and maybe some luck.

"We're going to end up [relying on] serendipitous connections," said Ann Jordan, the club's adviser.

The students know they are racing against time. It's been more than 60 years since the Japanese-American students were in high school, and the group is getting smaller by the day. The students recently found out that one of Yamamoto's schoolmates, Kiku Inouye Yamata, class of 1945, died just last June.

"This is not something we can sit on or say we're too busy and plan it for next year," said Jordan, a history and Japanese teacher.

For students, the project has made history come alive. The fact that Yamamoto walked the same halls they do has hit home.

"So many students aren't aware of the kind of discrimination that happened right here in our neighborhoods," Jordan said.

For Andria, the project is both urgent and poignant. She's the same age now as Yamamoto was when she relocated.

"I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be taken from here for no reason," Andria said.

Flipping through the yearbook has allowed Andria and her peers to see the personalities of those they are trying to find. The Itaya brothers, Andria said, were featured in many of the activities photos. They played football and basketball and belonged to the Spanish club and a service organization.

"Can you imagine being so active, only to be pulled out to live in the middle of [nowhere]?" she said.

These days, Yamamoto finds it difficult to talk about her internment experience. If someone is genuinely interested in learning, she'd be willing to talk, she said, but often, she finds others' curiosity too intrusive.

"I don't want to open my heart," she said.

After leaving Wyoming, she and her family settled in Palo Alto when they weren't welcomed back in Saratoga, she said. She's returned to her old high school only once. It was her 50th reunion. "One of my classmates kept bugging me to go," she said.

Despite the bittersweet feelings that tinge what could be a potential homecoming, Yamamoto commends what the students are doing to remember history.

"There's fewer of us left in our generation," she said. "Many of our stories will be lost. The younger generations are intermarrying, and they're not into our culture."

Jordan said that she hopes through this project, the students can see history isn't made up of just famous and infamous names.

"I want them to see that ordinary people affect history and are affected by history," Jordan said.

El Camino Hospital