It was a frightening period in our nation's history. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Forces of Japan, we were a nation at war. And because of the anti-Japanese frenzy that followed, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order in the spring of 1942 to send Japanese Americans to internment camps.
While many who lived through that period still defend the action, most of us recognize the great wrong that was enacted on those who were interned, two-thirds of them citizens of the United States. Even FDR realized that an injustice had been done and he rescinded the order in 1944. In the decades to follow, apologies were issued by the United States government and reparations were given for property lost by the Japanese Americans. In 1988, surviving internees were issued payments of $20,000.
What couldn't be returned to the Japanese Americans who were rounded up and sent off to camps during that period was the return of the events of life they missed during the period of internment.
More than 60 years later, a group of Los Gatos High School students is attempting to do just that.
Los Gatos was not immune to the anti-Japanese sentiment so common in the United States during World War II. Local Japanese American residents were among those shipped off to Tule Lake, Manzanar, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming and other camps.
But students in the Japanese National Honor Society at Los Gatos High School are attempting to do what they can to right this wrong.
The students are searching for Japanese American students of that period who were pulled out of the high school in 1942 before getting the opportunity to march in the graduation ceremonies that spring. The honor society members are inviting those students, now octogenarians, to walk with them in the 2006 commencement exercises at Los Gatos High.
May Yamamoto is one of those students from the class of 1942. She was a senior at Los Gatos High when her family was uprooted and shipped off to Wyoming a month before graduation. She was able to complete her course work before leaving town, but her diploma was mailed to her in Wyoming.
One of the great memories that all Los Gatos High School students share is the opportunity to march across the school's beautiful front lawn to receive a high school diploma. That's most high school graduates. A select few were not afforded that privilege. May Yamamoto is one of them. She has been invited to participate this spring, but the shy 81-year-old does not want to walk alone.
That's the challenge that now faces the students in the Japanese National Honor Society--to find the others who missed their graduation because of internment in World War II. Anyone with information about Japanese American students at Los Gatos High School who were so affected can contact this newspaper at 408.354.3110 and we'll pass the information on to the students. This is an opportunity to right a wrong--before it's too late.
