05.15.08
Japanese-American students get UW degrees decades after internment
Months after Japan attacked Pearl
Harbor, 440 Japanese American
students had to leave the university
because their families were ordered
into government internment camps.
1942 students from Seattle will be getting their bachelor’s degree at the University of Washington on Sunday, May 17, 2008. These students are those who have told to leave the university at the time when Japan attacked the Pearl Harbor. They left school because their families had to be imprisoned in government camps for a simple reason that they do look like an “enemy.”
“And to have to leave Seattle with just one suitcase, that was another shock,” said Tama Murotani-Ibana who was just a freshman then. And later on, he was accepted at Guilford College through the help of then UW President Lee Paul by begging his friends that are president of different colleges to accept these students.