Restoring Justice at UC Berkeley

It's impossible to reverse historical injustice, but every now and again individuals and institutions make earnest attempts to do so. The most recently notable took place at the University of California Berkeley, where the UC Board of Regents awarded honorary degrees to interned Japanese American students — six decades later.

Among them was Grace Obata Amemiya, 88, one of the 120,000 Japanese American men and women forced to detainment camps by President Franklin D. Roosevelt for fear they might be spies (700 of which were UC students).

In years since, a 1983 federal commission declared the Executive order, "motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a failure of political leadership." And in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that awarded $1.2 billion in reparations to 60,000 surviving detainees, who received about $20,000 each.

However, such reparations can never replace the lost educations and dreams of UC students like Amemiya, who never returned to the university.  But last week the Board of Regents in San Francisco tried to right the situation as best they could by granting honorary degrees to all Japanese American students who were unable to complete their schooling due to detainment. Although 300 returned after the war, approximately 400 students never received the opportunity to graduate.

According to the Los Angeles Times, only about a dozen former students have been located and awarded degrees. "We are going to do our darndest to find every single one of them," said William Kidder, a UC Riverside administrator who has been active in the effort to award the degrees. He said he expected the regents' action to elicit information about the whereabouts and fate of many former students. (E-mails with tips can be sent to HonoraryDegree@ucop.edu.)

Amemiya joyfully accepted the honor, which could have easily been met with bitterness or anger. She explains how her internment broke a family tradition of scholastic excellence, but that looking back, it was a situation they needed to accept and move on from.

The university acknowledges the inadequacy of an apology and honorary degree, but hopes that their actions can rectify the situation in some small way. Amemiya gave a speech, holding the regents spellbound, "I felt so honored. I've been floating way up there and my two feet have not come down yet." She still affectionately refers to her Alma mater as "Cal." Amemiya's loyalty is a true less in forgiveness.