Degrees at Last for WWII Internment-Camp Detainees

Oregon State to honor Japanese Americans taken from campus in 1941

By Nick McMaster, Newser Staff

Posted Jun 5, 2008 5:25 PM CDT

Copied

Degrees at Last for WWII Internment-Camp Detainees — The Manzanar War Relocation Center south of Independence, CA, June 25, 2000, where 10,000 Japanese-American citizens were interned during World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. (Getty Images)

Oregon State University will honor 42 Japanese-American students who were forced to leave school for a government internment camp in 1941, the Daily Barometer reports. OSU will give 22 honorary degrees to the surviving individuals and family members representing others at its commencement ceremony June 15.

"The honorary degrees are an opportunity for people to recognize the gravity of the situation then," said Noboru Endow, one of the evacuated students, "and the gravity of the situation now for civil-rights infringements that take place when we're at war." (More Japan stories.)

See 2 more photos

Report an error