The University Senate voted unanimously last Wednesday to grant honorary degrees to Japanese American students who were forced out of school and into internment camps during World War II. The decision came in response to House Bill 2823, ordered by the Oregon House of Representatives in late March of this year.
Peter B. Gilkey, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, is chair of the Ad Hoc University Senate Committee to Address House Bill 2823. He spoke on behalf of the bill at the Senate meeting, estimating that between eight and 23 people will be eligible to receive these honorary degrees.
For most, the decision comes sixty years too late, but the gesture is nevertheless justified. In 1942, amidst war hysteria and racial prejudice, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced evacuation and internment of an estimated 122,000 Japanese living in America. Nearly 70,000 of those forced into camps were U.S. citizens, and two-thirds of those were second- and third-generation Americans.
Among these citizens were students at colleges and universities around the country – citizens who, against their desires, left school for the camps, where they were subjected to poor living conditions and overcrowding. Needless to say, homes and careers and educations were not sitting around waiting for them to return. Opportunities have a tendency to pass you by when you are involuntarily interned for several years.
This is an opportunity for the University of Oregon to reaffirm its dedication toward providing equal and fair opportunities for all citizens to earn an education. Those students, whose educations were derailed because of a bad policy, deserve the honor that was irresponsibly deprived of them so many years ago.
In a memo to the Ad Hoc Committee, University President Dave Frohnmayer endorsed the bill as “of tremendous importance to the integrity of our educational mission and our commitment to addressing the status of former students who, through no fault of their own, were unable to complete their degrees at the University of Oregon.”
Frohnmayer is absolutely correct. Granting honorary degrees to between eight and 23 individuals will not make a noticeable difference in the community. The gesture, however, will serve as a symbol of the University’s commitment to justice for all people. Furthermore, the motion brings no significant financial impact to the university, so one would be hard-pressed to argue against its merit.
Students at the university understand the hardships and stress associated with working toward a bachelor’s degree. What we cannot comprehend is being forcibly removed from school and put into camps, then released after several years to fend for ourselves. Thousands of Japanese Americans suffered this fate, and it is only fair now that we actively seek to grant these citizens retribution for the hardships they’ve endured.