By Anne Wolf

Zina Mirsky		Judy Sakaki

Aiko "Grace" Obata Amemiya has always wanted two things: to be a nurse and to have a UC degree. Her wish to be a nurse was deferred when she and more than 110,000 other Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps in 1942. And her dream of a UC degree was denied - until now.

Making Amemiya's dream come true was in large part the work of a small group of UC employees, including Zina Mirsky, Bill Kidder and Judy Sakaki. For each of them, honoring her and several hundred other Japanese Americans who never graduated was more a mission than a job.

Mirsky, associate dean of administration for the UC San Francisco School of Nursing, first raised the issue of granting degrees to interned students on her campus in 2004 after meeting Amemiya.

"Grace recounted all the courses she had taken at UC Berkeley, how she was inappropriately advised and so had to wait a year to be admitted to nursing school, and how, as a result, she was unable to finish her degree because of the Executive Order to go to an internment camp, " Mirsky recalled.

Aiko "Grace" Obata Amemiya (second from right) and fellow UCSF student nurses in 1941. (photo courtesy G. Amemiya)

Mirsky was deeply moved by the story and promised to do anything she could to get Amemiya a degree. After a couple of setbacks, in 2008 Mirsky took her inquiry to Joseph Castro, UCSF vice provost for student academic affairs, to see if the UC Office of the President might be willing to take on this issue -- not only for Amemiya, but for all the Japanese-American students who had been unable to finish UC degrees. "When I heard Judy Sakaki's name, I began to think there was a chance," Mirsky said.

Sakaki, vice president for student affairs, is the daughter and granddaughter of former internees. On her office wall hangs the wooden sign bearing her father's name and ID number which once hung outside his internment camp barracks.

With Daniel Simmons, professor of law at UC Davis, she co-chaired the task force that researched and eventually recommended that the Regents grant special honorary degrees to the internees.

I am extremely proud of the action that the Regents took to address this 'unfinished business,' " Sakaki said. "It means a great deal to me personally, to all former internees and to the entire Japanese American community."

Bill Kidder, now assistant executive vice chancellor at UC Riverside, worked for Sakaki when Mirsky's and Castro's inquiry came to her office. An experience in law school ten years earlier motivated him to find a way for the University to honor these students. "When I was in law school at UC, Fred Korematsu spoke movingly before my class, and ever since, the story of the Japanese-American internment has stayed in my memory as an epic injustice." Korematsu, who is sometimes compared to Rosa Parks for taking an unpopular stand at a critical juncture in American history, was convicted for attempting to stay in the Bay Area in 1942. His case challenging the Executive Order leading to internment went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he lost in 1944.

Kidder's exhaustive research on the Executive Order, the UC students affected by it, and the University's position on awarding honorary degrees played a significant role in moving the issue forward. The momentum built as other campuses and children of former internees began inquiring to UCOP and the Regents about the possibility of honorary degrees.

Sakaki and Kidder spoke with Mary Croughan, chair of the Academic Senate, since the Senate confers degrees. From there a task force was created, comprised of faculty and staff from Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis and UCSF, the four campuses that had Japanese-American students who were forced to leave before completing their degrees.

Help locate UC students who were WWII internees. Contact via e-mail: HonoraryDegree@ucop.edu or call (510) 987-0239.

Whether to honor the former students was never a question for task force members; the primary question was how to honor them, given the Regents' moratorium on awarding honorary degrees. Great care was taken to limit the precedent this might set for the future, and both the Academic Senate and Academic Council unanimously endorsed the proposal before it was taken to the Regents.

"It was a great collaborative effort," Sakaki said. "Everyone on the task force felt that this would be a good thing, that we could right a wrong and that we could find a way to award degrees because a degree is what people wanted."

Task Force member Donald Kishi, clinical professor of pharmacy at UCSF who was born in an internment camp, agreed. "We did it and we did it well. By recommending a fairly limited action, it was hard to argue against it."

Members of the task force now look forward to campus ceremonies later this fall when degrees will be awarded. So far, about 125 internees or relatives of deceased internees have come forward. The campuses are planning awards ceremonies, and the search for former UC students who are eligible for the honor continues.

Mirsky eagerly awaits the day her promise to Grace Amemiya is fulfilled. In the meantime, "I am just so proud of the University for doing the right thing."