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UC Davis Magazine

Volume 27 · Number 3 · Spring 2010

Degrees of Justice: The Search for Honorees

The UC regents’ vote last summer to grant the honorary degrees launched a massive search for former Japanese American students, most of whom are well into their 80s and 90s. A number of faculty, staff and administrators with ties to UC Davis played a part in awarding the honorary degrees to these former students.

Dan Simmons, a UC Davis law professor and vice chair of the UC Academic Senate, and Judy Sakaki, UC vice president for Student Affairs and former UC Davis vice chancellor for Student Affairs, led a task force that recommended UC regents, in this case, make an exception to a 37-year moratorium on honorary degrees. Sakaki’s parents and grandparents had been interned.

At UC Davis, Louise Uota, director of Ceremonies and Special Events, spearheaded the search for the former students.

While contacting them, Uota said, she often thought of her husband Alan Uota’s parents, who were relocated from their Visalia farm to an internment camp in Arizona.

“They didn’t speak much about it, which has been the norm for that generation,” she said. “Making the calls was very emotional. . . . I would pop out of my office teary-eyed after speaking to someone or very excited that I had found another recipient.”

Two Asian American studies scholars, Wendy Ho and Isao Fujimoto, also helped with the search. As a child, Fujimoto had been sent with his family from their Washington home to camps, first to Heart Mountain, Wyo., and later to Tule Lake, in California’s far-northeastern Modoc County.

Ho said the episode serves as a clarion call on the need for tolerance in an increasingly diverse post-9/11 society.

Awarding the honorary degrees, she said, redressed a serious societal wrong at the individual level.

“It gave these former students an opportunity for some resolution of this sad, traumatic period in our history and in their families, communities and personal lives,” Ho said

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