On May 17, the University of Puget Sound (UPS) awarded honorary degrees during its graduation ceremony to 36 students who were sent to a relocation camp in spring 1942.

Executive Order 9066, signed into effect by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Feb. 19, 1942, decreed the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals from the American western coastal regions. UPS put forth the effort to extend a belated honor to these students whose college careers were put on hold by the federal government’s internment procedures following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

These former students each received a bachelor of arts degree, Honoris Causa, Nunc pro Tunc, (translating to: “a thing is done at one time which ought to have been performed at another”) at the 2009 commencement ceremony, which took place at Baker Stadium on the UPS campus.

“Each loyal student removed from campus at that time represented a life and an education suddenly interrupted,” said UPS President Ronald R. Thomas. “By granting these degrees now, we complete a circle, welcoming these individuals into the ranks of alumni and returning them to full inclusion in the Puget Sound community.”

Of the 36 total honorees, two, Michiko Jinguji Kiyokawa and Yoshiko Fujimoto Sugiyama, were in attendance at the ceremony to receive their degrees. Four of the students - Hugh Y. Seto, Yoshiye Jinguji Hoshiko, Shigeo Wakamatsu and Masayoshi Jinguji - were represented by family members. According to Shirley Skeel, a spokesperson for UPS, the school did its best to contact as many of the students as possible. “In total we were able to contact the students or the families of almost half of the 36 honorees. As the internment happened in early 1942, we have lost track of some of these students.”

In June 1942, the Pinedale Assembly Center in California held an informal graduation ceremony for Nisei seniors who had been removed from schools including Stadium and Lincoln high schools and the then College of Puget Sound (CPS). Official diplomas from their schools were sent to Pinedale for those students.

Michiko Kiyokawa (formerly Jinguji), 85, was one of the two Japanese American students attending the ceremony, and she was very happy to be honored. “It’s nice to be honored like this. I got a degree from Hamlin University graduating in St. Paul, Minn. in 1947. I was at CPS as a freshman, and studied home economics, and was taking the basic classes in biology, Spanish, English, clothing and I really was enjoying college,” Kiyokawa remarked.

From 1942-44, Kiyokawa was moved to three different camps: Pinedale in California until July 1942, then Tule Lake, Calif., and eventually to one in Heart Mountain, Wyo. From there, her brother went on to study at Hamlin University in Minnesota, and eventually she and her sister followed suit.

“At that point, I thought, FDR must have felt that that was necessary, and I just never felt any resentment or anything. It did upset people’s lives, those who had businesses going and everything,” Kiyokawa noted.

She ended up continuing her studies in biology and went on to become a medical technologist who now resides in Oregon with her husband, whom she met while interned at Tule Lake. Kiyokawa’s life affirms that despite war-related hindrances, one can move past them and live a full, accomplished life with pride and respect for events of the past.

“At that stage in my life, I think each thing we did felt like an adventure. I never looked back. I experienced meeting all the Japanese in one place.”