About Executive Order 9066:

Executive Order 9066 was signed and issued in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The order prescribed "military areas ... from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion." The California West Coast and Southern Arizona were declared such areas, which resulted in the removal or internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese and Americans of Japanese Ancestry.

• Those affected by the order were sent to nearly 40 camps located all throughout the country.

• The order did not specify ethnicities or nationalities, and several thousand people of German and Italian Ancestry were also detained.

• The order was only rescinded in 1976 by President Gerald Ford.

• More than 2,500 Japanese American students were forced to interrupt their studies.

• 28 Japanese Americans were studying at Modesto Junior College when the order was issued.

About the California Nisei Diploma Project:

The CA Nisei Project is the implementation of AB 37, introduced by Assemblyman Warren Furutani (D-Long Beach), and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on October 11, 2009.

AB 37 calls upon institutions of higher education in the state of California to confer honorary degrees to "each person, living of deceased, who was forced to leave his or her studies at a public postsecondary educational institution in which that person was enrolled as a result of the issuance of federal Executive Order 9066."