The Modesto Junior College Civic Engagement Project and the Title V Grant will present a Nisei Project Symposium examining the 1942 internment of Japanese Americans on Tuesday, April 20. The free, public event will begin at 6 p.m. with a reception and a display of photos and artifacts in the MJC Art Gallery, followed by a panel presentation at 7 p.m. in the Student Fireside Lounge on East Campus.

The three panelists, John Tateishi, Naomi Yamamoto and Sherman Kishi, each personally experienced the internment and will provide a first-hand perspective of the history, impact, and experience of being confined in the camps after Executive Order 9066 was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated during World War II were forcibly removed from their homes and community, sent to remote internment camps and denied all constitutional rights. A majority of the men, women and children sent to the camps were American born citizens who were Nisei (second generation) or Sansei (third generation) Japanese Americans.

Tateishi, who will moderate the panel discussion, was born and raised in Los Angeles and his family was interned in the Owens Valley camp at Manzanar when he was three years old. He gained national prominence in 1978 when he launched a national campaign to seek redress for Japanese Americans interned in U.S. detention camps during WWII. As the National Redress Director of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), Tateishi crafted the legislative and public affairs strategies of the campaign that successfully culminated in 1988 with an apology from the President and Congress and monetary redress for the victims of the internment. Takeishi is the author of And Justice for All (Univ. of Washington Press), an oral history of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, and a contributing author to Last Witnesses (St. Martin’s Press), a collection of essays by the children of the WWII internment camps.

It was Kishi’s 17th birthday on May 13, 1942, and he was a junior at Livingston High School, when he and his family were sent to a temporary internment camp at the Merced Fair Grounds. In September 1942, everyone from the camp was taken by train to Colorado. In November 1943, Kishi joined the military to prove to the U.S. that he was a loyal citizen, and worked in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) as part of an elite group of interpreters and translators. In 1946 he left the military, returned to Livingston, and eventually attended U.C. Berkeley, earning a degree in Wild Life Conservation. Kishi worked for the State Department of Fish and Game, leaving after only six months due to a continuing racism that he felt would prevent job advancement. He returned to Livingston and became a farmer, first growing grapes and other fruit and later almonds and sweet potatoes. Kishi is a member of the Commemoration Committee that recently established a memorial at the site of the Merced Assembly Center where he, and approximately 4,000 other Japanese Americans from the area, had been held for four months.

Yamamoto was born and raised in San Francisco. She was only twelve and half years old in 1942, when EO 9066 was signed into law. She and her family were forcibly removed from their home and taken to a temporary Internment camp in San Bruno. Four months later, the entire family was taken to Topaz Internment Camp in Utah, where they were kept for four years. In 1946, after being released from the camp, Yamamoto began her sophomore year at West Division High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During her senior year in high school her family returned to San Francisco where she finally graduated from Washington High School. She continued her education at San Francisco City College and San Francisco State University earning degrees in Physical Education/Recreation and Liberal Studies. Yamamoto worked as an elementary teacher in Oakland for six years and after getting married she and her family moved to Turlock, Ca. She worked as a special education teacher for Ballico-Cressey Elementary School for eight years before she retired.

MJC is holding the symposium as an educational component of the college’s “Nisei Project,” which is part of the California Nisei Diploma Project, an implementation of Assembly Bill 37 which was signed into law on October 11, 2009. The statewide project is an initiative that seeks to award honorary degrees to all Japanese American students who had their college educations interrupted when they were forced out of institutions of higher learning and into internment camps during World War II.

MJC will award honorary degrees to an estimated 28 Japanese American students who had their college educations interrupted by internment. MJC is still trying to locate many of these former students, and a number of them have been found to live outside the area or are deceased. However, if the students are unable to personally attend, MJC’s Commencement Ceremony on April 30, 2010, their family members are invited to attend the ceremony and receive the relative’s diploma on their behalf.

For more information on MJC’s Nisei Project visit the website http://mjc.edu/general/president/nisei-project. For more information on the Symposium contact Peggy Kroll, Title V Grant Coordinator, at (209) 575-7855 or via e-mail at krollp@mjc.edu.