Diplomas awarded -- 60 years later Diplomas awarded -- 60 years later (June 24, 2005)

World War II internees finally graduate from MV High

By Lena Wong

Though most of the graduates of Mountain View High School's class of 2005 had already stripped down into casual wear for the impending festivities of Grad Night, Toshiko Furuichi Kawamoto still donned her black cap and gown.

She helped herself to the cookies and lemonade laid out on a table, all the while clutching her precious diploma. People approached to congratulate her, and she even stopped to chat in Japanese with one student's parents before she had to leave to fly to her grandson's graduation.

On June 15, Mountain View High School held a commencement ceremony filled with laughter, tears, and goodbye hugs. Among the many who received their diplomas were three special individuals: George Yoshinaga, Toshiko Furuichi Kawamoto and George Kunimoto, members of the class of 1943, 1945, and 1945, respectively.

Forced to leave their school and homes in 1942, these three former Mountain View High School students were never given the chance to claim what was rightfully theirs -- a diploma from the school where they first started their high school education.

Sixty-three years ago, Mountain View High School's Japanese-American students knew this as a quiet, safe place. "The campus was comfortable because all the students didn't have 'hang-ups' and we enjoyed each other's company," Yoshinaga said. But that changed with the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

"I went to a neighborhood store to buy the Sunday paper," Yoshinaga recalls, "and saw a fellow student with whom I had gone through grammar school and all of high school. When he saw me, the first thing he muttered was, 'Do you know what your people did in Hawaii?'"

Soon, Americans of Japanese ancestry were given unsettling news. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had issued Executive Order 9066 -- a document that would lead to the incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans across the country.

"Signs were posted in areas where Japanese Americans gathered, like stores [and] churches," said Yoshinaga. Kunimoto's family received notice in the mail, and Kawamoto said she read signs on telephone posts stating that people of Japanese descent had to stay within a five-mile radius of their homes.

That May, the three families packed all they could into one suitcase per person and boarded trains for Arcadia, just east of Pasadena. After a short stay at the "assembly center" there, families were sent to interment camps. Kunimoto, Kawamoto and Yoshinaga were assigned to Heart Mountain in Wyoming.

The camp was guarded by men carrying guns and was surrounded with barbed wire. As a young boy, Kunimoto didn't understand why his family was "picked" to move, and only knew it was because of his Japanese ancestry. Kawamoto remembered the harsh winters endured without proper clothing and the long train ride from Santa Anita to an unknown location. "[We had] no idea where we were going, just its name," she says.

Adolescents at the camp were told to be obedient and "good citizens," Kawamoto remembers. Life continued as normally as it could, and the youngsters entertained themselves by ice skating (skates could be purchased through Montgomery Ward catalogs) or attending dances.

Within a year, a high school was erected, and though the education was fairly primitive at first, soon Kawamoto was able to take classes in typing and English. Both Kunimoto and Yoshinaga remember the academics at Mountain View High to be far superior, and Yoshinaga recalled that the teachers were college students who hadn't yet received teaching certificates.

Eventually, Kunimoto and Yoshinaga received a diploma from Heart Mountain. Kawamoto graduated from a high school in Oregon, traveling 18 miles a day from her family's farm in Idaho to the nearest school.

Both Kunimoto and Yoshinaga were drafted into the Army after getting their first diplomas. Ironically, Kunimoto was assigned to keep watch over German prisoners of war being shipped to Belgium.

Yoshinaga said that he wanted his diploma because he wanted a sense of his "roots." He said that as he "sat on the dais and looked into the blue skies, I really felt an emotional tinge flare up in my heart."

Overwhelming was the feeling of honor and pride that these three individuals felt from the support of the administration and student body of Mountain View High School.
Lena Wong is a student at Mountain View High School.

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