60 Years Later, Fife High School Rights A Wrong

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By By Kevin Reece

Summary

Six Japanese-Americans, robbed of their chance to graduate 60 years ago during World War II, finally got their ceremony this week.

Story Published: Jun 19, 2002 at 3:25 PM PDT

Story Updated: Jul 24, 2009 at 11:00 AM PDT

60 Years Later, Fife High School Rights A Wrong
FIFE - Thousands of Japanese Americans in the Northwest were sent to internment camps in World War II. By the time the war was over, many of those families lost everything: Their homes and their possessions were gone.

But thousands of teenage Japanese-Americans lost something else.

Tuesday night in Pierce County, they tried to correct at least one of history's mistakes.

Graduation: the biggest day of a high school student's life. It's something they wait for, for many years.

But Kenji Yaguchi has been waiting a lot longer.

"Sometimes you can't put it into words," he said.

He too was a student at Fife High School. He was quarterback of the football team, a champion wrestler, and Valedictorian -- the top of his class.

But that was 60 years ago. An he was also Nissei -- second generation Japanese American.

"I'd like to make it sound like a dream... but it wasn't a dream," he said.

It was a dream turned nightmare for the 24 Nissei seniors in the Fife High School class of 1942.

"Instead of going to graduation, they were ordered to the Puyallup Fairgrounds -- a place much different back in 1942. A place they called "Camp Harmony". A name that didn't fit at all.

The students were among the 7,000 Japanese-Americans ordered to Camp Harmony, and among the 100,000 then sent to larger camps throughout the western U.S. for the remaining two years of the war.

Fife student James Watanabe was sent there too. He says they kept his family all in one room.

Many would enlist, fight in the Army, and lead productive lives after the war. But still, there was no high school graduation, no ceremony.

No celebration.

"Kind of felt cheated at first," Yaguchi said.

Cheated for 60 years, but maybe not forever.

This week, Kenji along with fellow student Yuki Shiogi went back to their school. They thumbed through old memories in the yearbooks, and thought how emotional it would be if they could just make one more memory.

Kenji and five other survivors would finally get their due.

Kenji, Yuki, and James, along with May Fujii, Harry Asai, and George Morihiro, shared the stage with the class of 2002.

They received standing ovations, and got their diplomas, their recognition, and a missing piece of their lives.

"This nation of ours is the greatest," Yaguchi said. "I don't care what you say or where you hear, it's still the greatest."

Yuki says, "I'm like a little kid now, learning something. But I'm happy about that, very happy."

Happy now because they were American teenagers, who waited 60 years for history to correct at least one of its wrongs.

Ovations, and some of the happiest faces you've ever seen, tell you a major wrong was rewritten this day.

"I'm so happy," Kenji said. "I can't describe how happy I am because we get to close the chapter of a book with a happy ending."

The class of '42 didn't let the lack of a graduation ceremony slow them down. Many of them went on to professional careers -- including Kenji Yaguchi and James Watanabe.

They both went into medicine and became doctors.