June 26, 2006
internment high school diploma
Today's column about an 80-year-old Japanese-American woman getting her high school diploma 61 years late because she was interned in a relocation camp with her family in 1945 is a perfect example of luck and timing playing a big part in the column writing business.
A reader noticed in our news story on the graduation ceremony that no mention was made of the special ceremony for Dorothy Morita. The reader assumed the reporter hadn't stuck around for the entire ceremony, and missed that part.
She was right, and I got lucky because Dorothy's diploma story is strong enough to be its own column. So many Japanese-Americans were robbed of three or four years of their lives because of unfounded fears 61 years ago, and we're dealing with a lot of those same feelings today with terrorism and immigration issues.
Posted by Dennis McCarthy at June 26, 2006 01:30 PM