USC honors Nisei students


Carolyn Sugiyama Classen (center), carrying a photograph of her late father and WWII-era University of Southern California dental student Francis Sueo Sugiyama, accepts a posthumous honorary degree in his honor from Dr. Carol L. Folt (left), president of the University of Southern California, at a USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association gala at the Langham Huntington hotel in Pasadena, California, U.S., April 1, 2022. Nisei (‘second generation’) Japanese-American students at USC were forcibly sent to internment camps after the 1941 bombings, and had their college careers undermined when USC refused to release their transcripts for those who sought to transfer to other schools.
President Carol Folt awarded an honorary degree to Francis Sueo Sugiyama, which was accepted by his daughter, Carolyn Sugiyama Classen. (Photo courtesy of Bing Guan/Pool)

Holding a framed photograph of her late father, Carolyn Sugiyama Classen received, on his behalf, an apology and degree from USC that she thought would never come. 

Her father, Francis Sueo Sugiyama, was a dental student at the University when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The order would require the internment of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, including Sugiyama and 120 other first-generation Japanese American, or Nisei, students. 

After World War II concluded and internment camps closed, then-University President Rufus B. von KleinSmid refused to readmit previously enrolled Nisei students to the University and denied the students their transcripts, which would allow them to transfer their credits to other universities. 

So, when a friend sent her a USC News article that outlined the University’s plans to award the Nisei students their honorary degrees posthumously, Sugiyama Classen said she was “in shock.” 

“I didn’t think USC would ever make up for what they did to my father,” said Sugiyama Classen in an interview with the Daily Trojan. 

President Carol Folt, along with Provost Charles Zukoski and USC Board of Trustees voting member Rod Nakamoto, conferred posthumous honorary degrees on 33 Nisei students, including Sugiyama, at the Asian Pacific Alumni Association gala in Pasadena Friday. Members of the students’ families received the degrees. 

In 2012, the University announced that it would award honorary degrees to living Nisei students, because of an existing policy against posthumous degrees — a policy Folt said making a “simple exception to” was “the greatest privilege that you can imagine.” 

“We’re bringing some closure, and perhaps healing, more than 80 years after this injustice began,” said Folt at the gala. 

Sugiyama Classen said receiving her father’s posthumous degree was “a good way to lay [the situation] to rest.” 

“I just want to close the chapter. It’s been 80 years since the Executive Order was signed,” she said. “It’s time to close the chapter for our family.” 

For Lawrence Fujioka, whose father, John Masato Fujioka, was a first-year dental student when he was forced to leave USC for an internment camp at Santa Anita Racetrack, the honorary degree conferral was “a great thing.” 

“I can only guess that [my father] would be really happy about it,” said Fujioka in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “For him, this honorary degree just is a sign that USC recognizes the error they made in not releasing those transcripts. And I think the most meaningful part is the apology.” 

The Tribute Rock Garden for Nisei Students is a newly built rock garden dedicated to the Nisei students located near the University Club. (Photo courtesy of USC/Gus Ruelas)

Earlier in the day, the University dedicated a newly built rock garden to the Nisei students. The garden, officially named the Tribute Rock Garden for Nisei Students, is located near the Amy King Dundon-Berchtold University Club. It is designed in the style of karesansui, or traditional Japanese dry garden. 

“Our own karesansui is designed for meditation and contemplation and expresses the resilience, the perseverance and the hope of our USC Nisei students who faced tremendous suffering and injustice,” said Folt at the garden’s dedication. “We must never forget what happened in those internment camps, and indeed, across our society at that time, because memory is one of the primary deterrents to repeating injustice.” 

The perseverance of the Nisei students is represented by a Japanese proverb translating to “on a stone for three years” inscribed in Japanese kanji on a large vertical stone near the garden’s entrance, Folt said. 

“This proverb teaches that even when we experience hard times, through our endurance and patience, we will overcome,” she said. 

For landscape architect Calvin Abe, whose parents were also interned, designing the garden was a “unique and spiritual journey.” 

“To me, certainly it’s a garden of perseverance, but it speaks to the human spirit,” said Abe in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “Even though it’s dedicated to the Nisei, it speaks to this country, to all people.” 

Fujioka’s son, Bob, also spoke at the garden’s dedication, expressing his family’s gratitude for Folt and the University’s actions. 

“On behalf of my late father and all the other families of Nisei students, I would like to express our sincere and deepest gratitude for your having the vision, the courage and the respect for our ancestors to bring about such a historic exception to a long-standing school policy,” he said. “While this rock garden has been built as a tribute to the Nisei, it is truly meant for the living. And that is what the Nisei would want it to be.” 

Folt will also honor the Nisei students at the 2022 Commencement in May, where she will “recognize and salute these degree recipients before the entire University community.”

Correction: A previous version of this article mistakenly named John Masato Fujioka as John Masao Fujioka. The Daily Trojan regrets this error.