DELAYED GRADUATION WWII INTERNEES RECEIVING DIPLOMAS AT LAST.

Byline: Rachel Uranga Staff Writer

Three months before her high school graduation, a bubbly Helen Toyama had dreams of becoming a nurse until the War Relocation Authority posted orders to relocate her family - and thousands of other Japanese-Americans - to internment camps.

Helen never wore her cap and gown, received a diploma or went on to college. Instead, she spent the next years of World War II behind barbed wire, sharing tight quarters with dozens of others and making the best of life in an isolated barracks in Arcadia and later in Arkansas.

On Sunday, the 82-year-old widow - now named Helen Isa - will don the cap and gown that might have changed the course of her life had she worn it more than six decades ago.

``I had high hopes of going to college, hopes and dreams that went down the drain,'' said Isa, a retired secretary living in Sun Valley. ``To receive my high school diploma 63 years later ... is to correct the past injustice.''

Isa and dozens of other Japanese-Americans - teenagers in 1942 when the government ordered them into 10 internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor - will graduate at a private ceremony at Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

The graduation is one of a handful that have taken place throughout the state after legislation authored by Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, authorizing local school districts to award diplomas to students interned at one of the nation's 10 camps during the war years.

``People have commented that this represents a closure in a difficult part of their life,'' Lieber said. ``It's amazing to see some of them in their 70s and 80s walk across the stage and turn into an 18-year-old before your eyes.''

With anti-Japanese sentiment rampant after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government ordered more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans - many American-born - into internment camps.

Families hid or destroyed family pictures to keep FBI agents from linking them to Japan. Others tucked away family keepsakes in their own homes only to return to ransacked belongings. Many were forced to sell their homes and businesses at below-market prices to greedy investors taking advantage of their plight.

``This is an opportunity for us to right a wrong,'' said Mike Lansing, the Los Angeles Unified School District board member who proposed holding a graduation with the other local districts. Lansing, who grew up near San Pedro, still recalls his father's stories of classmates getting yanked out of class and taunted because of their Japanese ancestry.

``So many of them had been taken right out of their homes. At least we can give them the small dignity of being recognized.''

On the yellowed pages of a 1942 autograph book, Isa still has those memories preserved. Her friends bade her farewell as they prepared to depart for camps in different parts of their own country.

``Dear Helen,'' wrote one. ``Though we're going to part, it may not be for long, besides it's a small world so here's hoping we meet again.''

Although Isa and others continued their education inside the camps, their dreams were interrupted and aspirations dashed.

``It's a story that's not easily told. There is a lot of pain behind it, shame,'' said Jill Shiraki, the director of the California Nisei High School Diploma Project and the daughter of an internee.

``The graduation provides an opportunity for the conversation to happen again, their memories of youth, they can share this with family.''

More than 200 individuals have been awarded diplomas - some posthumously - since the legislation passed in 2004, bringing closure to a difficult chapter in their lives. The ceremony also fortifies a legacy - and teaches an important lesson on diversity, justice and history - for children, grandchildren and generations to come.

Harry Nakada, 81, was a junior at University High School in West Los Angeles when his farmer parents and three siblings each filled one suitcase with clothes and boarded a bus headed to the dusty Manzanar camp in Central California.

``It set us all back a year or two but some folks went on to get a better education,'' Nakada said. ``Some people came out and got lost and went from job to job.''

Nakada returned to work at his family's nursery and the following year joined the military. After several years of service, he finally enrolled at California Polytechnic Institute in Pomona for a two-year agriculture program.

Now retired, he looks at the period as a mixed blessing. It was painful for families, who were torn away from their lives, experienced institutional racism and lost enormous opportunities.

But in some ways the experience bonded an entire generation. The camps were a place where lifelong friendships, communities and identities developed and later flourished.

For many entering the camps as teens, the daily indignities of having to share close quarters were obscured by the relative freedom of a small community where children otherwise restricted by structure could hang out all day long.

Nakada joined a group called ``The Vandals.'' The boys, who remained friends years later, worked in the camp's commissary together, played baseball and sometimes just goofed around.

``We didn't really think of the future too much there because we didn't know what was going to happen,'' he said.

Bo Sakaguchi, 81, a retired dentist, thought he had his future figured out. The youngest of six children wanted to graduate from North Hollywood High School as his brothers and sisters had before him.

``I felt disappointed, but there was nothing I could do. We were forced to leave our homes. The old saying among the Japanese is, 'It couldn't be helped,''' he said.

``For me it meant we had to go with the flow ... We had to go on with our lives,'' he said. ``Because of the racial prejudice, having the face of the enemy, we weren't accepted. That was something we had to accept.''

Rachel Uranga, [phone]

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Helen Isa dons her grandson's cap and gown at home last week as she looks forward to receiving her diploma.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer

(2) Jun Okimoto, 81, right, and Nancy Takayama Sumiko say the pledge of allegiance at the start of a Glendale schools meeting where Sumiko's late parent and Okimoto were graduated.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer

(3) Retired dentist Bo Sakaguchi of Northridge looks ahead to graduation from North Hollywood High School - delayed decades by his internment during World War II.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer