RIGHTING A WRONG ON GRADUATION DAY.Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
Christine King Christine Elizabeth King is a British historian and university administrator. She is currently Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Staffordshire University.[1] wasn't sure how the Canoga Park High School Canoga Park High School is a public school located in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California, USA, within the Los Angeles Unified School District. It is located right across the street from the Topanga Plaza shopping center. Class of 2006 was going to react to the side trip the school was taking Friday at graduation ceremonies before handing out its diplomas. There was some old business from 61 years ago to take care of first -- a wrong that was finally being righted. Would the students care that her mother, Dorothy Morita, now 80, never got the chance to graduate from Canoga Park High because of her last name? Did they even know about Executive Order 9066 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed after Japan entered World War II and became our enemy? How more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in this country were uprooted from their lives and sent to internment internment, in international law, detention of the nationals or property of an enemy or a belligerent. A belligerent will intern enemy merchant ships or take them as prize, and a neutral should intern both belligerent ships that fail to leave its ports within a camps? Many of them lost their businesses and homes. By comparison, her mother was lucky. She just lost her chance to graduate from her high school 61 years ago. She was out of town on a forced, three-year hiatus from freedom, living in Wyoming's Heart Mountain Relocation Center relocation center, in U.S. history, camp in which Japanese and Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. Fearing a Japanese invasion, the military leaders, under authority of an executive order, defined (Mar. with her parents. ``It was so long ago, and kids at graduation ceremonies are excited about their futures, not the past,'' King said Monday by phone from her Colorado home. ``That's why I was so surprised when I looked out from that stage at their faces. They were quiet and respectful. They cared that my mother was finally getting her diploma.'' Mas Okui, a retired Canoga Park High teacher, saw the same look as he stood at the podium talking about how he was taken out of school at age 10 and sent to the Manzanar relocation camp with his parents for 3 1/2 years. ``I told the kids it happened once, it could happen again,'' Okui said. ``It's one of the things I appreciate about President Bush. ``Moments after 9-11 he was on TV telling the nation this wasn't our fellow Arab-Americans doing this, it was terrorists. Nobody was saying that in 1942.'' ``I always tell people that according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the Constitution I could be president today,'' Okui said. ``But in 1942 I was locked up because I looked like the enemy.'' She has a spot of prominence set aside on her bedroom wall, Dorothy Morita said by phone Monday from Northern California Northern California, sometimes referred to as NorCal, is the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. The region contains the San Francisco Bay Area, the state capital, Sacramento; as well as the substantial natural beauty of the redwood forests, the northern , where she lives with another daughter. That's where her 1945 high school diploma A high school diploma is a diploma awarded for the completion of high school. In the United States and Canada, it is considered the minimum education required for government jobs and higher education. An equivalent is the GED. will be going soon. She wasn't feeling well last week, so she couldn't make the trip down to graduation ceremonies. Her daughter accepted her diploma for her. ``It was so very nice that after all this time my old high school would do something like this for me,'' she said. Robert Nagai, Canoga Park High assistant principal, arranged for a replica of a 1945 diploma and a real 2006 one to be given to Dorothy. In 2004, a California law California Law consists of 29 codes, covering various subject areas, the State Constitution and Statutes. See also
n. 1. a. A student or a recent graduate undergoing supervised practical training. b. before graduating. Dorothy never did get the chance to graduate from high school after leaving that internment camp with her father, a farmer, and her mother, a housekeeper. She was almost 20 by then. Love, marriage and raising her own family interceded. One thing she wanted us to know: Her parents loved this country and would never have done anything to harm it. ``But fear can be a very ugly, unreasonable thing,'' the oldest member of the 2006 graduating class of Canoga Park High said. dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com (818) 713-3749 CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- 2) Left, Dorothy Morita in 1945. Right, Morita, at 80, today. She finally received her diploma with Canoga Park High School's Class of 2006. |
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