Lawson Sakai modestly recounts his life’s accomplishments: He was awarded a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars during World War II. He helped run a vegetable farm and worked in the food-processing business. Then he launched a successful travel agency. But the one thing that eluded Sakai for almost 70 years was a college diploma.
This is the lede in the LA Times story about Compton Community College awarding honorary degrees to interned Japanese-Americans. It’s just about the most underwhelming thing I can imagine reading. I understand it takes a huge amount of magnanimity to get over something like the injustice visited upon Sakai, but if I were him (I = lacking that magnanimity) I would have done something I probably can’t describe here.
