University of Oregon Awards Honorary Degrees

From the Oregonian:

Robert Yasui was a freshman premedical student at the University of Oregon when Executive Order 9066 was issued in the spring of 1942.

He and 19 other Japanese American students were expelled from the university, swept up in the mass roundup at the start of World War II that sent about 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of them U.S. citizens, to what were called internment camps.

That put an abrupt end to Yasui's ties to the university, and for the past 66 years, while he built a successful life as a surgeon in Williamsport, Pa., nothing connected him and the school that he attended briefly as a young man.

But on Sunday, Yasui, now 84, and three other former students were back on the Eugene campus. The university awarded honorary degrees to all 20 of the expelled students on what President Dave Frohnmayer called "a day of many emotions, of joy and regret."

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