one generation helps another

This is a really great story in the Los Angeles Times about a scholarship program created by former Japanese American internees of World War II, being used to help young college-bound Southeast Asian students in Long Beach find their footing: Helped during misfortune, World War II internees now help others.

The scholarship program, called the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund Inc., was started in 1980 by a group of largely West Coast Japanese Americans who ended up in New England after the war. The founders were mostly recipients of a Japanese American wartime college program themselves who decided to give back.

With stories of Vietnamese boat people filling the news at the time, the founders proposed that the fund help Southeast Asians displaced by war rather than their own relatively assimilated and economically comfortable community. The fund rotates among cities; this year the recipients were chosen from Long Beach. To learn more about the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund, go to the website here.