ucsf to award honorary degrees to interned students

This Friday, the University of California, San Francisco will award honorary degrees to 68 former Japanese American students who were interned in the United States during World War II. UCSF is the first public university in California to provide such degrees to former students, many of whom will be honored posthumously. Here's some info:

UCSF awards honorary degrees to students interned during WWII

Where:
UCSF Mission Bay Campus (3rd and 16th Streets)
William J. Rutter Center, Robertson Auditorium
1675 Owens Street
San Francisco

When:
Friday, December 4
Doors open: 3:00 p.m.
Ceremony: 3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Reception: 5:00 - 6:00 p.m.

Why:
More than 700 students at four UC campuses - Berkeley, Davis, Los Angeles and San Francisco - were removed from the West Coast in 1942 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order allowing the U.S. military to send Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals to internment camps. In July 2009, the UC Regents voted to suspend a 37-year university moratorium on honorary degrees to acknowledge these former students. The diplomas bear the inscription Inter Silvas Academi Restituere Iustitiam - or "to restore justice among the groves of the academe."

While many have since passed, several honorees will be in attendance, as well as more than 300 members of their families and the community. It's a small gesture -- and a long time coming -- to right a wrong that never should've happened in the first place.

Three other UC ceremonies will follow during annual commencement ceremonies on the Davis, Berkeley, and Los Angeles campuses. For more information about this Friday's UCSF ceremony, go here. And for more information about the UC Honorary Degrees, and interviews with some of the recipients, go here.