Story23

Like other Japanese American students whose lives were disrupted in 1942, Cromwell Mukai was removed from a college campus to the horse stables at Tanforan, then transferred to the Topaz camp in Utah. Exceptionally, though, he stayed only five days in Topaz before continuing his journey further inland to the University of Nebraska, where he would continue his studies. The opportunity for him to leave the camp resulted from a letter of recommendation written by Professor Wendell Latimer. Our family will forever remember that man, an educator who demonstrated extraordinary care for all students. Beyond one powerful individual, however, this is also the story of a community and an institution that took positive action to address injustice.

Having grown up on a farm in San Diego, my grandfather must have been enthralled to end up at Berkeley’s chemistry department during what would be its most impactful time in history. Their cyclotron had just produced a new element, plutonium; berkelium and californium would later add to this legacy. In 1941, following Gilbert Lewis (of “Lewis dots” fame), Prof. Latimer became the dean of a faculty that included renowned figures such as Glenn Seaborg (of seaborgium fame) who had just started his half-century professorship, and Melvin Calvin (namesake of the photosynthesis cycle) was my grandfather’s teaching instructor. Latimer would also oversee Berkeley’s involvement in the top-secret Manhattan Project. With such consequential responsibilities at the time, it is notable that someone in his position would be sensitive to the plight of a mere undergraduate.

Similar advocacy by Linus Pauling at Caltech is well documented, and the Student Relocation Committee at Stiles Hall was an influence at Berkeley, among many factors that led to the creation of the National Japanese Student Relocation Council (NJSRC) managed by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) of the Quakers. This ultimately relocated thousands of Japanese Americans throughout educational institutions east of the Rockies. Nonetheless, my grandfather was one of the first such cases and he was specifically most grateful to Prof. Latimer, publicly thanking him in the Class Notes section of an alumni magazine.

My grandmother also had some influence. A graduate of Berkeley High School, Kyoko Hoshiga earned degrees in music performance and had taken piano lessons with Mrs. Helen Crawford, who was married to the head of Berkeley’s astronomy department. Among the close-knit faculty at the time, Profs. Crawford and Latimer were colleagues who played chess regularly. My mother would later learn that Mrs. Crawford had told her husband to urge Prof. Latimer to get my grandfather out of the camps. Perhaps it was this woman’s more personal behind-the-scenes advocacy that most directly benefited our family.

Growing up, I first learned this history in the context of college football in my grandparents’ home on the East Coast. I was confused why Grandpa watched the televised Nebraska Cornhuskers games on Saturdays, but also looked up scores for the Cal Bears in the Sunday papers. He explained his dual allegiances without dwelling on the context of the war and relocation, but what I remember best was this clarification: Nebraska was an athletic powerhouse in the midst of historic dominance during the mid-1990s, but Berkeley would always be the preeminent research university. That influence led me to enroll at Berkeley, and I am glad that my grandfather was able to see me achieve this milestone before he passed away in 2002 — even if it wasn’t entirely clear to me whether it was technically his alma mater.

The University of California is famed for not awarding honorary degrees. Since the regents established the policy in 1972, there has been only one exception: UC Berkeley conferred honorary degrees to all of the Japanese American students forced to leave during the war. In 2009, I walked on the stage to receive this posthumous honor on my grandfather’s behalf. My family greatly appreciated this gesture, which formalized the support of an institution — for me, it finally resolved any administrative ambiguity there may have been about which school my grandfather belonged to.