In 1942, President FDR signed executive order 9066, forcing Japanese American citizens into internment camps. Many of those interned citizens were students at USC.

One of them, Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi, was an extremely outspoken advocate for Japanese American rights. She wrote several opinion articles to the Daily Trojan in the three months between Pearl Harbor and her internment, aiming to highlight the dedication she and other Nisei had to defending America. “We are real Americans. What else could we be? American born, American educated, loving American tolerance, justice, and equality,” she wrote. Nishi also wired a telegram directly to president FDR himself, just days before he signed executive order 9066. In her telegram, she called the president’s actions an “undemocratic curtailment of constitutional rights and civil liberties.”

Tim Yuge, whose uncle Hitoshi Sageshima was also interned during his time at USC, gives us context as to why it was particularly devastating to first generation Japanese Americans for their kids to be forced out of school. Of the 121 Nisei students interned during their time at USC, none were welcome back after their release.