today, october 17,2003
homecoming
CUT THE CAPS 9.29.1944
the university daily kansan 15B
Forty World War II veterans, enrolled as freshmen at KU, refuse to don "freshman caps," "thus marking the beginning of the end of this controversial, decades-old tradition.
WELCOME TO CIVILIZATION 12.19.1944
FLOODED —
FALL OF 1951
KU faculty votes to make an introductory course on Western Civilization a requirement for all undergraduates for a five-year trial period.
Students are forced to alternative housing as flooding causes delays in construction. For the full story, go to
www.kansan.com.
Despite outcry, University could not save Japanese-American students from camps
By Ron Knox
correspondent@kansan.com
Kansan correspondent
Tsuyoshi Horike did not bomb PearlHarbor.
He did not dislike the United States or the American way of life. He ran a good business and was close to getting his degree in business and economics from the College of Puget Sound. He did not want to leave his life, his business, his school.
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the government ordered all Japanese Americans to evacuate the West Coast. Horike's parents were born in Japan. He had two choices: transfer schools or be interned in a camp far away from Seattle.
AN URGENT REQUEST
On March 9, 1942, Chancellor Deane Malott received a letter from L.P. Sieg, president of the University of Washington, in Seattle. One month earlier, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that would force more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast into isolated internment camps in Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming and elsewhere in the western United States.
The University of Washington had between 300 and 400 Japanese students attending, Sieg said in his letter. He didn't want them in camps, but they couldn't stay there. Sieg looked to the University of Kansas, and Malott, for help.
"We have known these stu-
ents as excellent scholars and young people," Sieg wrote. "As citizens of the University community, they have been loyal supporters of academic and defense activities."
Sieg asked Malott if some of the students could be relocated to the University or Kansas, if the chancellor could find room for, as Sieg wrote, "a few well qualified Americans of Japanese ancestry."
Washington wasn't the only university looking for help. Malott received letters from the University of California, the University of Oregon and from a small city college outside of Seattle, the
support for taking on displaced Japanese students. For Japanese students to transfer Kansas universities, the board had to approve.
"It is also my strong desire to attend your University. Please give great consideration on my part. I will appreciate very much. Another thing I like to ask your favor, is that it will not be long before I must evacuate so please
"I have consulted with a good
rush your reply."
College of Puget Sound
—Tsuvoshi Horike
Malott responded to Sieg the next week in an encouraging letter. Malott wrote that he wanted the students, but he understood the time and place in which he lived.
a letter sent to Chancellor Deane Malott in 1942 seeking permission to transfer to the University of Kansas.
"Kansas is such a very conservative community that public sentiment is likely to be horrified at the idea," Malott wrote to Sieg. "But I hope not."
On March 17, Malott wrote to Fred Harris, the chairman of the Board of Regents, to voice his
many people here, and none of them showed the slightest hesitancy in saying that we should take some of these students on," Malott wrote.
"It would be an interesting leaven in our group, and the University has a duty to bear some fair share of this problem which, somehow, the nation must solve."
The board would meet two weeks later to make its decision. Japanese students at West
Coast universities, facing internment, waited.
A HEARTENED PLEA
Horike's business, a variety store in Tacoma, Wash., once primed with activity. He started the store from nothing, and it quickly became a popular spot for students in the city. Before Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, several students from the college worked for Horike, selling food and knickknacks to customers after their classes.
After Pearl Harbor, Horike's customers stopped coming. People no longer bought from Japanese stores; it was considered support for the enemy. Business fell off, and Horike shut down the store. The military then ordered he and his family to leave their home. If Horike didn't find a place to transfer, his education would disappear, too.
His economics professor, John Adams, wrote that Horike was "a capable man, capable of thinking and acting wisely under all circumstances."
His professors suggested the University of Kansas, and Horike asked for letters of recommendation.
Charles Battin, chairman of the business administration and economics department, wrote that he believed in Horike's "unqualified loyalty to his community and to America."
The letters, sent on March 27. arrived on Malott's desk days later, but Horike's reply was slow in coming.
If Horike couldn't transfer to another school, the army would force his family onto a train, pull the blinds and ship them off to camps.
So Horike wrote a letter to Malott. In broken English, he pleaded his case.
"It is also my strong desire to attend your University." Horike wrote. "Please give great consideration on my part. I will appreciate very much.
the very thing "Another thing I like to ask your favor," he wrote, "is that it
SEE CAMPS ON PAGE 17
Local league fought for desegregation
Viva Bolova
Viva Bolova
correspondent@kansan.com
Kansan correspondent
One had to have white skin in order to be served in a restaurant when Marnie Argersinger came to town.
The future mayor of Lawrence and wife of former vice chancellor and dean of research and graduate studies Bill Argersinger, arrived with the birth of the civil rights movement in 1946.
"There were times when I was thinking, What am I doing here? I have three little babies at home and we are going to have a riot," Argersinger said.
In the mid-1940s, the turmoil in Lawrence was associated with the Lawrence League for Practice of Democracy, dedicated to fighting racial discrimination. The LLPD was formed after Wesley Sims, an African-American World War II veteran, was thrown out of Varsity Theatre, now Urban Outfitters, 1013 Massachusetts St., for refusing to move to the other side of the balcony.
The league was organized by 11 citizens in 1945, but soon reached a membership of 650. Three years later, it began the process of desegregation of public facilities.
One of the main projects of the LLPD was to establish the first interracial preschool. The Lawrence Community Nursery School, 645 Alabama St., opened its doors in 1948, and still exists. After seven years in operation, the school served African-American, white, Filipino, East Indian, Protestant and Catholic children.
The desegregation of Liberty Hall, 642 Massachusetts St., also occurred in 1948 when about 60 LLPD members took on the establishment. White members went up to the balcony where only the black people were supposed to sit. Downstairs, where it was whites only, blacks sat amongst the LLPD white members. The manager of the theater stopped the movie and asked people to sit where they belonged, yet no one moved.
"None of that still exists, but I am sure there are some parts of town where they discourage blacks from buying a property," Argsinger said. "I still don't think there is equal job opportunity."
Some of the issues that LLPD fought for in the 1960s have now become a part of daily life although people are not totally equal, said Emeritus Harry Shaffer, professor of economics. He said the LLPD fought for the first swimming pool that would allow African Americans.
Shaffer began teaching at the University of Kansas in 1956 and was president of LLPD in 1960.
"It is a moral obligation of University students and professors to fight for others since those whose needs are most precarious are the least able to speak up," Shaffer said.
Yet, according to Shaffer, the most prominent change in campus life for the past 47 years is that students have become less active.
Young people do not appreciate the social changes made, said Sam Adams, former professor of journalism for Media and Minorities and other writing courses. Adams, who is also African-American, taught from 1973 to 1998 and visited Lawrence several times during the Civil Rights era.
Today we have problems of integration, not desegregation, but some things are destined not to change at all, Adams said.
"People who start behind will continue to be behind educationally, politically and economically, unless they work harder and run faster." Adams said. "Still, I'll tell them to blame themselves rather than the system."
- Edited by Ashley Marriott
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