Mitsi Mihara has a hard time orienting herself on the expansive University of Washington campus. When she was attending school here, there was no such thing as Red Square. The space now occupied by Meany, Odegaard, Kane and Gerberding was just a grassy field. But she remembers Suzzallo Library, and the picture of her and her Japanese-American classmates once taken on its steps.

Mihara, now 87, was one of 449 students of Japanese descent to be forced to abandon her education and move to an internment camp after Executive Order 9066 was enforced in May 1942. But she was not among the fortunate group of Japanese-American students who received help from the UW to transfer to another school. Mihara was sent, with her parents and two younger sisters, to the temporary internment camp on the Puyallup fairgrounds, and from there was moved to the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho. Now, 66 years later, she recalls the experience.

Molly Rosbach:

After Pearl Harbor, how did it feel to be a Japanese-American living in the United States? How did the community act toward you?

Mitsi Mihara:

Well, right after Pearl Harbor, I felt very anxious, stressful. I hated my so-called Japanese background. Everybody was staring at me. I was worrying about my folks — they were born in Japan. I didn’t know what was going to happen to us. There had been talks of the alien parents being sent to concentration camps, but I didn’t know about the U.S. citizens. Then the Executive Order 9066 said people could be excluded.

I was walking up the Ave when a white lady came up and spat on me and said, “You dirty Jap.” I felt I would have to accept that humiliation. I was taking a speech class at the time; I gave a talk about why I would be loyal to the University of Washington, and I remember my classmates listening very hard to what I had to say.

It was a time of fear, distress, uncertainty, anger and pain.

Rosbach:

How did it feel to be forced to leave the UW before you could finish your degree?

Mihara:

I was a junior. I had just turned 21, and I was looking forward to voting that year. I was really disappointed on that. I was studying business at that time, but there was so much discrimination — I don’t know that I could’ve even landed a job. I don’t know what I would’ve done. But I did want to get that degree. Education was stressed among our group of people. In order to get anywhere, you had to have an education, especially for minority groups.

Rosbach:

What did you do and where did you go once you were “evacuated”?

Mihara:

I was in the Puyallup assembly center from May 1942 to September 1942. Then from September 1942 to January 1943, I was in the Minidoka relocation center [in Idaho]. After I got out of the camp, I found a place for my sister, who was four years younger than me, to be a housemaid like I was. Then I went to Hanover, Indiana, and finished my last year. [Before], when I was in Evanston [Illinois], I wanted to get into Northwestern, but they weren’t accepting us because they said they had defense contracts. [There were so many schools] in the Midwest; I had to narrow it down to see where I wanted to apply. Hanover was the friendliest answer I got; the president and his wife were missionaries to China or somewhere like that.

When I went to Hanover, there was a military ammunition depot, and here I was, a rejected American citizen within 20 miles of that ammunition depot. The president’s wife took me around to various women’s clubs. In the Midwest, they didn’t really know about the situation on the West Coast.

Rosbach:

What were the camps like?

Mihara:

Quite a few of my friends did go to the assembly center [at the Puyallup fairgrounds]. Since we weren’t in communication as a group anymore, I didn’t know where anybody went except our family and the people at the camp.

It was very crowded. In the assembly center, we had barracks. One barrack was divided into six living quarters with plywood boards separating the families from the other rooms. The boards didn’t reach all the way to the ceiling; there was 1 foot or so of space. You could hear the sounds from the other room: babies crying, boys playing poker, people getting up to go use the latrine. There was not much privacy.

The food they gave us, like chili, we’d never eaten that before. The smell of it — we couldn’t stomach it. And it was the first time I’d eaten apple butter. I didn’t know what that was.

Days were quite boring. We were still waiting for them to get organized and to go to the permanent center. We did have church services and some socials, I think. Mostly we played cards and knitted and crocheted and visited our neighbors while we were waiting to go further inland.

Rosbach:

What did you do after you finished college?

Mihara:

I had a government job. I worked for military intelligence for 10 years. Then I worked in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; we called it the civil rights office. I worked in the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act. It was the department that enforced affirmative action and non-discrimination in the workplace. Had it not been for the war, we would not have been able to get into that kind of job.

I gave a talk to a high school two years ago, and I got all these thank-you letters from the students. One-third of them didn’t know about the evacuation, and one-third knew about it but knew very little, and they thanked me for explaining it to them. Since it took place in Washington state, it should be better known. This was at Kentridge High School in Kent.

Rosbach:

Do you feel the UW supported you and your fellow students?

Mihara:

I heard of the UW supporting other students and finding other schools for them to transfer to, but I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t know about this until later.

Rosbach:

What do you think of the UW’s decision to award honorary degrees, 66 years later?

Mihara:

I think it was too late, but it was an incredible thing to have this done for us. I know they had to do a lot of research into all the names to get this for us.

Being a Husky is a big thing for me. My three children and my younger sister graduated from the UW, and they’d always get stuff in the mail, and I always wished I got them, too.

When I was at the UW, my last year there, I went to almost every game. We didn’t even have a student union building then. I always rooted for the Huskies.