Valedictorian Speaks Her Piece 52 Years After the Fact

Amy Uchimoto Naito finished first in her high school class, but it took 52 years for her to actually walk the stage in cap and gown and collect her honors as valedictorian.

Less than a month before Naito’s scheduled graduation from Armijo High School in Fairfield, Calif., in 1942, she and her family were sent to an internment camp, as were more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry.

Half a century later--after Naito had finished college, done a stint in the Army, borne four children and retired from nearly two decades as an elementary school teacher--Armijo High honored her at this year’s graduation.

“With all the troubles and anxiety and turmoil we were going through (in 1942), the only comfort I had was that I was expecting this diploma with this little gold seal (for honor roll), and when I didn’t receive it I was very devastated,” remembered Naito, 69, who lives in Costa Mesa. “That was the one thing I was looking forward to. There weren’t too many things to look forward to--we knew that evacuation was coming down the road. I was hoping we would still be around at least through the graduation ceremony, but that was not to be.

“I appreciate it very much that it is coming to me now.”

Armijo High Principal Rae Lanpheir heard Naito’s story earlier this spring from a Fairfield man who knows her son and decided immediately to do something about it.

After discussions with the students in Armijo’s Class of 1994, Lanpheir arranged for Naito to speak at the high school’s June 10 graduation, an honor she’d been denied during her senior year.

In addition, she was showered with gifts: two Olympic-style medals for academic achievement, a special valedictorian’s watch, the 1942 yearbook she had never received, an honor sash and the gold seal on her diploma that top students earn. The mayor of Fairfield even gave her a key to the city, and some members of the Class of ’42 were there to watch.

“It was something wrong and it had to be made right,” Lanpheir said, explaining why he wanted to bring Naito back for graduation.

“It was awesome beyond belief to know that you’ve taken 50 years of pain and turned that around,” he said. “What it has done for this community is to prove that we care about people--it doesn’t matter who you are, what color you are, what faith you are--we’re interested in the human mind, the human spirit.”

Naito, the third of four children of Japanese immigrant parents, was born and raised in Fairfield--then a sleepy village of about 1,300. In May, 1942, government officials swooped down in a flourish, Naito recalled, sending her family and other Japanese Americans in Fairfield to a so-called evacuation center in Turlock, Calif. Eventually, Naito, her father, mother, sister and two brothers were transferred to a camp near the Gila River in Arizona, where Naito and her family spent about 18 months.

Ten other Japanese American students from her Armijo High class also were sent to one of the government’s 10 internment camps, she said.

The school did send Naito her diploma in 1942, but it did not note her academic success. It was not until Lanpheir telephoned a few months ago that Naito discovered she had been valedictorian.

“My parents had always placed a huge premium on education. That was the first thing my mother would tell us in the morning, ‘Do well at school.’ And then the first thing she would ask us when we got back was, ‘How did you do at school?’ ” recalled Naito, who played basketball, baseball and volleyball and represented the Girls’ Athletic Society in student government while at Armijo.

“I felt that I must do that to please my parents as well as myself,” she said. “So when I did not get the honor I had looked for, I was very, very crushed.”

Naito was able to leave the internment camp along with other high-achieving teen-agers through a program that sent Japanese Americans to Midwestern and East Coast colleges.

She attended Boston University and later was trained as an occupational therapist in Wisconsin, then served as a second lieutenant in the Women’s Medical Specialist Corps and worked at a variety of military hospitals. After marrying, Naito returned to California in 1960; she taught for 17 years in the Cypress School District, retiring in 1984.

As Naito returned to her birthplace for the first time in decades earlier this month, a crowd of about 4,000 feted her at graduation with cheers of “Way to go, Amy!” and a standing ovation.

Afterward, she visited her 98-year-old mother in a nursing home.

“I took all the awards that I got and showed them to her, and she was very impressed,” Naito said softly. “I said, ‘Mom, do you remember how I felt in camp when I did not get my awards?’ and she said, ‘Yes, you were very disappointed.’ I said, ‘Well, Mom, I guess if one waits long enough, things work out in the end.’ And she said, ‘Yes, that’s true.’ ”