Word: fujimoto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
During the summers off from Harvard, Fujimoto traveled to Alaska to earn “good money” working in salmon canneries. The 1942 edition of the Harvard Album, a class yearbook, noted that Fujimoto received the Edmund Ira Scholarship while he was here...
...didn’t give a damn about grades,” Fujimoto said. “I came from an immigrant family and had no background in a lot of the subjects I was studying. At high school, they never even taught us the Periodic Table, and there I was, competing with fellows from prep schools who had already taken these things. My A’s in science were balanced by my C’s in everything else, but graduating with honors meant nothing to me then...
...those A’s couldn’t erase his ancestry. “Here I was, a college graduate from Harvard University, and not a single company or place would offer me a job,” says Fujimoto. “Not only that, but my draft board had the audacity to classify me as an ‘enemy alien.’ When I applied to graduate school at [University of] Illinois, they turned me down on the basis that there was an Army air base right next to the campus. I saved that letter...
Fujimoto’s parents were finally allowed to leave Minidoka concentration camp and travel east to Chicago, where they remained for the rest of their lives. Fujimoto, meanwhile, went onto graduate school in chemistry at University of Michigan—an all-expenses fellowship...
...Michigan was unusual in that it went all-out to welcome the Japanese rather than turn them away,” says Fujimoto. “In fact, they were running a Japanese language program for soldiers, so they wanted as many Japanese there as possible in hopes that we might be able to help...