Celebrating 90th birthday, long-ago student gets SPU degree

A stroke in 2007 left Kimiko Nagaoka Mukai unable to remember many details of her long life, but a few stand out. Mukai, who lives in the Keiro nursing home in Seattle's Chinatown International District, says she always loved children and wanted to be a teacher.

That dream was cut short in 1942 when Mukai and her family, along with 110,000 other Japanese Americans on the West Coast, were ordered into internment camps following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Mukai, a sophomore at Seattle Pacific College majoring in Christian education, never returned to school, now named Seattle Pacific University, or earned a degree.

Saturday night, at her 90th birthday party, Seattle Pacific University President Philip Eaton, in full academic regalia, bestowed an honorary degree on Mukai as her sons, extended family and more than 100 friends looked on.

"We're proud that she attended SPU and that she was able to move beyond the painful circumstances of internment to live a full and successful life," Eaton told the family in an e-mail informing them of the university's decision to grant the award.

Last May, the University of Washington awarded 450 honorary degrees to its Japanese-American students forced to leave college. Fewer than 70 were able to attend; many had died.

"This chapter is closing fast," said one of Kimiko's three sons, Dennis Mukai, a Los Angeles attorney who flew in for the event. "I wish we'd done it sooner."

Kimiko grew up with five siblings in Seattle's South Park neighborhood, where they played in the mud flats of the Duwamish River. Her father was a sawmill worker who was often away from home. Her mother was a reporter for a Japanese-American newspaper. Most of their neighbors — from a variety of ethnic groups, according to her brother Harry Nagaoka, 80 — were truck farmers who sold produce at the Pike Place Market.

Kimiko Mukai was a bright and lively student, profoundly influenced by the Baptist missionaries who worked among Japanese immigrant families, her brother said. They encouraged her to attend Seattle Pacific. For room and board, she stayed with a family near campus and worked as the housekeeper.

When President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing the relocation of Japanese Americans, Kimiko had to leave school and rejoin her family. They spent several months at a temporary camp in Puyallup before being sent to Camp Minidoka in Idaho.

"Our whole world was over. We were stuck in a camp," said Harry Nagaoka. Their father suffered a stroke there and died. Two brothers enlisted in the Army, one with the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a mostly Japanese-American unit considered the most decorated, for its size, in U.S. military history.

Kimiko was able to leave camp in 1943 when a high-school beau she'd met at church, Mitsuo "Mark" Mukai, asked her to marry him and join him on a farm in Montana. After the war, the couple moved to Spokane, where they bought a big apartment building and raised their family. Kimiko's husband worked three jobs. She ran the apartment house, where they helped other Japanese-American families re-establish their lives.

At the center of the family's life was the First Baptist Church of Spokane. Kimiko taught Sunday school there for more than 50 years.

Her sons remember her mimeograph machine running off drawings of Bible figures for her pupils to cut out and color. On Sunday mornings, she acted out stories such as "Jonah and the Whale" and "David and Goliath."

"She was really great," said son David Mukai, who said he got out of his own Sunday-school lessons by helping his mom with hers.

Family members say they're honored their mother is receiving a college degree, and that they believe she also has honored the university with her teaching, Christian faith and a lifetime of service to others.

SPU President Eaton said the university has identified seven other Japanese-American students forced to leave school because of the internment, and the school has begun reaching out to their families. Kimiko Mukai's family hopes other private colleges will offer degrees to former students denied an education because of their race.

"It's only right," said Kimiko Mukai's brother Harry. "Kimiko would have finished college. There's no question about that."

Lynn Thompson: 206-464-8305 or lthompson@seattletimes.com