FROM THE HEART OF USC

We Finally Know All Their Names

The list of names of Japanese Americans forcibly interned during WWII has always been woefully inaccurate. Now, a USC Dornsife scholar sets the record straight.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration, fearful that those of Japanese descent would remain loyal to their ancestral home rather than to the United States during World War II, issued Executive Order 9066. The order forced Japanese Americans from their homes to remote camps throughout the U.S. Some 1,600 prisoners died during their incarceration and many lost property and businesses they were forced to abandon.

A complete and accurate list of victims of the executive order has remained elusive over the years. Many names were misspelled and others lost while identities of those born in the camps were often omitted. The Reagan administration’s Civil Liberties Act of 1988 issued an apology to those interned as well as a check for $20,000 to the roughly 80,000 people — including survivors and their families — that the government was able to trace. However, a lack of technology at the time meant that the total number of victims remained inaccurate.

The first comprehensive accounting of those imprisoned is now complete, thanks to the work of Duncan Williams, professor of religion, American studies and ethnicity, and East Asian languages and cultures and director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture.

Williams spent years collecting names from camp rosters and other primary source documents, building a list that not only accurately spells each name, but also produced an accurate tally of the number of people sentenced to the camps.

“Up until this point, everybody’s been guessing,” says Williams. “We came to a total of 125,284 when we finished the project.”

The names are printed in a book titled Ireichō, or The Book of Names, a choice inspired by the Japanese tradition of “Kakochō,” or “The Book of the Past.” A kakochō lists those who have passed away and is placed on altars and read during memorial services.

The book is part of Williams’ and the center’s ongoing effort to memorialize the victims of Executive Order 9066. Their project, Irei: National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration, received a $3.4 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. It will eventually include an online archive and a series of monuments at former camp sites in memory of those imprisoned.

In September, The Book of Names was put on display at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where it will remain for a year. Relatives of victims can stop by to place a Japanese “hanko,” or seal, by their family member’s name, as a way to acknowledge their memory. Relatives can also request changes or additions to the list.

Once any edits have been entered at the end of the book’s residency, the list of those who were interned in the camps will be considered finally complete. —M.C.

Battling New Variants

Pioneering research could help predict — and protect against — new COVID-19 strains.

Researchers have found the first experimental evidence explaining why the COVID-19 virus produces variants such as delta and omicron so quickly.

The findings could help scientists predict the emergence of new coronavirus strains and possibly even produce vaccines before those strains arrive.

Scientists led by USC Dornsife’s Xiaojiang Chen, professor of biological sciences and chemistry, figured out the COVID-19 virus hijacks enzymes within human cells that normally defend against viral infections, using those enzymes to alter its genome and make variants.

The scientists infected human cells with the coronavirus in the lab and then studied changes to the virus’ genome as it multiplied. They noticed that many mutations that arose as the virus replicated itself were caused by changing one particular nucleotide, cytosine (C), to Uracil (U).

The high frequency of C-to-U mutations pointed them toward a group of enzymes called APOBEC, which cells often use to defend against viruses by converting Cs in the virus’ genome to Us with the aim of causing fatal mutations.

In an experimental first, Chen and the team found that the C-to-U mutations actually helped the COVID-19 virus to evolve and develop new strains faster than expected.

“Somehow the virus learned to turn the tables on these host APOBEC enzymes for its evolution and fitness,” Chen says.

Fortunately for researchers looking to overcome COVID-19, every good offense has its weakness. In this case, the mutations created by APOBEC enzymes are not random — they happen at specific places in the virus’ genetic sequence. So, scientists can look for these hotspots and possibly use them to predict what new COVID-19 variants might emerge and suggest how to update vaccines so they protect against any new variants that are likely to spread. —D.S.J. A USC Dornsife alumna donated $15 million in her family’s name to the Department of History at USC Dornsife, the single largest gift to a USC humanities department.

The landmark gift from Elizabeth Van Hunnick follows her donation in 2016 to establish the Garrett and Anne Van Hunnick Chair in European History. Combined, Van Hunnick’s gifts to the department represent one of the largest endowment contributions to any university history department in the United States.

The gift endows three faculty chairs, establishes a faculty research fund, creates a graduate student fellowship and names the department the “Van Hunnick History Department.”

The three new faculty chairs will be named after Van Hunnick and her late father and sister: the Elizabeth J. Van Hunnick Endowed Chair in History; the Garrett Van Hunnick Endowed Chair in History; and the Wilhelmina Van Hunnick Endowed Chair in History.

The previously established Garrett and Anne Van Hunnick Endowed Chair in European History was named in honor of Elizabeth Van Hunnick’s late parents.

“This landmark gift will not only provide essential support for our researchers to pursue cutting-edge scholarship, it will help the department become a magnet for outstanding new faculty, propelling this already strong department to a position of national preeminence,” said USC Dornsife Dean Amber D. Miller.

Van Hunnick, an alumna of USC Dornsife’s history department and resident of San Diego County, said she hopes her gift will help elevate the department to even greater prominence and support the development of more informed leaders.

“I am encouraged by the fact that we’ll have an outstanding history department, hopefully known nationwide and attracting many prominent scholars,” she said. “That’s important because you can see what’s happening in the world today; you see leaders and politicians making the same mistakes over and over again.

“Things could be different,” she said, “if they would just look at history and understand what happened in other cultures and civilizations. You can truly learn a lot from the past.”

Jay Rubenstein, professor of history, chair of the newly renamed Van Hunnick History Department and director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Premodern World, noted that the “astonishing” gift will transform the department.

“The world has always been a highly interconnected place, and the story of its past is a tangled and serpentine tale,” he said. “To tell that story properly requires history departments with great geographic and chronological reach. Thanks to this gift, USC Dornsife’s history department can attain that degree of wide-ranging excellence.”

Van Hunnick’s parents, Garrett and Anne, emigrated to the United States from the Netherlands in the 1920s.

“Since both my parents were born in the Netherlands, we were raised learning about European culture and history, and we traveled frequently to Europe,” Van Hunnick said.

A teacher, she journeyed to dozens of storied locations around the globe, documenting her excursions on film and sharing them in her classroom.

“I was interested in going to centers of ancient cultures,” she said, including Greece, Rome, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. “I took thousands of 35mm slides, and I would show them to my students. Or maybe the term is ‘bored them,’” she added, laughing, “but I thought it was valuable to share what I saw and learned.”

This spirit of seeking broader knowledge led to Van Hunnick’s support of USC Dornsife and the history department.

“I agree with the Greeks that in order to be a well-educated person you should study many, many different things,” she said. “It’s not just taking a course to get a job. That’s fine, but it’s important to be — I guess the oldfashioned term is — ‘well-rounded.’”

For History Department Chair Rubenstein, the gift is nothing short of historic.

“This moment is — and as a historian, I don’t use this term lightly — a revolution.”

BOOK OF NAMES PHOTO BY KRISTEN MURAKOSHI; COVID-19 PHOTO COURTESY OF UNSPLASH PHOTO COURTESY OF ELIZABETH VAN HUNNICK

One for the History Books

Alumna Elizabeth Van Hunnick’s $15 million endowment puts the history department on a path to preeminence. By Darrin S. Joy