Sam Ozaki, the first Asian-American principal in the Chicago Public Schools, was part of a national effort during the 1980s to get reparations to the more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans who were placed in internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a law that issued a formal apology and awarded each survivor $20,000 in damages.
“Sam was a remarkable man with a strong sense of social justice,” said Bill Yoshino, Midwest director of the Japanese American Citizens League. “Not only did he feel it was a grave injustice what happened to his family, but he never wanted this to happen again to any individual or group of people. He was a voice of reason when people’s thinking can be clouded by events at any given time.”
Ozaki, who fought and later received a Purple Heart in World War II, often spoke of his experiences to students and civic groups. Those appearances became more frequent after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the longtime Rogers Park resident became deeply concerned that xenophobia could again grip the country.
“It’s important to tell the American public about it so they know what happened, so they realize the violation of our civil liberties and so this kind of thing will never happen again,” he said in a 2007 interview that appeared in the newsletter of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s American Asian Resource and Cultural Center.
Ozaki, 90, who retired in 1989 after 12 years at Taft High School on the Northwest Side, died Sept. 23 at Swedish Covenant Hospital after a bout with pneumonia. He was a longtime resident of Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood.
“His students loved and remembered him,” said his daughter-in-law, Marina Ozaki. “Not too long ago he received a letter from a student that attended Taft, who wrote to thank him for always taking the time to chat with her in the hallway. She said his kindness helped get her through the day.”
Ozaki was 17 and a senior in high school in San Pedro County, Calif., when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese.
“We didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was, but we understood the implications,” he wrote in a memoir published several years ago by the Japanese American Service Committee in Chicago. “We knew it was going to be bad for us.”
Within a month, three FBI agents came to his house and questioned the entire family. His father was taken to LA County jail and then to a Department of Justice camp in Santa Fe, N.M. Ozaki and the rest of his family were sent to Santa Anita Park racetrack, arriving in a caravan of about 70 cars in April 1942, he wrote in his memoir.
Horses were removed from their stalls, a temporary surface was laid on the ground and the tight quarters were provided for families like the Ozakis.
“They treated the racehorses with a great deal of care because they were worth money,” Ozaki told the Tribune in a 2011 article. “We were not worth two cents, because we had the face of the enemy.”
He and his family were at Santa Anita for six months before being transferred to the Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas, a more permanent internment camp, where they were joined by his father.
He and four friends volunteered for the Army in September 1944 to serve in the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up almost entirely of Japanese-Americans. His platoon leader was the late Daniel K. Inouye, later a U.S. senator from Hawaii.
“There was a feeling that it was the only way we could prove our loyalty as Americans,” Ozaki told The New York Times in a 2005 story. Ozaki served as an intelligence officer and worked as an interpreter, though he needed a crash course in Japanese to do it.
The 442nd became one of the most highly decorated regiments in American military history and suffered huge casualties, seeing combat in Italy and France. In 2011, the unit was collectively honored, along with the 100th Infantry Battalion and Japanese-Americans serving in the Military Intelligence Service, with the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian award.
“The medal meant a great deal to him, but it was more important to him to honor those who fought and never returned from the war,” said his daughter, Nancy Ozaki.
Without a home to return to in California, Ozaki joined his sister in Chicago after the war. He enrolled at Roosevelt College and worked sorting files part time while earning his bachelor’s degree in education in 1953. In 1956, he got his master’s degree at Loyola University in school administration and supervision.
He first taught at Lemoyne Elementary School before passing the principal’s exam. He had stints at Shoesmith and O’Keeffe elementary schools, and Harrison and Lakeview high schools, before becoming the principal at Taft in the late 1970s.
Ozaki’s wife of 57 years, Harue, a CPS nurse for many years, died in 2012.
Survivors also include two sons, Edward and Stephen; two sisters Lily Teraji and June Nomura; and four grandchildren.
Services have been held.
