Feedback on the last issue

Another spectacular Minnesota Alumni magazine. It is one of the few things I read from cover to cover—thank you, thank you, thank you!

Mark Ritchie (B.A. ’86)
Life Member
Minneapolis

In the article about Hubert Humphrey [“The Education of Hubert H. Humphrey,” Summer 2024] there is a photo of JFK, LBJ, HHH, and two “guests.”

My daughter attended Sonnesyn Elementary School in New Hope, Minnesota, in the 1980s. A picture of these five hung in the front entry of the school. The guests are The Post newspaper editor H.O. “Sonny” Sonnesyn and his wife, Margaret.

Bill Sonsin (M.S. ’71)
Life Member
Prescott, Arizona

Thank you for the article on Hubert Humphrey in the summer issue. I’m anxious to read Samuel Freedman’s book.

My family has always been grateful to Humphrey, going back to the 1940s after Executive Order 9066. [Ed. note: This 1942 wartime order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized forced removal of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to internment camps inland.]

When the Army was looking for a place to relocate the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Japanese Language School away from the West Coast, Humphrey, then mayor of Minneapolis, and Harold Stassen, then governor of Minnesota, said they would welcome the Japanese Americans. Most other states refused to do so. The school was first located at Camp Savage and later moved to Fort Snelling for the duration of WWII.

My parents and other families with a connection to the MIS decided to remain in Minneapolis after the war rather than return to the discrimination they would face on the West Coast.

Yes, Humphrey was a champion for civil rights.

Toni Okada (B.S. ’68)
Life Member
Mercer Island, Washington

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