Background
A Japanese American, Honda was born in Walnut Grove, California in 1941 and spent his early childhood in a Japanese American internment camp in Colorado. Between the ages of one and five, Honda recalls living in Camp Amache,an internment camp located in Southeastern Colorado. It was during these formative years spent within the camp that young Michael Honda learned that being of Asian descent carried with it a negative connotation in the United States. Grasping the injustice wrought on minorities who were legal, law-abiding citizens of this country instilled in him a lifelong goal to overcome these injustices, to fight for those less fortunate than others, and to persevere in providing opportunities for all Americans regardless of race or religious preferences.
So, in 1953 his family returned to California, where they became strawberry sharecroppers in Blossom Valley in San Jose.
Honda first attended Andrew P. Hill High School, then transferred to and graduated from San Josė High Academy. He entered San Josė State University, but interrupted his studies from 1965 to 1967 to serve in the United States Peace Corps in El Salvador, where he became fluent in Spanish. He returned to San Josė State, where in 1968 he received a Bachelor degree in biological sciences and Spanish. He continued at San Josė State, earning a Master's degree in Education (1974).
In his 30-year career as an educator, Honda was a science teacher, a school board member, and a principal at two public schools, and he conducted educational research at Stanford University.
Read more about this topic: Mike Honda
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