Nao Takasugi’s UCLA letter

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Nao Takasugi was a standout tennis player at UCLA when his family was ordered into a Japanese internment camp. Takasugi, who died Thursday at 87, earned a letterman’s sweater, but ‘I never got the chance to wear it,’ he told the Ventura County Star in 2005.

Friends wanted to borrow it. It disappeared and Takasugi couldn’t recall what happened to it.

He was allowed to leave the internment camp after a few months to finish college in Pennsylvania at Temple and the Wharton School. When he returned to Oxnard after the war, he realized the sweater was gone.

In 2005, UCLA gave him a replacement.

According to the newspaper, one of Takasugi’’s sons, Ronald, and one of his former aides, Mark Dodd, had attended UCLA and brought the matter to the attention of the athletic department.

‘It was a nice little surprise,’ Takasugi said.

-- Keith Thursby