One of the best things about Macalester is how interesting, smart, and multitalented its students are. Here’s one we recently ran across:

Name: Jeffrey Yamashita

Class: 2011

Hometown: Honolulu, Hawaii

Major: History, American studies

Scholarship: Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship

Project: “Minority Cannon Fodder: Japanese American and Korean Resistance During World War II”—a transnational comparative study of gender norms and citizenship between Japanese Americans and their relationship with the American military and Koreans in the Japanese Imperial Army

Family ties: Yamashita is part of the fifth generation of his Japanese American family to live in Hawaii. Two of his great uncles served in the famous 442^nd Regimental Combat Team, the highly decorated Japanese-American unit that rescued the “lost battalion” in WWII

Sports: Although he played only water polo in high school, Yamashita is now captain of both the men’s water polo team and the men’s swim team. He has three top 10 times in Macalester history (50 free, 100 free, 100 fly) and was awarded an NCAA leadership award in May 2009.

Future plans: Aspires to be accepted into the ethnic studies graduate program at the University of California at Berkeley

Other: Loves to surf, hopes to return to Hawaii someday (who wouldn’t?)