User:Ej2022/Internment of Japanese Americans

Student leave to attend Eastern colleges
Japanese-American students were not longer allowed to attend college in the West during the period of Internment, and many found ways to transfer or attend schools in the Midwest and East in order to continue their education.

Most Nisei college students followed their families into camp, but a small number arranged for transfers to schools outside the exclusion zone. Their initial efforts expanded as sympathetic college administrators and the American Friends Service Committee began to coordinate a larger student relocation program. The Friends petitioned WRA Director Milton Eisenhowe r to place college students in Eastern and Midwestern academic institutions.

The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council was formed on May 29, 1942, and the AFSC administered the program. The acceptance process vetted college students graduating high school students through academic achievement and a questionnaire centering on their relationship with American culture. Some high school students were also able to leave the internment camps through boarding schools. 39 percent of the Nisei students were women. The student's tuition, book costs, and living expenses were absorbed by the U.S. government, private foundations) such as the Columbia Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation) and church scholarships, in addition to significant fundraising efforts led by Issei parents in camp.

Outside camp, the students took on the role of "ambassadors of good will", and the NJASRC and WRA promoted this image to soften anti-Japanese prejudice and prepare the public for the resettlement of Japanese Americans in their communities. Some students worked as domestic workers in nearby communities during the school year.

At Earlham College, President William Dennis helped institute a program that enrolled several dozen Japanese-American students in order to spare them from incarceration. While this action was controversial in Richmond, Indiana, it helped strengthen the college's ties to Japan and the Japanese-American community. (*CITATION*) At Park College in Missouri, Dr. William Lindsay Young attempted to get Nisei students enrolled despite backlash from the greater Parkville city.

At Oberlin College, about 40 evacuated Nisei students were enrolled. One of them, Kenji Okuda, was elected as student council president. Three Nisei students were enrolled at Mount Holyoke College during World War 2.

In total, over 600 institutions east of the exclusion zone opened their doors to more than 4,000 college-age youth who had been placed behind barbed wire, many of whom were enrolled in West Coast schools prior to their removal.

Incomplete List of schools attended by Japanese Americans during their period of internment:[edit]
Boston University

Colorado State University

Columbia University

Connecticut College

Cornell

Harvard

Hunter College

Iowa State

McFierson College

Mount Holyoke College

National College in Kansas City

New York University

Ohio State

Parsons College

Simpson College

Smith University

University of Chicago

University of Colorado

University of Illinois

University of Michigan

University of Minnesota

University of Missouri

University of Nebraska

University of Oregon

University of Utah

University of Texas

University of Wisconsin

Vassar College

Washington University

Wesleyan College

Wheaton College

Yale

Nisei Attending Eastern colleges at the End of WWII:[edit]
The NJASRC ceased operations on June 7, 1946. After the internment camps had been shut down, releasing many Issei parents with little belongings, many families followed the college students to the eastern cities where they attended school. In 1980, former Nisei students formed the NSRC Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund. In 2021, The University of Southern California apologized for discriminating against Nisei students. It issued posthumous degrees to the students whose educations were cut short or illegitimated, having already issued degrees to those surviving.