Lessons from the Past for Students of Today: Navigating Resettlement through the NJASRC
A version of this article originally appeared in Nichi Bei Weekly.
Amid the current expansion of ICE detention and immigration enforcement, US citizen children of undocumented immigrants are also being impacted. While some attention has been given to the minor children who are being “voluntarily deported” alongside their immigrant parents, a subset of this population that has been largely ignored are college-bound high school graduates and current college students. For students whose parents were helping to shoulder the increasingly heavy burden of college tuition, their sudden absence can cause a promising future to be delayed or altogether halted as young adults grapple with their sudden change in circumstance. As concerned citizens consider how they might support such individuals, it merits further study as to how college-aged Nisei navigated their own challenges during the wartime incarceration.
The War Relocation Authority (WRA) is widely known to have overseen the leave clearance and resettlement program. This tends to overshadow the earlier efforts by a civilian-led organization called the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council (NJASRC). Established in May 1942, NJASRC worked with students and their families to help place more than 4,000 Nisei into over 600 colleges and educational institutions in 46 different states by the time they ceased operations in June 1946. In order for the students to be enrolled at colleges outside of the exclusion zone, both the students and the schools themselves had to be cleared by military intelligence. Working across multiple state lines and having to negotiate with several government agencies and the military required incredible diplomacy and understanding of the national landscape.
With its first cohort of 152 college students placed in schools during the Fall semester of 1942, Nisei student resettlers underwent intense scrutiny by a society at the height of anti-Japanese sentiment. These were mostly students who were previously enrolled at West Coast universities whose education was interrupted by the forced removal. As the war dragged on, some students who graduated from high schools in the WRA camps would also benefit from the NJASRC. Ultimately their successful integration into campus communities positioned them as goodwill ambassadors who paved the way for the larger resettlement efforts.
In a 1945 brochure published by NJSARC titled “From Camp to College,” WRA Director Dillon Myer is quoted on the front page, “When the story of relocation is written and WRA’s objective of emptying the relocation centers is achieved, we will be able to look back and say that the first impetus to resettlement out of the centers was provided by student relocation.”
While the Council did not guarantee tuition funding directly, a significant amount of scholarship money was channeled through it to scholarship recipients. Data published by NJASRC in 1945 claims that, “up to December 31, 1944, a total of $188,972 in scholarship aid had been channeled through the Council, of which $140,361 came from thirteen national church boards, $34,971 from the World Student Service Fund, and $13,640 from other sources.” With current inflation rates, the total amount of scholarship funding exceeds $3.5 million. Organized and funded by private individuals, the NJASRC is a remarkable example of allyship at a time when advocating for the Japanese American community was seen as tantamount to being a “Jap sympathizer.”
The success of the NJASRC is a testament to its largely Quaker leadership, as it was established in part by American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization originally formed to support conscientious objectors during the first World War. Headquartered in AFSC’s building in Philadelphia, a city known for its Quaker roots, the NJASRC was able to leverage goodwill and relationships with local universities to place their first students in the mid-Atlantic region at Swarthmore College – another historically Quaker institution.
NJASRC was helmed by John Nason, a practicing Quaker and Philadelphia transplant from Minnesota, who since the young age of thirty-five had served as president of Swarthmore College. Nason would use his connections to both the Quaker schools and regional ties in Minnesota to help place transfer students at a time when many university administrators were reluctant to do so.
In his recently published book “Enmity and Empathy” about the resettlement of Japanese Americans in Minnesota, author Ka F. Wong surmises that there were few regions of the country available for would-be resettlers to choose from. Wong explains, “Chances in the interior states under the jurisdiction of DeWitt’s Western Defense Command—Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah—were also slim. The Southern region, with its own “Jim Crow” segregation policy, was not interested in being a host.” This meant that the Midwest and Eastern states became important sites for early Nisei resettlers.
However, getting clearance from the government proved difficult even within those regions. NJASRC explains in their 1945 brochure, “in the early summer of 1942 the military authorities in Washington felt that for security reasons no evacuee student should attend any college within twenty-five miles of a railroad terminus. This decision seemed so restrictive that there was some question as to whether it was worthwhile to go forward with the program at all.” After the loyalty questionnaire was administered in February 1943 and the WRA began resettlement in earnest, military intelligence relented on many of their earlier guidelines. This made it easier for NJASRC to get clearance for hundreds of previously restricted schools.
Another matter complicating school choice was that many of the larger state schools located in the Midwest had taken on government research contracts involving technology and medicine intended for military use. This became a major issue that delayed the clearance of some schools until late 1944, and some even denied admission to Japanese Americans through the end of the war. University of Minnesota’s president Walter C. Coffey sparked national debate in April 1942 when he created a policy to deny all transfer requests from Japanese Americans.
In an article titled, “Can’t Be Done – This is War,” Indiana University archivist Katie Martin explains, “Coffey, wrote to his peers to express his hesitancy in admitting Japanese students until the US government could address the issue and outline a clear course of action.” Indiana University, Purdue, and several other prominent universities would follow suit by preemptively banning students of Japanese ancestry from being admitted.
The issue at Indiana University resurfaced almost a decade ago when a Yonsei undergraduate student and then JACL Hoosier Chapter President Eric Langowski was researching in the university archive. In 2019 Langowski was commissioned by the university to produce a research paper on the ban titled, “Education Denied,” that was published in the Indiana Magazine of History, but it would take further direct action before the university would concede.
The issue came to a head at a Day of Remembrance event held on campus in February 2020 when Langowski shared a petition requesting the university to issue an apology. After the Bloomington Human Rights Commission and other influential local groups added their support to the petition, college president Michael McRobbie finally issued an apology. Reflecting on the importance of this closure, Langowski writes, “I think it’s a great way to kind of close the chapter of not having ever acknowledged IU banned Japanese Americans after it happened. Hopefully it will spur wider conversation about who is able to be a student at IU.” In November 2021, a memorial plaque was installed outside of IU’s Herman B Wells Library that expressed regret at the wartime admissions ban and renewed the university’s commitment to social justice and equity.
As the IU incident illustrates, Nisei students had to overcome enormous challenges simply to attend the university of their choice, let alone in navigating wartime prejudice. Not all of the NJASRC students were able to complete their degrees as some were drafted, accepted jobs in war industries, or left college for other reasons. Some stayed in the regions where they were resettled, raising families and becoming a part of the community. Others migrated back to the West Coast shortly after the exclusion zone was lifted.
Wherever their lives took them, the Nisei students resettled through the NJASRC held deep gratitude for the organization and individual patrons who helped support their early release from camp. This is perhaps best exemplified by the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund (NSRCF), a non-profit organization that awards scholarships to Southeast Asian refugee students. NSRCF was established in 1980 by two New England based Nisei couples: Nobu and Yosh Hibino of Connecticut, and Mayme and Lafayette Noda of New Hampshire.
Lafayette Noda details the organization’s origins, “one day during a get-together, questions arose: “What could we do besides socialize? What could we do to help the Southeast Asian refugee students whose needs and difficulties were so often described in the news?” We were keenly aware of the similarities between those young people and ourselves. Like them, we had been victims of war, our financial resources had been limited, our opportunities narrowed by the prejudice in the society around us. We had been incarcerated in wartime camps. They had come to the United States from refugee camps, driven from their homelands by war.”
Since 1980 NSRCF has awarded over 1,200 scholarships totaling $1.4 million, in over 30 cities and regions. Their mission values are driven in part by the Japanese concept of ongaeshi, or acknowledging the past support one has received and endeavoring to repay it. NSRCF’s continued work in funding under resourced communities demonstrates an actionable strategy for improving the lives of current immigrant communities and their American born children. Similarly, looking to the past successes of the NJASRC may inspire other such solutions to mitigate the horrors wrought by the current immigration enforcement landscape today.