During the internment, Japanese American college students were also granted leave to continue their education at participating institutions. Permission for leave took a great deal of time and paperwork, so Christian organizations assisted in the process. The AFSC especially participated in student resettlement as many were concerned about the 3,252 West Coast Nikkei students who had been forced to vacate their education.[1] They also considered these American-born, English-speaking college students to be highly capable “ambassadors of goodwill” who would prove to the American people that the Nikkei could be trusted contributors to society. An editorial in the Santa Anita Pacemaker stated as much: “Upon their scholarship, their conduct, their thoughts, their sense of humor, their adaptability, will rest the verdict of the rest of the country as to whether Japanese Americans are true Americans.”[2] This ambassadorship “helped create a safe environment for the students and, just as importantly, paved the way for future students. Positive receptions of students in new locales also proved the viability of student resettlement to the philanthropic organizations and church mission boards on whose funding [they] relied.”[3] The success of student resettlement would embolden others to leave the camps and favorable reports from initial pioneers would demonstrate that the wider American society was not hostile to the Nikkei. Support for student resettlement even came from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt:
These young people are Americans and they are being denied an education. As far as we know, they are loyal Americans, but for reasons of safety, they must go from the areas where there might be sabotage or where they might be accused of sabotage rightly or wrongly. But they are still American citizens. . . . We are not asking colleges to take aliens or refugees, but refugees from our own coast to the interior.[4]
For these reasons, the National Japanese American Student Relocation Committee (NJASRC) was launched in the spring of 1942 to help students transfer to universities around the country. In a letter, dated May 5, 1942, Milton Eisenhower, director of the WRA, asked Clarence E. Pickett, executive secretary of the AFSC, to organize a national committee to work on this problem.
Encouraged by the willingness of the War Relocation Authority to have a non-government organization assume the responsibility for this program, Pickett called a meeting of educators, government representatives, church people and others in Chicago on May 29, 1942. As a result of this meeting, a National Japanese American Student Relocation Council was formed.[5]
The results were considered a success. Volunteers worked upwards of fourteen hours a day writing letters and processing paperwork so that Japanese Americans would not be denied the opportunity of education. “From July 1942 to June 1946, the Student Relocation Council financially supported 966 Japanese American students. By the end of the war, student relocation programs helped over four thousand incarcerees attend six hundred colleges and universities outside of the restricted zone. Nikkei students received over $270,000 in scholarship money.”[6] Bodine wrote of those monumental efforts:
The Council’s most time consuming and challenging task these past two years has been to overcome the apathy, apprehensiveness and misconceptions that are so often a part of Relocation Center life. In its correspondence with students it has therefore tried to be warm and human. Each boy and girl has been thought of and written to as an individual person, worthy of careful thought and consideration.[7]
Pickett himself recalled in his memoir, For More Than Bread.
Few undertakings have ever been more completely satisfactory to me. About four thousand young people were aided in locating in more than six hundred colleges in various parts of the country, many of them never returning to the west coast. Almost all of these students did very well academically, a high proportion winning special honors, and so far as I know there were no disciplinary cases among them. Also they proved to be excellent “ambassadors” for the over-all Japanese American population, quickly making a place for themselves in terms of friendship and citizenship in the various college communities.[8]
Churches and denominations helped make college a reality for Japanese American students by writing letters of recommendation, appealing to educational institutions, and raising financial support with the help of generous scholarships.[9] In Nebraska, for example, the Lincoln Japanese Student Relocation Council “had grown out of a grassroots movement among local clergy. Chaired by Reverend Robert Drew, the university’s Methodist minister and a member of the FOR, the Lincoln group sent letters to students who had been admitted, met them as they arrived at the train station, and helped arrange housing.”[10] Such concern about the well-being and future advancement of the Nikkei demonstrated the love of Christ in word and deed.
Dr. William L. Young, Sr. (1893-1959) was the president of Park College, a small liberal arts college near Kansas City, Missouri. He was also a revered leader in the Presbyterian Church, former university pastor at the University of Montana, and worker for the National Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church. Park College’s primary objective was to aid students in Christian character growth and believed this commitment stretched across every discipline:
The professor of Bible is no more responsible for advancing the Kingdom of God than any other professor or member of the administrative staff. Caretakers, workers in the green house, the farm, the heat plant, the carpenter shop, the print shop, the Commons [the kitchen and dining hall], should be individuals whose influence is of a positive Christian character.[11]
Young had been greatly impacted by his visit to the Santa Anita Assembly Center in the spring of 1942 and resolved to help the Japanese American internees. Young’s efforts raised a public outcry and later became known as “the Battle of Parkville.”[12] Opposition came from organizations such as the American Legion and American War Mothers. Herbert A. Dyer, the city’s mayor, even threatened court action if the college did not expel the three young Nisei men with their so-called “enemy names.” Young persisted in his efforts, however, and “by June 1942, [he] had secured agreement from Park’s faculty and its board of trustees to accept six Nisei for admission in the fall, provided they (1) could demonstrate the ability to college-level work; (2) were native-born U.S. citizens; (3) were a member of a Christian church; and (4) had the necessary financial resources.”[13] They were one of the first schools to open their doors to Japanese American students. “A total of nine Nisei eventually enrolled at Park, and several went on to distinguished careers.”[14] One of those students, Masaye Nagao, would express her appreciation at the 60th anniversary of the Nisei students’ enrollment at Park College:
I will be forever grateful for Dr. Young and his courage and determination to accept the Nisei students from the camps despite great opposition. His steadfast stand and his commitment to democratic principles allowed us to continue our education and helped us to achieve our dreams. My years at Park were some of the happiest and most rewarding years of my life.[15]
Yuriko Miyachi was fifteen years old when a Quaker family in Pennsylvania, the Albert L. Baileys, sponsored her and another girl from Topaz to receive a private-school education to prepare her for college. One day, Yuriko was dining out with her adoptive family, when the wait staff informed the party that they would wait on everyone except for her. As Yuriko recounted, “In their typical Quaker manner, they quietly got up and said, ‘She is our daughter,’ and left, without causing any other disturbance.”[16]
Another Quaker, Margaret Rodman, was a long-time substitute teacher at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon. She helped one of her students, Esther Torii Suzuki, gain admission to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Rodman also tithed $10 a month for nine months from her $100-a-month salary to support Suzuki, but requested that Suzuki not write her name on the return address of her letters because “the inquisitive postmistress had questioned her about who she knew in St. Paul. The anti-Japanese feeling was so strong in [Rodman’s] small town that she feared losing her job if they found she had a friend of Japanese ancestry.”[17] The NJASRC processed the paperwork and Suzuki recalled how many other Christians helped her during her time at Macalester:
One friend from the Church of the Brethren said her mother, who lived on a farm without electricity, felt that the evacuation was a national shame and she wanted to do something personally for me. She did my laundry in a gas-operated washing machine with homemade soap, so I smelled clean in all my classes. She ironed with a flatiron heated on a wood-burning stove. This dear person packed in large homemade oatmeal cookies, which smelled like homemade soap, but I ate them with relish.
One classmate’s father was a chaplain in the navy, and her mother was director of Christian education in a Presbyterian church in St. Paul. When she heard I skipped breakfasts to save money, she gave $10 to the dean to give to me anonymously.
I missed Japanese food, and one classmate’s father, who was on the faculty and came from Japan when he was 17, cooked sukiyaki for me. In addition, he took his daughter, Ethel, and me to the movies.
One religion professor, Dr. Edwin Kagin, had been a missionary to Korea, and in the first week of school he gave me two persimmons, one for my roommate, Ellen Okagaki. He said he understood prejudice because he was subjected to it in Korea, where everyone commented on his big nose. (I didn’t think his nose was big at all.) . . . The other religion professor, Dr. Milton D. McLean, was advisor to the six Nisei students on campus. He opened up his home every Sunday night for popcorn and apples and we looked forward to going to this warm, loving home.[18]
It is impossible to record the gratitude of these 4,300 students, but the following stories represent a glimpse of the church’s ministry. Providentially, student resettlement would also produce countless missionaries, preachers, and faithful church members for the Nikkei community. Lillian Ota received a full scholarship to attend Wellesley College in May and asked Joe Conard, the Student Relocation Committee executive secretary, to help her secure a release from the Tanforan Assembly Center. Ota received her travel permit by August and thanked Conard by describing Wellesley as “a beautiful place [where] everyone is so friendly and intent on making me feel at home.”[19]
Monica Sone was granted a work scholarship through the help of former missionaries so that she could attend Wendell College in Indiana, a small Presbyterian-affiliated liberal arts college. A minister’s widow, Mrs. Ashford, who lived on the campus grounds, invited Sone to live with her. Sone wrote about her experience: “I tried in vain to tell the Richardsons how happy I was, and was immensely relieved when Dr. Richardson reached for his Bible and began the usual after-dinner worship so I could sob quietly while we bowed our heads for the prayer.”[20]
Fujiko Kitagawa, widow of the Rev. Daisuke Kitagawa, later recalled the help she and her husband had received from a Christian church:
We were members of the First Evangelical and Reformed Church (E & R Church) in San Francisco. The Rev. and Mrs. Carl Nugent, who had previously been missionaries in Japan, were serving the church’s Nisei members as World War II began. When members of the church were interned at Topaz, Utah, the Nugents chose to move there, too, to continue their ministry to the camp inmates. . . .
I had to withdraw from the University of California, Berkeley, in mid-March 1941 in order to evacuate “voluntarily” from San Francisco. . . . I then began hoping for the possibility of going to an inland college. Our former pastor the Rev. Arthur Felkey and his wife, who had moved elsewhere before the war began, were graduates of Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. They recommended me to the college. . . . [T]he national E & R Church assisted me with train fare. . . . The college provided me with tuition scholarship and a job in the college office. I was one of five Nisei from the San Francisco E & R Church who were admitted to Heidelberg in the fall of 1942.
Michito “Frank” Fukuzawa received financial aid to attend college from the Congregational Christian Committee for War Victims and Service and enrolled at the Central YMCA College in Chicago. After being drafted into the army, he returned to Gila River to say goodbye to his parents. During that visit, the Gila River Christian Church presented him with a special armed forces New Testament with a personal message by President Roosevelt. Fukuzawa carried that Bible with him during the war and often looked up verses he had learned in Sunday school or at Christian Endeavor meetings. He eventually married a Christian woman and raised his family to follow Jesus. One of his favorite verses was Isaiah 43:2, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”[21]
Many Nisei students were granted opportunities they never would have dreamed of prior to relocation. Thanks to the financial gifts of five Quaker women, Yoshiye Togasaki may have been the first Japanese American woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.[22] Others, perhaps influenced by their Christian benefactors, pursued theological education for training in ministry. Kayoko Suzukida remembered,
Dr. John Thomas, a New York executive of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, visited us from time to time. When he discovered that my college education had been interrupted, he asked if I wanted to complete my education. He found a scholarship for me, and in October 1942, I left Poston to enter Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. In May 1944, I received a bachelor of religious education.[23]
The Christian church provided many such opportunities for Nisei students. By doing so, they restored lost prospects and emboldened their Nikkei friends with hope for a better future.
[1] Robert W. O’Brien, The College Nisei (New York: Reprinted by Arno Press [1949], 1978), 135-36.
[2] “Students Bear a Great Burden,” Santa Anita Pacemaker (11 July 1942), 4.
[3] Allan W. Austin, From Concentration Camps to Campus: Japanese American Students and World War II (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2004), 2.
[4] International Student Service Executive Committee Meeting (20 May 1942), Box 2068, Series 130, News Items, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, FDRL.
[5] Lord, “Peace Churches,” 86. Dr. Pickett appointed Robbins W. Barstow, president of Hartford Theological Seminary, to head up this joint effort between educators and churchmen. See Allan W. Austin, “National Japanese American Student Relocation Council,” Densho Encyclopedia, accessed at http://encyclopedia.densho.org/National_Japanese_American_Student_Relocation_Council.
[6] “Report on Scholarship Allocations” (July 1942 to 30 June 1946), Box 1/Fld 1, RG 37, Presbyterian Historical Society. “In a little over two-and-one-half years, the Council was able to obtain acceptances for 3,600 students at 550 institutions away from the West Coast” (Timothy Drake, “Leaving Camp for Campus,” Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today 38, no. 11 [November 1992], 19-21. See also Sugimura, Quiet Heroes, 81-84). Eventually, about 4,300 Japanese American students would be able to go from the camps to college.
[7] Pacific Citizen (7 October 1944). Marjorie Hyer, peace section secretary for the AFSC’s Middle Atlantic states “visited colleges in her region to solicit their interest in accepting nisei services, and reported her findings to the Student Relocation Council” (Gary Y. Okihiro, “American Friends Service Committee,” in Okihiro, Encyclopedia, 8). Floyd Schmoe visited nearly one hundred schools to find placements for Japanese students and only three schools turned him down. Ralph Smeltzer also wrote to many presidents of the Church of the Brethren colleges to extend themselves in accepting Japanese students. Some replied negatively, yet despite initial resistance many Nikkei students were able to attend Brethren, Quaker, and Mennonite colleges before the war was over.
[8] Clarence E. Pickett, For More Than Bread (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, andCompany, 1953), 159. In 1959, Pickett was the first post-war recipient to be named Honorary Consul of Japan for his commendable service to the Japanese Americans. He is known as “one of the greatest Quakers of the 20th century” (Lawrence Miller, Witness for Humanity: A Biography of Clarence E. Pickett [Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 1999], xi). According to JACL chairman, Mike Masaoka, “[Pickett’s] activities and those of the American Friends Service Committee probably personally touched the lives of more evacuees than any other single non-Nisei, non-governmental individual” (The Pacific Citizen [26 March 1965]).
[9] Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 106. Organizations which contributed included the ABHMS, the Foreign Missionary Society of the United Brethren in Christ, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the Lutheran Church, and the Episcopalian Church. Note, however, that some non-Protestant leaders complained about favoritism being shown to Christian Nikkei compared to those of other religions (Austin, Concentration Camps to Campus, 43-45).
[10] Ibid., 15. The University of Nebraska had been one of the only public universities willing to enroll Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. Other colleges refused to admit Nikkei students for many different reasons such as the presence of soldiers on campus, close proximity to military sites, housing shortages, and community hostility toward Japanese Americans (ibid., 77-78).
[11] Letter from William Lindsay Young to Jerzy Hauptmann (28 March 1952), Fishburn Archives, Park University.
[12] Lynn Chun Ink, “The Everyday Heroes of World War II:Ordinary People Who Did Extraordinary Things,” (Go For Broke National Education Center, 2015), 122-26, accessed at http://www.goforbroke.org/learn/history/combat_history/world_war_2/The_Everyday_Heroes_of_World_War_II.pdf.
[13] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 206. See Harold F. Smith, “The Battle of Parkville: Resistance to Japanese American Students at Park College,” The Journal of Presbyterian History 82, no. 1 (Spring 2004), 46-51.
[14] Seigel, In Good Conscience, 209-210. Dr. Young left Park College in January 1944 to become the regional director of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, where he would serve until his retirement.
[15] Masaye Nagao Nakamura, “The Nisei Experience at Park College,” speech given at Park University, Missouri (25 September 2002).
[16] Kerrily Kitano, “Adopted by Quakers,” accessed at https://topazstories.com/adopted-by-quakers, Topaz Stories blog (2019). Yuriko went on to become a registered nurse and married the esteemed UCLA professor of sociology, Harry H. L Kitano.
[17] Esther Torii Suzuki, “The Good Lives On,” Friends Journal: Quaker Thought and Life Today 38, no. 11 (November 1992), 22.
[18] Ibid., 23. Suzuki would eventually serve on the Alumni Board of Directors at Macalester College.
[19] Letter from Lillian Ota to Joe Conard (30 August 1942), Lillian Ota File.
[20] Sone, Nisei Daughter, 225.
[21] Michito Frank Fukuzawa, “Through Deep Waters,” in Triumphs, 20.
[22] “Yoshiye Togasaki” in Tateishi, Justice for All, 223.
[23] Kayoko Asai Suzukida, “A Midwestern Nisei’s Wartime Experiences,” in Triumphs, 126. Suzukida testified to “John Thomas’s loving concern and guidance,” Irene A. Jones for her lifelong friendship, and Pastor Lee Shane and his wife, Mae, for providing a home and a family for her during her senior year in the seminary.
