Education for Young Japanese Americans - Digital Museum of the History of Japanese in NY

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a significant number of Japanese American students were enrolled in educational institutions across the United States. In response to the evacuation, local groups endeavored to facilitate the prompt transfer of students to educational institutions situated east of military zones. To that end, a Student Relocation Committee was established in Berkeley on March 21, 1942. This committee successfully coordinated the evacuation of approximately 75 students to educational institutions outside the restricted area. However, the majority of students opted to relocate with their families to assembly centers. In May 1942, Clarence Pickett of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) established The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, a nongovernmental committee to identify institutions of higher education in the eastern and midwestern regions where Japanese American students could pursue their education.

Japanese Student Relocation, An American Challenge, 1942. Courtesy of American Friends Service Committee

Toru Matsumoto was interned at Ellis Island and Camp Upton in New York and was subsequently relocated to Fort Meade in Maryland. In the late months of 1942, after his release from internment, he was designated as executive assistant to George E. Rundquist, the Secretary of the Committee on Resettlement of Japanese Americans for the Federal Council of Churches and the Home Missions Council of North America. Matsumoto’s activities also included collaboration with the International Board of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Concurrent with his involvement in Japanese American Christian Association (JSCA) as secretary general was his collaboration with The World Student Service Fund, where he contributed to fundraising efforts aimed at supporting students. Matsumoto’s endeavors extended to visiting concentration camps, where he encouraged young Japanese Americans to take advantage of NJASRC’s programs and pursue higher education beyond the confines of the camps.

How to Help Japanese American Student Relocation, published by the National Student Relocation Council, 1943. Courtesy of AFSC.

Within a year of its founding, by April 1, 1943, the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council had provided opportunities for more than 1,000 students to continue their education. According to the Council’s records, by the end of the war in 1945, more than 5,500 students had been placed in approximately 550 educational institutions in 46 states.

In New York, Alfred University, Chesbrough Seminary, Art Students’ League, Bard College, Barnard College, Biblical Seminary in New York, Cornell University, New School of Social Research, Hunter College, Manhattanville, College of Sacred Heart, New York Institute of Photography, New York School of Social Work, New York University, Otsego School of Education, Pace Institute, Packard Business College, Pratt Institute, Rochester Institute, Rochdale Institute, Russell Sage College, Syracuse University, Teachers College, Traphagen School of Fashion, Tully High School, Union College, Union Theological Seminary, University of Buffalo University of Rochester, and Vassar College joined the effort, and over 320 students were relocated to New York to pursue their education. A total of over 500 came to the East Coast from July 1942 to July 1946.

Rev. and Mrs. Isao Tanaka and their 16-year-old son Shin, all Issei from the Central Utah Relocation Center, are shown at the main entrance to New York City's Mt. Sinai Hospital, where they are all employed. Shin, who plans to be a doctor, is receiving excellent training during his summer school vacation as a junior laboratory assistant to Dr. Joseph H. Globus, the hospital's neuropathologist and associate neurologist. His father is employed as a technician in the bacteriological department, and his mother as a nurse's aide in the babies' ward. Nearly 30 other evacuees are employed at the hospital. Shin left the center in October 1943 to enter Pennington (N.J.) Preparatory School. His parents came to New York last April after visiting friends for several months in Salt Lake City. Prior to evacuation, the Tanaka family lived in Oakland, Cal., where Rev. Tanaka was associated with the Oakland Junior Methodist Church. At Topaz he was active in the United Protestant Church, Mrs. Tanaka was supervisor of music and teacher of voice, and Shin worked on the hog farm while attending school. Rev. Tanaka came to the United States as a student in 1916. He has degrees from Duke, Clark and Yale Universities. He returned to Japan in 1924, where for thirty years he was associated with a missionary college and in the field church. Photographer: Iwasaki, Hikaru New York, New York.. Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

Chiyeko Juliet Fukuoka leaves the portals of the New York Public Library. Formerly of San Francisco, California, where she attended Girls' High School, she is now a student at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, where she is majoring in Home Economics. Chiyeko lived for one year at the Central Utah Relocation Center, where her family are still residing. Photographer: Parker, Tom New York, New York. Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library.

Ken Shimizu, representing the young people of New York City's famous Riverside Church, is speaking at one of several discussion groups at a City-Wide Unity Conference which took place at the Society for Ethical Culture on March 1945, under the auspices of the Interracial Youth Committee. Ken was one of several hundred young people representing sixty schools, church groups, and settlement houses throughout the city who participated in the conference. A former resident of Los Angeles, Ken is now a student at George Washington High School in New York City. He relocated there from the Gila River Relocation Center with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Nobukichi Shimizu. Mr. Shimizu is engaged in the bean sprout business in New York. Photographer: Fujihira, Toge New York, New York. Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library.

New York University, under the leadership of Chancellor Harry Woodburn Chase, notably enrolled more than a dozen Japanese American students. Chase firmly believed in the pivotal role of education in safeguarding democratic principles, fostering freedom of expression and academic freedom, and promoting racial and religious tolerance, global awareness, and minority education. Mitsuye Yamada (then Yasutake), a student at New York University during the war, went on to become a prominent figure in Japanese American poetry, essayism, feminism, and human rights activism. She was among the most outspoken Asian American writers to address the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.

In 1945, the Newark W.R.A. office and a civil rights group, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) organized a traveling art exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Issei and Nisei New Yorkers, including JACD artists, Leo Amino, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Eitaro Ishigaki at the New Jersey College for Women, New Brunswick, New Jersey, attended by over a thousand people, including Japanese Americans and relocated students around the area.

Students at the New Jersey College for Women, New Brunswick, New Jersey, view an exhibit of paintings and sculptures by Issei and Nisei artists. Sixteen of the artists are Issei New Yorkers of long-standing; and ten are project residents. The exhibit, which was arranged by the Newark WRA office, was attended by over a thousand persons, and is now on tour. Visible in the photographs are the following: (upper left) Third Avenue by Corrine Dohi of New York City; (lower left) Autumn in Utah by Masao Mori of Central Utah; (upper right) Portrait Head by Benji Okubo of Heart Mountain; (lower right) Still Life with Camel Hair Rug by Susumu Hirota of New York City. New Brunswick, New Jersey. Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library.

Visible in the photographs are the following: Deserted Brickyard by Yasuo Kiniyoshi of New York City, winner of the $1000 Carnegie Institute award in 1944; Mealtime by Chuzo Tamotzu of New York City; the Wind by Eitaro Ishigaki of New York City. The willingness of the above nationally known artists to have their work shown in the exhibit contributed greatly to its success. New Brunswick, New Jersey. Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library.

Visible in the photograph are the following: (left wall) Living Quarters by Mrs. F. Kato of Minidoka; Windy Day by Harry Yoshizumi of Poston, Waterfront by Thomas Nagai of New York City; (right wall) Still Life with Bread and Things by Kazumi Sonoda of New York City, Study by T. Sgt. Iwao Lewis Suzuki of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and New York City, Third Avenue by Corrine Dohi of New York City, Autumn in Utah by Masao Mori of Central Utah. The wood carving in the center is Embrace by Leo Amino of New York City. New Brunswick, New Jersey. Courtesy of UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library.

In 1942, Kenji Kenneth Murase became one of the first three Nisei to be admitted to higher education institutions by the newly established NJASRC. After graduating from Temple University in 1944, Murase relocated to New York City, where he assumed a position as an aide in a social service agency. Subsequently, he enrolled in the School of Social Work at Columbia University, receiving his master’s degree in 1947. In 1952, Murase became the inaugural American Fulbright Scholar in Japan, where he served as a visiting professor of social welfare at Osaka University. Upon his return to the United States, Murase assumed a professorship in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Washington. In the late 1950s, Murase returned to Columbia University in New York to pursue his doctoral studies. Murase’s experience at the camp and his scholarship from the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, which facilitated his attendance at Temple University, had a profound impact on him. In 1980, he and other recipients established the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund with the aim of generating funds for college scholarships for children of Southeast Asian refugee families.

Yoshiko Uchida was among the students who were relocated from concentration camps to the East Coast. She pursued her studies at Smith College through the wartime student relocation program and subsequently taught at a Quaker school in Philadelphia for several years prior to relocating to New York. Uchida became a prominent figure in the discourse on the internment experience, openly discussing its implications and publishing books that focused on the Japanese American experience. Uchida collaborated with Henry Sugimoto, who also relocated from the camp, and provided the artwork for New Friends for Susan, one of her children’s books about a Japanese American girl.

Sono Okamura, like Uchida, won a scholarship to Smith College in 1940, then moved to New York in 1943, where she began work as a copy editor for the Associated Press and joined JACD. Okamura presented and wrote about Nisei women who had settled in New York, including painter Mine Okubo, dancer Yuriko Kikuchi, silversmith Kikuko Miyakawa Cusick, illustrator Amy Fukuba, and interior designer Mary Daté, among others.

Frank Masao Okamura