Student Relocation Council
The National Japanese American Student Relocation Council was a private organization led by the Executive Secretary of the American Friends Service Committee and with the knowledge and support of the War Relocation Authority started in May 1942 to raise funds to assist students in being admitted and placed in schools in the Midwest and East Coast (outside of the military zones of exclusion on the West Coast). [Document related to the forming are also included in this collection here.]
This organization would support around 4,000 students who were released from camp to go to school. The organization was operated by members of the (Quaker) American Friends Service Committee and was interested in supporting the assimilation of Japanese Americans into the broader society, encouraging the students that it placed into colleges to not draw attention to themselves and not to hang out in groups of fellow Japanese Americans.
Political Science Scholar Fred I. Lee details the process by which the administration (War Relocation Authority) administered a program of leave clearance as one which delineated or distinguised "friends" or "loyals" from "enemies" or "disloyals" through the lens of acculturation to American culture.
For example, when Bob Tokiro Ono applied for leave clearance, we was granted it to become a language instructor for Military Intelligence School in Michigan. When the FBI found out that they had previously found that a Tokiro Ono had been a donor to an international organization (hokoku kai) that raised money for the Japanese military, they decided that he was a low risk because of his excellent character references, his routine of speaking English at home, his history of attending American colleges and attending Christian churches. The government official writes, "The subject has an excellent letter of recommendation from Frank Herron Smith, a member of the Methodist church, who is actively in charge of the Japanese congregation. Mr. Smith has resided in Japan for some time and he speaks, reads and writes the Japanese language fluently. He would probably understand the Japanese mind almost as well as a Japanese...Subject claims that he is a graduate of the University of Oregon, and another reference states that most of the family conversation is conducted in English. He is married to an American citizen and he has a son attending the Washington University. The subjects is also a member of the Methodist church, all of which indicates that, although he is a citizen of Japan, he is quite well Americanized." (FBI Report in Bob Ono's WRA File)
Lee writes “As encouraged by the WRA [War Relocation Authority] and NJASRC [National Japanese American Student Relocation Council], many released students at schools with higer concentrations of Nisei often tried to keep a low profile by avoiding visible ‘clustering’. [Japanese Internment and the Racial State of Exception, Fred I Lee, Theory & Event Vol. 10. Issue 1, 2007]
Kay worked as an employee with the NJASRC for years and continued working for the organization from Philadelphia after gaining leave clearance from Topaz. Through this position she had insider information on administrative decisions which would affect incarcerees. And she actively encouraged Japanese American college students to keep a low profile and not to associate in groups with other Japanese Americans. Ironically, she had attended Cal Berkeley before the war and had a pretty robust network of Japanese American friends. She was a member of the Japanese American Women's Student Association and may have had a strong Japanese American community at Berkeley based on her own photos from this period. A letter from a student Martha whom Kay helped transition to Washington University in St. Louis is very detailed in her correspondence with Kay (Letter dated Feb 23 1943) updating Kay that thirty JA students met up to talk about how they could share notes of their experiences at the university. They don't want to make a formal group-- only a workshop-- so as not to be "an obvious congregation of Japanese." Martha and this working group would form a steering committee to share with other groups on campus information about evacuation and our problems. Martha is also trying to see about where her family, and other Japanese American families could live after camp.
Another aspect of the process for being able to grant a student leave clearance to go to a school that had accepted them was a requirement by the Wartime Civilian Contral Administration to receive a letter from some local authority indicating "community acceptance." [Source: Memo: Suggested procedure for effecting the placement of students already accepted by Eastern Colleges] This letter could come from a peace officer, mayor or district attorney. Interestingly, this procedure appears to privilege racial prejudce on the part of the community over the rights of a student to attend a college that they have been accepted to attend.
The very operational standards and procedures of work of the National Student Relocation Council were devised in conversation with the WRA and the Wartime Civilian Control Administration. So while this was a private organization, it was definitely being directed by government officials. Then, these directives would be sent to center managers and the council itself. This document lays out the students that would be eligible for the program-- those with an average grade of B or higher, who had not spent much time in Japan, had "ability to mix with Caucasians," were adaptable, and were U.S. citizens "elimination pro. tem of non-U.S. citizens." So even at the moment of deciding which students the Council would work with, they have devised a sorting that mirrored (or foreshadowed) the loyalty questionnaire sorting of "loyal" and "disloyal."
The council's support or guidance by the camp administrators in rolling out a leave clearance application (which also was called later a loyalty questionnaire) facilitated the state racial project to identify and segregate "loyal" and "disloyal" or assimilable and unassimilable. The very traits that made the students who were able to gain leave clearance (acceptability to whites) was further subsuming the possibility of staking a claim on basic civil rights for all ethnic Japanese immigrants and citizen alike regardless of cultural attribute or travel history.
To Browse the Kay's Work Correspondence with the Japanese American Student Relocation Council (116 items)
To Browse letters and items just about Japanese Student Relocation Council's work (16 items)
Letter from someone who works for the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council in Gila River to Kay. Jan 1, 1945.
