This blog post has been adapted and updated from the Wheaton College Historical Review Task Force Report (pp 55-57), released on September 14, 2023. The entire report can be found here.  

Every spring, Wheaton College celebrates Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month from April 15 – May 15, and this year the Wheaton Archives & Special Collections commemorates several Japanese American alumni who studied at Wheaton College during the turbulent years of World War II. The United States’ entry into World War II after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 brought a wave of Japanese students to Wheaton College and with them questions surrounding the place of Japanese and Japanese American students both on Wheaton’s campus and in American society.

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, stipulating that civilians could be excluded from military spaces. Under EO 9066, the military began “evacuating” Japanese American residents from the West Coast the following month, first into temporary assembly centers followed by incarceration in camps supervised by the War Relocation Authority. Scattered over seven states, the 10 internment camps eventually housed over 122,000 Nikkei (Japanese immigrants and their descendants), the majority of whom were American citizens.

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, approximately 2,500 Japanese American students were enrolled in colleges and universities on the West Coast, their lives and educations traumatically interrupted by the War Relocation Authority. To assist Japanese American students whose educations were interrupted, the National Japanese-American Student Relocation Council (NJASRC) was formed in May 1942 to place select college-aged students into higher education institutions east of the military areas. Candidates for placement were screened for “doubtful loyalty.” If cleared by the Council, students were transferred to participating institutions and enrolled. While some colleges and universities chose not to accept students out of the Relocation Centers due to anti-Asian prejudice, others advocated to bring Nikkei students to their institutions, working to provide campus housing, support from the community, and financial assistance in the form of scholarships. Although spearheaded by the American Friends Service Committee, the Council included a wide range of members, from college and university presidents and administrators to clergy representing mainline Protestant churches, to evangelical mission board executives, to the YMCA/YWCA.