University of Oregon. Office of the Dean of Personnel Administration.

In 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066 authorizing the evacuation of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast into internment camps. In response, college administrators, religious leaders, and some Japanese American community leaders banded together to form a student relocation council, which was funded by the national YMCA-YWCA and organized in Berkeley, Calif., in March 1942. This was the beginning of a concerted effort to relocate Japanese American students enrolled in West Coast colleges and universities to other colleges and universities in the Midwest and East so that they could continue their studies and avoid internment. The council was formalized into the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council in Chicago on May 29, 1942. At the University of Oregon, Karl Onthank, then Dean of Personnel Administration initiated and managed the effort to relocate UO Japanese American students. In the fall of 1941, 22 Japanese American students (and one Japanese student) were enrolled, though by the spring of 1942, several of these students had withdrawn. Onthank described the Japanese American students at the University of Oregon as "keen, alert young men and women headed toward professional or important business activities." The records demonstrate that he worked diligently to help these students.