University of Oregon. Dean of Personnel Administration, Office of

In the winter of 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, California, 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. Regional offices were set up in Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, Berkeley, and Los Angeles; less than a year later, the offices were consolidated in Philadelphia. As a non-government organization, the NJASRC was staffed largely by volunteers and funded by private donations, churches, and colleges and universities. The Quaker American Friends Service Committee managed the organization.

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