Outside Comments

"The good to which the Commemorative Fund seeks to turn the tragedy of earlier relocation is an exemplary human impulse to which many Americans might wish to subscribe if given the opportunity."

Jack Anderson, Regional Director, Office of Refugee Resettlement, Boston

"I cannot think of anything more exciting to me personally than your formation of the NSRC Fund, Inc. It is a real reward to those of us who tried to raise funds in 1942."

Robert W. O'Brien, director, National Japanese American Student Relocation Council

Of all the things I have done in a long life, my work with the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council gives me the greatest satisfaction. The work of the Council was an attempt to compensate in a small way for the enormous injustice and suffering caused by the 1942 evacuation. One of its premises was the conviction that the entry or re-entry of the younger generation of Japanese Americans into colleges and universities was essential to their sense of identity as Americans and to their future leadership of Japanese American society.

We believed in the Nisei, but we did not know what magnificent contributions they would make to the country in their work and lives. It is a record of which they can be proud. And now for the past 16 years, through the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund, the Nisei and other supporters have been helping young people from Southeast Asia, who have come to start new lives in America, get a college education as you did half a century ago. They have set themselves an impressive and moving program and are carrying it out with enthusiasm and distinction.

There were times back in the 1942-1945 period when the NJASRC was not sure where the money would come from to continue its work, but the importance of the program raised peoples' sights. I hope that in similar fashion the work of the NSRC Fund will stimulate individuals of imagination and goodwill to realize the same ideal.

[John W. Nason was president of Swarthmore College when he accepted the daunting task of leading the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council in 1942. He was president of Swarthmore for 13 years, headed the Foreign Policy Association, and was president of Carleton College, his alma mater. He became a trustee of the United Negro College Fund, the Danforth Foundation and Vassar College, among others. Hearing Mr. Nason say that his three years as head of the NJASRC gave him the greatest satisfaction of hiis long and distinguished career is testament to his unwavering sense of justice and fair play, and serves as inspiration to the rest ofus trying to follow in his giant footsteps. This statement is based upon a letter he wrote in 1996 on behalf of the Nisei Student Relocation Fund.]

John W. Nason

Few groups can have been more aware of the benefits of a college education that the 4,000 Nisei who attended American colleges while the United States and Japan were engaged in what John Dower has styled a "war without mercy." Most of them made the journey from concentration camp to college with the help of an important salvage operation conducted by anti-racist whites largely through the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council. Although we now know that these Nisei were but the first of many later and larger echelons of Asian American college students, no one could have predicted that during or immediately after the war . Almost 40 years after the war, a group of alumni/ae of that wartime program founded the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund to help refugees and their American-born children from our misbegotten wars in Southeast Asia follow the paths that they themselves blazed. As of this spring about 250 individuals had been awarded scholarships. I find it remarkable that the Nisei founders found common ground with those who had somewhat similar experiences rather than, as might have been expected, concentrating their efforts on members of their own ethnic group. Those who wish to learn more of the history of the fund should see the 10-page afterword by Leslie A. Ito, "Nisei Student Commemorative Fund," in Gary Y. Okihiro's excellent book, Storied Lives: Japanese Americans Students and World War 11 Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.

[Roger Daniels is the Charles Phelps Taft Professor ofHistory at the University ofCincinnati and a former president of the Immigration History Society. His contributions to the field of immigration history are widely acknowledged. Among his published works are: The Politics of Prejudice, Concentration Camps, USA; and Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in American Life. He served as historical consultant to the Presidential Commission on the Relocation and Internment of Civilians, and advisor to the producers of Unfinished Business, a documentary nominated for an Academy Award. His 1990 work, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, has been called the best one-volume distillation of the American immigrant experience.]

Professor Roger Daniels