It’s almost surreal, the about-turn that takes place between Dec. 5, 1941’s issue of The Daily Emerald and the next one, Dec. 11. Dec. 5th’s is full of announcements about plays and socials with cake, and Dec. 11th’s is all war.
In the intervening days, Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japanese bombers and Congress had declared war on Japan. Besides two little notices and two photos, the entire front page of Dec. 11th’s Emerald is war-related. Faculty officials give their comments, President Erb announces his intention to introduce training facilities for civilian defense, and Japanese students at UO speak out.
There are two letters at the bottom of the page of Japanese students proclaiming their allegiance to the United States signed by many male and female Japanese students.
There’s a headline right above the fold that says “Japanese Cash Ordered Held”:
“On orders from Washington the funds of all University students of Japanese descent have been “frozen” in local banks.”
The article goes on to say that this affects twenty-three second and third-generation Japanese students at the UO, and one “Japanese alien.” The native born or naturalized Japanese were allowed to draw their money again when they proved their citizenship, but the “alien”? He or she was in “imminent danger of apprehension by police or federal agents.”
This was a dark period for Japanese Americans and resident aliens on the West Coast. Over the course of the war, Japanese in Oregon, California and Washington would be forced into internment camps in terrible conditions.
At UO, nearly half the Japanese students had left by the end of the 1942 school year, relocating to places like Colorado or the East Coast. Ones who stayed still faced discrimination: Senior Michi Yasui couldn’t even attend her graduation that May because of a curfew enforced on Japanese students.
Administrators like Karl Onthank were advocates for Japanese students at this time, helping them relocate and, in Yasui’s case, trying unsuccessfully to get the government to lift the curfew so she could go to her graduation.
Onthank said the Japanese students were “surprisingly unresentful” about the push to move them away from the West Coast.
“If they are thrown out of college and can do nothing but mark time the next few years,” Onthank said, “it would not only be too bad, but would involve a very grave risk of developing antagonisms which do not yet exist.”