Japanese American Student Relocation

Two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. This order affected about 120,000 people, most of them were American citizens.

Macalester participated in the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, as one of 680 institutions east of the exclusion zone that admitted Japanese American students who had been forcibly relocated and incarcerated. Macalester was the first college in Minnesota to accept Japanese students. Esther Torii Suzuki, half of the namesake of the Lealtad-Suzuki Center on campus, was one of the first students from Japanese internment camps to be admitted to Macalester. The other students were Ellen Okagaki, Misao Furuta, Uta Shimotsuka, Emily Kadota, William Takano, George Takano, Henry Makino, George Suzuki, Tom Kuranishi, Simpachi Kanow, David Imagawa, Clifford Nakadegawa, Dorothy Ogota, and Eunice Torii.

Not much can be found about these students’ experiences during their time at Macalester. The presence of these students is only mentioned in the Mac Weekly once during this time (see right). Additionally, the Mac Weekly continued to publish racist and xenophobic articles about Japanese people during the war.

Esther Suzuki (Esther Mikiko Torii)

In May 1942, Esther Suzuki (then Esther Torii) and her family were forcibly placed in detention camps in Portland, Oregon, the city she had lived in her entire life. Suzuki, her parents and her two sisters had to pack their lives into two suitcases each and relocate to living quarters made of horse stalls. Her acceptance into Macalester was her way out, even though it meant leaving her family—who was to be moved to a permanent internment camp in Idaho—behind. Before she could be released from detention, she had to mail Macalester President Charles Turck’s acceptance letter to the War Department. She also had to attain three letters of recommendation from Caucasians attesting to her loyalty and letters from the St. Paul police and fire chiefs acknowledging her residence in the city. She and five others students were the first Japanese-American students at Macalester. Including her future husband, George Suzuki, who was drafted in 1944 even as his family was in an internment camp. Suzuki graduated with an honors degree in sociology in 1946 and after her children were grown, became the only social worker of Asian descent in Ramsey County at the time. She spent most of her career participating in civil rights groups and developing programs specifically to assist the Southeast Asian-American population.

George Masuru Takano

George Takano was originally from the Seattle area but was relocated to Tule Lake camp in Newell, CA. He attended the University of Washington but transferred to Macalester as a Junior and attended from 1943 to 1945.

George Masaharu Suzuki

George Suzuki was originally from Portland, Oregon and was relocated to the Minidoka camp in Hunt, Idaho. He enrolled at Macalester in 1943. He met his future wife, Esther Torii at Macalester. He was drafted in 1944 and was accepted into the Military Intelligence Service at Fort Snelling. He was trained to be a translator and interpreted and was sent to the Philippines and later occupied Japan. After his discharge from the army in 1946, George and Esther were married. He later graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1949.

Clifford Takeshi Nakadegawa

Clifford Takeshi Nakadegawa was from Los Angeles originally but was forcibly relocated to Colorado River center in Poston, Arizona. He began at Macalester as a junior in 1944.

To the right is a clipping from the Poston Chronicle (Newspaper from the Colorado River internment camp) from February 2, 1943 that mentions Clifford Nakadegawa under “Week-end’s Social Hi-lites.” Clifford Nakadegawa was the director of young people’s activities in the camp.

Emily Kadota

Emily Kadota was originally from San Luis Obispo, California but was relocated to the Gila River Center in Arizona. She attended Macalester from 1944 to 1947. She was involved in student life on campus and was the secretary of Alpha Delta Theta, the med tech sorority on campus.