education: a means of escape

Children attended both primary and secondary schools in the camps.  Classes were taught solely in English, primarily by European Americans.  Marian E. Potts was vice principal at Manzanar's high school from 1942 to 1945.  From 1921 to 1941, she worked as a schoolteacher in Japan for the Lutheran church.  While at Manzanar, Potts collected a variety of camp publications, photographs, and correspondence.  She returned to Japan in 1948 but came back to the United States in the mid-1950s to teach adult classes for the foreign-born from 1956 to 1968.  Potts taught at the Chinese Christian Center in Philadelphia before her death in 1974.

"Reiko Yamashita's Report Card from Santa Anita School, July-August, 1942"   [52.6 KB; 58.7 KB]

High school graduates were encouraged to apply to universities in the East and Midwest.  Higher education was a means for young adults to escape camp life.  While some were successful, many qualified Japanese- Americans were denied entrance into colleges and universities across the country due to wartime xenophobia.  The only other alternative for many was military service.  In 1943, Franklin Roosevelt allowed Nisei to enlist in the nation's armed forces.  Women joined the Red Cross and Women's Army Corps, while men served in the Pacific as well as Europe.  The combined 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat team, the "Nisei Regiment", went on to become the most highly decorated Army unit during World War II--also suffering the Army's highest casualty rate.

"Commencement Program, Amache Junior High School, 23 June 1943"  [55.4 KB; 80.9 KB]

"Manzanar Graduates, 1940s"  [28.6 KB]

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