A Glimpse of War-time College Life Through the Eyes of Laurel Jandy
Laurel Emily Jandy: 1926-2016 (Mother)
When my mother-in-law, Laurel Jandy Aird, died in 2016, the family gathered at her house to sort through the contents to prepare the house for sale and to divide up family photos, heirlooms and assorted memorabilia. My husband and I ended up taking home a marvelous treasure-trove of family letters, including vividly detailed letters his mother sent home from college.
Laurel attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio in the early 1940s during
World War II. Her letters paint an amazing picture of the campus during the war
years. She describes little incidents and makes brief references that send me
searching Google for explanations. What my husband and I learned in school as
“history” was right there on campus—Laurel was a part of it. My understanding
of the World War II era is enriched with every letter I read.
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| Laurel in 1944 |
What sort of topics am I learning about? How about Japanese
internment? While I have visited the Manzanar historic site in California and
knew the basics about the United States’ shameful treatment of its
Japanese-American citizens, I realized I had a lot more to learn when I ran
across a passage in one of Laurel’s letters.
Laurel mentions turning down a dance invitation from a young
man named Sada, “a Japanese from a relocation center.” Apparently the
government enjoyed sugarcoating reality with euphemisms in the 1940s as much as
they do today. We now call sites like Manzanar internment camps—relocation
sounds as if the Japanese confined there were refugees, not loyal American
citizens who had been ripped from their homes, jobs and businesses, shipped to
these remote, ill-equipped camps, and subjected to prejudice and cruelty.
Laurel didn’t seem to share the prejudice of the era,
remarking that Sada was “unusually fine looking and a fairly good dancer” and
that she had ridden to college with him on the same bus. She explains that she
just didn’t feel like attending a formal dance that night, preferring to catch
up on her own interests, and she had turned down two other invitations by other
young men earlier.
I was fascinated, not having known that some internees were
allowed to attend college. I started researching and found an Oberlin Alumni
magazine article about the war-era Japanese students, which included a list of
all the students.
I discovered that Sada’s full name was Sadayoshi Omoto. He
was born on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, and he was sent to Manzanar with
his family in June of 1942. Sada was one
of over forty Nisei students Oberlin had enrolled during the war. The war
office had ordered West Coast colleges and universities to deny admission to
interned Japanese Americans, apparently believing they would use their
education to somehow attack the homeland or provide assistance to Japan. Some
of those West Coast college presidents and administrators were appalled and
tried to find places for their students elsewhere. After all, these young men
and women were Nisei, the first generation born in America—native-born citizens
in other words. Oberlin’s president stepped up when contacted by an
administrator at the University of Washington, enrolling 17 Nisei in 1942
alone.
Oberlin’s alumni magazine published an article in Fall 2013
describing recent research conducted by history majors on the campus’ experiences
with Nisei students. The undergraduates interviewed several surviving Nisei
students, and reviewed college and city records to prepare their papers.
According to their research, the city of Oberlin vowed to welcome and embrace
the students, with the Oberlin News-Tribune editorializing that,
“We do not believe there are any Oberlin citizens who are
so lacking in common humanity, or whose patriotism is of such an empty,
bombastic variety as would allow them to adopt the attitude of Parkville’s
mayor.” (Explanatory note: Parkville, Missouri had rejected students who tried
to enroll in a college there.) “If so, they surely do not deserve the name of
Oberlin, and we wish them elsewhere.”
1940s postcard of Oberlin College Men's Dormitory
The college itself was so welcoming that within a month of
arriving, a Japanese transfer student named Kenji Okuda was elected student
body president, attracting national media attention, resulting in AP, UPI and Time
Magazine articles.
After the war, most of the Nisei students left Oberlin to
complete their degrees at their original West Coast universities, but several
students stayed and became alumni. Laurel’s classmate, Sada Omoto, had served
in the war as a linguist before enrolling at Oberlin. He graduated from Oberlin
in 1949 with a BA in art, marrying a woman he met there. Omoto remained in
Ohio, completing a Ph.D. in Art History at Ohio State University. Over the next
40 years, he taught American and Asian art at several Midwest universities,
becoming tenured at Michigan State, where he taught for 30 years and served as
department chair. He and his two wives
raised four children, and he remained in the area following retirement. He continued
creating art and organizing art exhibits until his death at age 90 in 2013.
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| Sada Omoto |
I found Sada Omoto’s story fascinating. Without that
paragraph in Laurel’s letter home that week, I would never have known about
Oberlin’s choice to take in Nisei students and would never have learned about
Omoto’s life after Oberlin.
I am so grateful that Laurel wrote these amazing letters,
that she saved them for over sixty years, and that we chose to keep them
following her death. I will continue to read the letters and keep researching
things she talks about. I also plan to scan the letters and share them with all
of Laurel’s grandchildren so that they too can have history brought to life
through her life and experiences.
Sources:
Laurel Aird letters. Family collection.
Oberlin Vouches for Them”. Oberlin Magazine. Fall 2013
issue. https://issuu.com/oberlin/docs/oberlin_alumni_magazine_-_fall_2013
Oberlin Magazine. Winter 2014 issue. Obituary for
Sadayoshi Omoto, Class of 1949. https://issuu.com/oberlin/docs/13110201
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community media,
including video clips of an interview with Sada Omoto. https://bijac.org/artwork/memorial-on-bainbridge-island-sada-omoto-oh0095/
Obituary for Sada Omoto. https://www.collegeart.org/news/2013/08/21/sadayoshi-sada-omoto-in-memoriam/
“Islander, Teacher and Artist Sadayoshi Omoto Passes Away.
Richard D. Oxley. Bainbridge Island Review. Mar 13, 2013. https://www.bainbridgereview.com/news/islander-teacher-and-artist-sadayoshi-omoto-passes-away/
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