Kei Kaneda (known then as Kay or Kayelise) and Shizuko Hayashi were the first two Japanese American students known to matriculate at UNC. During World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated, without evidence or trial, chiefly into hastily built camps in remote areas of the country. Though facilities grew and improved greatly over the course of the war, one structure that the camps could never provide was a college, which fell particularly hard on a generation of young U.S. citizens who were in the middle of their studies. The University of North Carolina played a key role in the efforts of sympathizers, led by the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council (NJASRC) and various religious groups, to place and support Japanese American college students. Not only was the university one of the institutions first approached to admit students, but history professor Howard Beale took a leave of absence in order to go work with the NJASRC, purely out of his convictions that what had happened to Japanese Americans was unjust. President Frank Porter Graham also viewed this as an issue of civil rights. His powerful influence prevailed at UNC, where Presbyterian minister Charles M. Jones and Beale worked hard to overcome local opposition. Hayashi, a graduate student, and Kaneda, an undergraduate, both studied sociology and attended Jones’s church. Kaneda, in particular, formed lifelong friendships at UNC, and both retained warm memories of their time here.
