National Japanese American Student Relocation Council at Swarthmore College Collection

William, George and Miyoko Iyoshia were born and grew up in Sacrimento California where their parents owned a furniture shop. On March 29, 1942, under the authority of Executive Order 9066, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which began the forced evacuation and detention of Japanese-American West Coast residents on a 48-hour notice.The Iyoshia family was ordered to dispose of their possessions before being taken under military guard, first to a temperorary detention center and then imprisoned in the Tule Lake Internment Camp in California. William Iyoshia, who had been a student at the University of California, Berkeley was incarcerated along with the rest of his family and barred from finishing his degree.

During this time the American Friends Service Committee, a social justice advocate group run by the Religious Society of Friends, begain forming the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council. The Council was made up of higher administrators from colleges and universities across the United States with the focus of secure academic placements for college age Japanese American students currently incarcerated in the internment camps. John Nason, then president of Swarthmore College, chaired the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council. The Council worked with William and George Iyoshia to secure permissions for both to attend Swarthmore College. In 1943 Miyoko Iyoshia joined them.