"Cherry Blossoms Among Magnolias?": A History of the Asian American Experience at Duke

Nakayama, who had attended Duke on a scholarship, spent the majority of the war in Minidoka Internment Camp in Idaho. From the 1941 Chanticleer.

Toyoro Yamashita, a Duke sophomore who was supposed to graduate in 1944, returned to Japan in the Fall of 1941. From the 1941 Chanticleer.

Vee-Tsung Ling was probably the only Asian student to graduate from Duke during wartime. From the 1942 Chanticleer.

Although throughout the 1920s and 1930s, there had been a trickle of Asian international students coming to Duke with a total of about 4-5 any given year, the realities of wartime often prevented the few students from Asia from studying at Duke. Records from the University Registrar list 5 students from Asia (2 from Korea, and 1 each from China, Japan, and the Phillipines) for the 1938-1939 school year,^[1] but lists no students from Asia in a 1943 document.^[2] In one noteworthy case, Toyoro Yamashita, a Trinity College sophomore from Tokyo, Japan, left Duke suddenly in the beginning of the 1941-1942 school year,^[3] probably as a result of the deteriorating relations between the United States and Japan.

Even Duke students of Asian descent who were American citizens were affected by the war, as evidenced by Yukio Nakayama (Class of 1941) who was denied his civil rights and forced into a concentration camp, courtesy of Executive Order 9066. Gradually, after World War II ended, international students from Asia started to enroll at Duke again.