“Education was Dillon Myer’s passion,” wrote historian Robert Harvey. Critics have charged that Myer was destroying Nikkei culture, but Nisei behavioral assimilation was already well advanced. Many of their own leaders saw assimilation as the best way to avoid another misfortune like relocation. Closing down Little Tokyos was the means to open up the promise of American life to the Japanese Americans. Therefore, the WRA provided an education to 25,000 Japanese American school-age youngsters, including 16,000 secondary students. At a time when pre-primary schools were far from universal, most relocation systems provided kindergarten and many also ran nursery schools. Education for the handicapped was also supplied. The high schools followed the standard curricula of the time, and English was especially stressed. Summer, vocational, and night school were also offered. Books and equipment were inadequate, but the demands of war shortchanged education everywhere. From early on, several thousand youngsters left the centers to attend college. At a time when Nazis and Communists were sending East European children to slavery in concentration camps and shooting their parents, the WRA were sending Japanese American kids to high school and college.