Confinement and Ethnicity

Contents

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pp. vii-viii

Abstract

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pp. v-

This report provides an overview of the tangible remains currently left at the sites of the Japanese American internment during World War II. The main focus is on the War Relocation Authority's relocation centers, but Department of Justice and U.S. Army facilities where Japanese Americans were interned ...

Acknowledgments

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pp. vi-

As would be expected with a project taking nearly six years to complete, the authors are indebted to many. Three of the authors (Mary, Dick, and Flo) volunteered hundreds of hours of their time. Partial funding for the senior author was provided by Manzanar National Historic Site. The support, encouragement, ...

Foreword

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pp. ix-xii

Ethnicity and confinement-words that capture the essence of an epochal American tragedy that unfolded between 1942 and 1945. The United States then incarcerated behind barbed-wire fences almost an entire ethnic group living within its continental borders. Without formal charges, trials, findings made, ...

Chapter 1: Sites of Shame: An Introduction

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pp. 1-18

In 1942, almost 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced from their homes in California, western Oregon and Washington, and southern Arizona in the single largest forced relocation in U.S. history. Many would spend the next 3 years in one of ten "relocation centers" across the country run by the newly-formed ...

Chapter 2: To Undo a Mistake is Always Harder Than Not to Create One Originally

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pp. 19-24

We are at war with Japan, and yet we have American citizens, born and brought up in this country whose parents are Japanese. This is the essential problem. A good deal has already been written about it. One phase, however, I do not think as yet has been adequately stressed. To really cover it, we must get ...

Chapter 3: A Brief History of Japanese American Relocation During World War II

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pp. 25-58

On December 7,1941, the United States entered World War II when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. At that time, nearly 113,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them American Cltlzens, were living in California, Washington, and Oregon. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ...

Chapter 4: Gila River Relocation Center, Arizona

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pp. 59-100

The Gila River Relocation Center was located about 50 miles south of Phoenix and 9 miles west of Sacaton in Pinal County, Arizona. The site is on the Gila River Indian Reservation, and access to the site today is restricted. The post office designation for the center was Rivers, named after Jim Rivers, ...

Chapter 5: Granada Relocation Center, Colorado

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pp. 101-128

The Granada Relocation Center was located in southeastern Colorado 140 miles east of Pueblo. The relocation center site is 16 miles east of the town of Lamar and 15 miles west of the Kansas border. The relocation center's common name was derived from the small town of Granada, less than a mile away. However, ...

Chapter 6: Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Wyoming

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pp. 129-148

The Heart Mountain Relocation Center was located in Park County, in northwest Wyoming, 12 miles northwest of the town of Cody. Situated on terraces of the Shoshone River, the relocation center lies at 4700 ft elevation, within open sagebrush desert. Heart Mountain, a detached limestone fault block rising ...

Chapter 7: Jerome Relocation Center, Arkansas

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pp. 149-160

The Jerome Relocation Center was located in Chicot and Drew Counties, Arkansas, 18 miles south of McGehee and 120 miles southeast of Little Rock. It was one of two relocation centers in Arkansas - 27 miles north was the Rohwer Relocation Center. The relocation center was named after the town of Jerome, ...

Chapter 8: Manzanar Relocation Center, California

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pp. 161-202

The Manzanar Relocation Center was in east-central California, in southern Owens Valley. Located for the most part on the west side of u.s. Highway 395, it is 220 miles north of Los Angeles and 250 miles south of Reno, between the towns of Lone Pine and Independence. The central portion of the relocation ...

Chapter 9: Minidoka Relocation Center, Idaho

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pp. 203-214

The Minidoka Relocation Center was located in Jerome County, Idaho, 15 miles east of Jerome and 15 miles northeast of Twin Falls. The relocation center was also known as Hunt, after the official Post Office designation for the area, since there was already a town of Minidoka in Idaho, 50 miles east. ...

Chapter 10: Poston Relocation Center, Arizona

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pp. 215-242

The Poston or Colorado River Relocation Center was located in La Paz County, Arizona, 12 miles south of the town of Parker. Poston was named after Charles Debrille Poston, the first Superintendent for Indian Mfairs in Arizona. Poston was directly responsible for the establishment, in 1865, of the Colorado River ...

Chapter 11: Rohwer Relocation Center, Arkansas

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pp. 243-258

The Rohwer Relocation Center was located in Desha County, Arkansas, 11 miles north of McGehee and 110 miles southeast of Little Rock. It was one of two relocation centers in Arkansas - 27 miles south was the Jerome Relocation Center. The relocation center was named after the community of Rohwer, which was ...

Chapter 12: Topaz Relocation Center, Utah

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pp. 259-278

The Topaz or Central Utah Relocation Center was located in west-central Utah, in Millard County near the town of Delta, 140 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Named after Topaz Mountain, 9 miles northwest, the relocation center was briefly known as the "Abraham Relocation Center," after a nearby settlement ...

Chapter 13: Tule Lake Relocation Center, California

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pp. 279-324

The Tule Lake Relocation Center is in Modoc County, California, 35 miles southeast of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and about 10 miles from the town of Tulelake. The town is spelled as one word and the relocation center as two. The post office designation for the relocation center was Newell, the name of the post office, ...

Chapter 14: Citizen Isolation Centers

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pp. 325-334

After the riot at the Manzanar Relocation Center in December 1942, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) decided to remove so-called troublemakers from the relocation centers. An isolation center was established at an abandoned Civilian Conservation Corps (Ccq Camp at Dalton Wells, near Moab, Utah, which had ...

Chapter 15: Additional War Relocation Authority Facilities

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pp. 335-350

In addition to the relocation centers and isolation centers, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) used at least three other facilities, all former Civilian Conservation Corps (Ccq camps. Antelope Springs, Utah, was used as a recreation area for the Topaz Relocation Center to make difficult conditions more bearable. ...

Chapter 16: Assembly Centers

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pp. 351-378

Although Executive Order 9066 authorized the evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, at the time it was signed there was no place for the Japanese Americans to go. When voluntary evacuation proved impractical, the military took over full responsibility for the evacuation: ...

Chapter 17: Department of Justice and U.S. Army Facilities

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pp. 379-406

Most Japanese Americans interned during World War II were held in facilities run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and Wartime Civilian Control Agency (WCCA) described in previous chapters. However, other facilities were also used to imprison Japanese Americans during the war. In all, over 7,000 Japanese ...

Chapter 18: Federal Bureau of Prisons

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pp. 407-416

No Japanese American was ever charged and convicted of sabotage or spying during World War II. However, over a hundred Japanese Americans who sought to challenge the internment were convicted and sentenced to terms in federal prisons. These cases, highlighted in recent research (see, for example, work by ...

References Cited

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pp. 417-424

Appendix A: Relocation Center Drawings in Records Group 210, National Archives, Cartographic Division

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pp. 425-430

Appendix B: Tule Lake Relocation Center Drawings at the Bureau of Reclamation, Klamath Falls Office

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pp. 431-434

Appendix C: Selected Relocation Center Blueprints

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pp. 435-449