Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites

Chapter 9: Minidoka Relocation Center, Idaho

Chapter 9 Minidoka Relocation Center The Minidoka Relocation Center was located inJerome County, Idaho, 15 miles east ofJerome and 15 miles northeast ofTwin 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. The relocation center lies within the Snake River Plain at an elevation of 4000 feet. The natural vegetation of this high desert area is dominated by sagebrush and other shrubs. Dominant geological features of the area are thin basaltic lava flows and cinder cones overlying thick rhyolite ash. The most notable topographic feature at the site is the wide meandering man-made North Side Canal (Figure 9.1). For the most part, the canal formed the southern boundary ofthe 33,000-acre relocation center reserve (Figure 9.2). Five miles of barbed wire fencing and eight watch towers surrounded the administrative and residential portions of the relocation center, 203 Figure 9.1. North Side Canal (Francis Stewart photograph, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley). Surface Dump (lBndfill andScatter ~ Cemetery ° Canal South Road South Road WllsonLske_ Figure 9.2. Minidoka Relocation Center. 204 MINIDOKA RELOCATION CENTER o 1 KILOMETER ~ o 0.5 MILfS t N I Relocation Center Boundary Cinder Butte :{""'; "'" Figure 9.3. Residents of Block 34 (from Minidoka Interlude 1943). which was located on 950 acres in the west-central portion of the reserve. Built by the Morrison-Knudsen Company, construction began June 5, 1942, and the relocation center was in operation from August 10, 1942 to October 28, 1945. The maximum population was 9,397; evacuees were from Oregon, Washington, and Alaska (Figure 9.3). In early 1943, all of the Bainbridge Island (Washington) residents interned at the Manzanar Relocation Center under the authority of the first Civilian Exclusion Order were moved to Minidoka. The transfer was at their own request, not only to be closer to their original home, but also because they were often at odds with their new neighbors from Terminal Island in Los Angeles. There were over 600 buildings at the relocation center. Minidoka had an unusual layout due to the uneven terrain. At the other relocation centers, the barracks were all within a single large rectangular area subdivided into blocks, aligned on a single grid system. At Minidoka, the barracks blocks are in four separate groups following the arc ofthe North Side Canal, so that the block grids vary from the standard north-south orientation. Administration areas ofthe relocation center also were geographically separate, with their grids laid out at slightly different angles (Figures 9.4-9.6). There were 31 buildings in the 205 administration and staffhousing area, 19 buildings in awarehouse and motor pool area, 17 buildings at the hospital, and 15 buildings at the military police compound. Another unusual feature of the Minidoka layout is that although the residential blocks were numbered up to 44 not all numbers were used. Several blocks (for example, 9 and 11) never existed. Each of the 35 residential blocks had 12 barracks, a mess hall, a recreation hall, and a central H-shaped building with bathrooms, showers, and a laundry. Also within the residential areas were four general stores, two dry-goods stores, two barber shops, a beauty shop, two mail-order stores, two dry cleaning stores, two watch repair stores, two radio repair shops, a check-cashing service, two elementary schools, a health clinic, and two fire stations. A civic center, high school, and the evacuee-run community offices were centrally located in Block 23. In the vacant area between administrative areas and residential blocks were wells, a well house, and a sewage disposal plant. A gym was built by the evacuees adjacent to Block 23, and evacuees pursued outdoor sports as well. They constructed nine baseball diamonds, and in the winter water was diverted into a natural depression southeast ofBlock 44 for ice skating Gim Kubota, personal communication, 1995). Swimming in the North Side Canal was common in the summer, however after a drowning accident, two swimming pools were constructed by the evacuees (Figure 9.7). Evacuees constructed an irrigation canal to the relocation center from the Milner-Gooding CanalS miles east. Because ofthe topography the North Side canal could not used by the relocation center for irrigation without a costly pumping plant. Both the Milner-Gooding and North Side Canals had their takeout from the...