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6 Justice Department and Army Camps T he Tuna Canyon Detention Station in Southern California, formerly an old Civilian Conservation Corps camp, was used as a temporary center to hold enemy aliens by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The ins brought Yasutaro Hibi and Taju Koide (the two Issei fishermen introduced in chapter 1) from the immigration station at San Pedro, California, to this camp, which was located near Pasadena on Tujunga Canyon Boulevard. It was also here that Reverend Daisho Tana arrived after his arrest on March 13, 1942, and a short stay at the Santa Barbara County Jail. Reverend Tana was born in 1901 and came to the United States in 1928 to serve as a priest with the Buddhist Churches of America; at the time of his arrest, he also worked as a Japanese-language teacher in Lompoc, California.1 He described his first full day at Tuna Canyon: Today [Sunday, March 15] is the dawn of the C.C.C. camp of Tujunga which is outside of Los Angeles. . . . I got up at 6 o’clock in the morning and they called our names, lunch at noon, they called our names at 4:15, and dinner was at 5:00. At 8:30 they called our names and at 10 p.m. they turned off the lights. And this kind of regulated and group life makes me think of a soldier’s routine. We are prohibited to go within ten feet of the fence, and it is most painful to be cut off from the outside world. At 1 p.m. some visitors came; today and Wednesday are visiting days and especially because today is the first Sunday after being put into camp so many families were excited and came here. . . . After thirty minutes of the visit, I can see people’s eyes filled with tears—of those internees who are waving their hands good-bye as the visitors go to the distant parking area. What can they talk about for thirty minutes through the iron fence? And those who cannot speak English must talk through someone who can understand Japanese.2 After Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, commanding general of the Western Defense Command (wdc), ordered those arrested under the Alien Enemies Act removed into the interior of the United States, the ins assembled groups of internees and trucked them to the Los Angeles train depot for shipment eastward to other ins camps.3 Reverend Tana stayed at Tuna Canyon for eleven days and was then taken with 208 other prisoners on the long train trip inland. Their destination was an ins facility at Santa Fe, New Mexico; other internees were transported to the ins camp at Fort Abraham Lincoln, North Dakota. Along the way, the northbound trains usually stopped at Sacramento, California, to collect Issei taken in the San Francisco Bay Area, and then at Portland, Oregon, to pick up those from the Pacific Northwest.4 In this chapter, we continue the story of the imprisonment process used by the Justice and War Departments. But first, we must step back and look at the different centers in which enemy nationals were interned immediately after their arrests.Although the process itself was straightforward, the many types of camps create a seemingly complex picture. Instead of detailed descriptions of each type, brief overviews are offered, followed by sections on particular camps that were typical, held mainly Issei internees, or were the sites of important events. This portion of the imprisonment experience can be divided into three main parts. First, as described in chapter 3, beginning with their arrests in early December 1941, people designated as enemy aliens were kept in Justice Department holding centers until they appeared before a hearing board. Second, if the hearing board recommended permanent internment, male internees were placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army. And third, from early 1943, the army returned these internees to the control of the Justice Department, where many remained until—and sometimes even after—the end the war. justice department camps Before the United States entered the war, the ins had only a few facilities designated for holding enemy aliens. Especially important were seven permanent ins stations and three prewar internment camps that already housed stranded German and Italian seamen.5 Several points about the early internment centers are noteworthy. First, the War and Justice Departments used different types of centers with distinct designations...

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