National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

National Historic Landmarks Survey

National Register, History and Education

Japanese Americans

in World War II

A National Historic Landmark Theme Study Draft, February 2005
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 1

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

1 Foreword to Ansel Adams, Born Free and Equal, Photographs of the Loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar

Relocation Center, Inyo County, California (New York: U.S. Camera, 1944), 7.

Waiting For Relocation, April 1942

 E. STATEMENT OF HISTORIC CONTEXTS

It has long been my belief that the greatness of America has risen in large part out of the

diversity of her peoples. Before the war, peoples of Japanese ancestry were a small but

valuable element in our population. Their record of law-abiding, industrious citizenship

was surpassed by no other group. Their contributions to the arts, agriculture, and science

were indisputable evidence that the majority of them believed in America and were

growing with America.

Then war came with the nation of their parental origin, The ensuing two and a half years

have brought heartaches to many in our population. Among the casualties of war has

been America’s Japanese minority. It is my hope that the wounds which it has received

in the great uprooting will heal. It is my prayer that other Americans will fully realize

that to condone the whittling away of the rights of any one minority group is to pave the

way for us all to lose the guarantees of the Constitution.

As the President has said, “Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism

is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.”

 Harold L. Ickes

Secretary of the Interior

July, 19441
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 2

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

2

 The term “Japanese Americans,” as used in this theme study, refers both to immigrants from Japan, who were

prohibited by law from becoming U.S. citizens, and the children and grandchildren of those immigrants, who were

automatically U.S. citizens by virtue of being born in the United States.

3

 Daniel S. Davis, Behind Barbed Wire: The Imprisonment of Japanese Americans During World War II (Malabar,

FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1989), 27; Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice

Denied (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982); Lane Ryo Hirabayashi and James Hirabayashi,

“A Reconsideration of the United States Military’s Role in the Violation of Japanese-American Citizenship Rights,”

in Ethnicity and War, Winston A. Van Horne, ed. (Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin, American Ethnic Studies

Coordinating Committee, 1984), 87-110. 

INTRODUCTION

Title II of Public Law 102-248, enacted by Congress on March 3, 1992, authorized and directed the

Secretary of the Interior to prepare a Japanese American National Historic Landmark (NHL) Theme

Study. Specifically, this law defined the purpose of the study as 

identify[ing] the key sites in Japanese American history that illustrate the period in American

history when personal justice was denied Japanese Americans. The Theme Study shall identify,

evaluate, and nominate as national historic landmarks those sites, buildings, and structures that

best illustrate or commemorate the period in American history from 1941 to 1946 when Japanese

Americans were ordered to be detained, relocated, or excluded pursuant to Executive Order

Number 9066 and other actions.

The title of the resulting theme study, Japanese Americans in World War II, reflects the 1941-46 period

assigned to the study by the law.2

Some properties associated with this theme study have already been declared National Historic Sites or

National Monuments, designated as National Historic Landmarks, or listed in the National Register of

Historic Places. The Manzanar Relocation Center was designated a National Historic Landmark and

subsequently declared a National Historic Site; part of the Minidoka Relocation Center was recently

declared a National Monument. The memorial cemetery at the Rohwer Relocation Center has also been

designated a National Historic Landmark. A number of properties relevant to this theme study have

been listed in the National Register.

In 1941, nearly 113,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them American citizens, were living

in California, Washington, and Oregon. On December 7, Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl

Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II. On February 19, 1942, a little more than two

months later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 9066 empowering the U.S.

Army to designate areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded.” Although the Executive

Order did not further identify the persons to be excluded, the Army enforced its provisions only against

Japanese Americans. No person of Japanese ancestry living in the United States was ever convicted of

any serious act of espionage or sabotage during the war yet these innocent people were removed from

their homes and placed in relocation centers, many for the duration of the war. To understand why the

United States government decided to remove both first-generation immigrants and American citizens

from the West Coast, one must consider several factors. These include wartime hysteria, politics, and

racial prejudice.3
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 3

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

4

 The following historic context is taken from Jeffery F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord and Richard W.

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

Western Archeological and Conservation Center Publications in Anthropology 74 (Tucson, AZ: National Park

Service, 1999), with some changes and additions by National Historic Landmark staff.

5 Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps: North America, Japanese in the United States and Canada During World

War II (Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1989), 2-25.

West Coast Anti-Asian Prejudice4

Anti-Asian prejudices, especially in California, began as anti-Chinese feelings. The cultural and

economic forces that led to the anti-Japanese feelings are discussed in detail by historian Roger Daniels

and summarized here.5

 Chinese immigration to the U.S. began about the same time as the California

gold rush of 1849. During the initial phases of the economic boom that accompanied the gold rush,

Chinese labor was needed and welcomed. However, soon white workingmen began to consider the

Chinese, who in 1870 comprised about 10 percent of California's population, as competitors. This

economic competition increased after the completion of the trans-continental Union-Central Pacific

Railroad in 1869, which had employed around 10,000 Chinese laborers. American workers’

resentments over cheap Chinese labor were soon translated into an ideology of Asian racial inferiority. 

Discrimination became legislated at both the state and federal level, including a Chinese immigration

exclusion bill passed in 1882 by the U.S. Congress.

The experiences of Chinese immigrants foreshadowed those of Japanese immigrants, who began

arriving about the same time the Chinese exclusion bill was passed. Japanese immigrants were called

Issei, from the combination of the Japanese words for “one” and “generation”; their children, the

American-born second generation, were Nisei, and the third generation were Sansei. Nisei and Sansei

who were educated in Japan were called Kibei. The Issei mostly came from the Japanese countryside,

and they generally arrived, either in Hawaii or the mainland West Coast, with very little money. 

Approximately half became farmers, while others went to the coastal urban centers and worked in small

commercial establishments, usually for themselves or for other Issei.

Anti-Japanese movements began shortly after Japanese immigration began, arising from existing

anti-Asian prejudices. However, the anti-Japanese movement became widespread around 1905, due

both to increasing immigration and the Japanese victory over Russia, the first defeat of a western nation

by an Asian nation in modern times. Both Japan and Japanese immigrants began to be perceived as

threats. Discrimination included the formation of anti-Japanese organizations, such as the Asiatic

Exclusion League, attempts at school segregation (which eventually affected Nisei under the doctrine of

“separate but equal”), and a growing number of violent attacks upon individuals and businesses. 

The Japanese government subsequently protested this treatment of its citizens. To maintain the

friendship between Japan and America, President Theodore Roosevelt attempted to negotiate a

compromise, convincing the San Francisco school board to revoke the segregation order, restraining the

California Legislature from passing more anti-Japanese legislation, and working out what was known as

the “Gentlemen's Agreement” with the Japanese government. In this, the Japanese government agreed

to limit emigration to the continental United States to laborers who had already been to the United States

before and to the parents, wives, and children of laborers already there.

In 1913, California passed the Alien Land Law which prohibited the ownership of agricultural land and
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 4

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

6

 Daniels, Concentration Camps.

other real property by “aliens ineligible to citizenship.” In 1920, a stronger Alien Land Act prohibited

leasing and sharecropping as well. Both laws were based on the presumption that Asians were aliens

ineligible for citizenship, which in turn stemmed from a narrow interpretation of the naturalization

statute. The statute had been rewritten after the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution to permit

naturalization of “white persons” and “aliens of African descent.” This exclusionism, clearly the intent

of Congress, was legitimized by the Supreme Court in 1921, when Takao Ozawa was denied citizenship.

However, the Nisei were citizens by birth, and therefore parents would often transfer property titles to

their children. The Immigration Act of 1924 prohibited all further Japanese immigration, with the side

effect of making a very distinct generation gap between the Issei and Nisei. 

Many of the anti-Japanese fears arose from economic factors combined with envy, since many of the

Issei farmers had become very successful at raising fruits and vegetables in soil that most people had

considered infertile. Other fears were military in nature; the Russo-Japanese War proved that the

Japanese were a force to be reckoned with and stimulated fears of Asian conquest–“the Yellow Peril.”

These factors, plus the perception of “otherness” and “Asian inscrutability” that typified American racial

stereotypes, greatly influenced the events following Pearl Harbor.

Preparing for War with Japan

While the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came as a shock to most Americans, the U.S. government

had already investigated possible actions to take in case of war with Japan. Japanese Americans and

their parents who were not citizens also had speculated on what would happen to them, fearing as early

as 1937 that they would be “herded into prison camps–perhaps we would be slaughtered on the spot.”6

Some Nisei emphasized their loyalty and Americanism, which led to generational conflict with their

Issei parents. The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), an influential all-Nisei organization,

represented this pro-American attitude in their creed. The JACL creed, an optimistic, patriotic

expression written by Mike Masaoka in 1940, was published in the Congressional Record for May 9,

1941:

I am proud that I am an American citizen of Japanese ancestry, for my very background makes

me appreciate more fully the wonderful advantages of this nation. I believe in her institutions,

ideals and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future. She has

granted me liberties and opportunities such as no individual enjoys in this world today. She has

given me an education befitting kings. She has entrusted me with the responsibilities of the

franchise. She has permitted me to build a home, to earn a livelihood, to worship, think, speak

and act as I please–as a free man equal to every other man.

Although some individuals may discriminate against me, I shall never become bitter or lose

faith, for I know that such persons are not representative of the majority of the American people. 

True, I shall do all in my power to discourage such practices, but I shall do it in the American

way–above board, in the open, through courts of law, by education, by proving myself to be

worthy of equal treatment and consideration. I am firm in my belief that American

sportsmanship and attitude of fair play will judge citizenship and patriotism on the basis of

action and achievement, and not on the basis of physical characteristics. Because I believe in

America, and I trust she believes in me, and because I have received innumerable benefits from

her, I pledge myself to do honor to her at all times and all places; to support her constitution; to
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 5

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

7

 ibid., 24-25.

8 Personal Justice Denied, 52.

9

 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 28.

10 Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engleman, and Byron Fairchild, United States Army in World War II: Western

Hemisphere, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History,

U.S. Army, 1964, hereafter U.S. Army), 148.

11 ibid., 116.

obey her laws; to respect her flag; to defend her against all enemies, foreign and domestic; to

actively assume my duties and obligations as a citizen, cheerfully and without any reservations

whatsoever, in the hope that I may become a better American in a greater America.7

At the same time as the JACL creed was written, the United States government was preparing for war.

The Alien Registration Act of 1940 required the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens over

fourteen years of age. During 1941, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compiled a list of

“dangerous” or “subversive” German, Italian, and Japanese aliens who were to be arrested or interned at

the outbreak of war with their country. 

In November 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt received a secret report on the West Coast Japanese

Americans by Curtis B. Munson, a well-to-do Chicago businessman who gathered intelligence under the

guise of being a government official.8

 In his report Munson concluded that most of the Japanese

Americans were loyal to the United States and that many would have become citizens if they had been

allowed to do so. Moreover, the report stated that most of the few disloyal Japanese Americans hoped

that “by remaining quiet they [could] avoid concentration camps or irresponsible mobs.” However,

Munson also noted that the West Coast was vulnerable to sabotage, since dams, bridges, harbors, and

power stations were unguarded; Munson wrote “There are still Japanese in the United States who will

tie dynamite around their waist and make a human bomb out of themselves. We grant this, but today

they are few.” The Munson Report was never sent to President Roosevelt, but Army Intelligence

apparently used it as the basis for its conclusion that “widespread sabotage by Japanese is not expected .

. . identification of dangerous Japanese on the West Coast is reasonably complete.”9

 A Navy report of

February 1942 was also in agreement on this point: few persons of Japanese ancestry were expected to

be disloyal to the United States.10 

In the Aftermath of Pearl Harbor

Beginning on December 7th, the Justice Department organized the arrests of 3,000 people whom it

considered dangerous enemy aliens, half of whom were Japanese. Presidential proclamations

addressing the issue of enemy aliens were issued on December 7 and 8. These proclamations allowed

the FBI, assisted by the Army, to apprehend enemy aliens whom they suspected of disloyalty. Within a

week, 831 enemy aliens from the Pacific states were in Department of Justice custody; the majority of

the detainees were Japanese.11

Of the Japanese, those arrested included community leaders who were involved in Japanese

organizations and religious groups. These arrests were based upon the FBI’s 1941 compilation of

possibly dangerous or subversive enemy aliens; evidence of actual subversive activities was not a
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 6

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

12 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 35.

13 Japanese American Curriculum Project, “Wartime Hysteria: The Role of the Press in the Removal of 110,000

Persons of Japanese Ancestry During World War II, a Gathering of Actual Newspaper and Magazine Clippings”

(San Mateo, CA: Japanese American Curriculum Project, 1973). The military had already concluded that Japanese

hit-and-run raids on the mainland were possible, but that any large-scale invasion was beyond the capacity of the

Japanese military, as was any invasion of Japan by the U.S. military.

14 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 36. DeWitt had a history of prejudice against non-Caucasian Americans, even

those already in the Army, and he was easily swayed by any rumor of sabotage or imminent Japanese invasion.

15 John B. DeWitt, Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1943). None of these was ever verified.

16 Conn et al., U.S. Army, 118.

17 John Hersey, “A Mistake of Terrifically Horrible Proportions,” in John Armor and Peter Wright, Manzanar =

[Ringoen] (New York: Times Books, 1988), 22; Conn et al., U.S. Army, 147-148.

prerequisite for arrest. At the same time, the bank accounts of all enemy aliens and all accounts in

American branches of Japanese banks were frozen. These two actions paralyzed the Japanese American

community by depriving it of both its leadership and its financial assets.

In late January 1942 many of the enemy aliens arrested by the Justice Department were transferred to

internment camps in Montana, New Mexico, and North Dakota. Often their families had no idea of their

whereabouts for weeks. Some internees were reunited with their families later in relocation centers.

However, many remained in Justice camps for the duration of the war.

After Pearl Harbor, the shock of a surprise attack on American soil caused widespread hysteria and

paranoia. It certainly did not help matters when Frank Knox, Roosevelt's Secretary of the Navy, blamed

Pearl Harbor on “the most effective fifth column work that's come out of this war, except in Norway.”12

This opened the door to sensationalistic newspaper headlines about sabotage, fifth column activities, and

imminent invasion and fed the growing suspicions about Japanese Americans.13

“Military Necessity”

One of the key players in the confusion following Pearl Harbor was Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, the

commander of the Western Defense Command and the U.S. 4th Army. DeWitt was convinced that if he

could control all civilian activity on the West Coast, he could prevent another Pearl Harbor-type

disaster.14 Reporting in 1943 on the completed evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast,

DeWitt cited other reasons for the “military necessity” of evacuation, such as supposed signal lights and

unidentified radio transmissions.15 In late December the Department of Justice issued regulations

requiring that enemy aliens in the Western Defense Command surrender weapons, ammunition, radios,

and cameras.16 DeWitt described these items, seized by the FBI between February and May 1942, as

“hidden caches of contraband,” even though most of the weapons were from two legitimate sporting

goods stores.17

Initially, DeWitt did not embrace the broad-scale removal of all Japanese Americans from the West

Coast. On December 19, 1941, General DeWitt recommended “that action be initiated at the earliest

practicable date to collect all alien subjects fourteen years of age and over, of enemy nations and remove
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 7

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

18 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 39-40.

19 Conn et al., U.S. Army, 121-122.

20 Hersey, “Mistake,” 42.

21 Hersey, “Mistake,” 43-44.

22 Conn, et al., U.S. Army, 135.

them” to the interior of the country and hold them “under restraint after removal.” On December 26, he

told Provost Marshall Gen. Allen W. Gullion that “I'm very doubtful that it would be commonsense

procedure to try and intern 117,000 Japanese in this theater. . . . An American citizen, after all, is an

American citizen. And while they all may not be loyal, I think we can weed the disloyal out of the loyal

and lock them up if necessary.”18

With encouragement from Col. Karl Bendetson, the head of the Provost Marshall's Aliens Division, on

January 21, DeWitt recommended to Secretary of War Henry Stimson the establishment of small

“prohibited zones” around strategic areas from which enemy aliens and their native-born children would

be removed, as well as some larger “restricted zones” where they would be kept under close

surveillance. Stimson and Attorney General Francis Biddle agreed, although Biddle was determined not

to do anything to violate Japanese Americans' constitutional rights.

The drive for mass evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry, including U.S. citizens, did not gain

significant momentum within the War Department until after the Roberts Commission report was

released on January 25, 1942. This report of the first official investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack

identified espionage by Japanese residents of Oahu as an important factor in the attack. Public opinion

was inflamed by the findings of the Roberts Commission; the plans for exclusion of persons of Japanese

ancestry grew accordingly.19

On February 9, DeWitt asked for much larger prohibited zones in Washington and Oregon which

included the entire cities of Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma. Biddle refused to go along, but President

Roosevelt, convinced of the military necessity, agreed to bypass the Justice Department. Roosevelt

gave the army “carte blanche” to do what they wanted, with the caveat to be as reasonable as possible.20

Two days later, DeWitt submitted his final recommendations in which he called for the removal of all

Japanese, native-born as well as alien, and “other subversive persons” from the entire area lying west of

the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains. In stark contrast to his previously cited statement of

December 26th, DeWitt justified this broad-scale removal on “military necessity,” stating that “the

Japanese race is an enemy race” and “the very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a

disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.”21

On February 17, Biddle made a last ditch effort to convince the President that evacuation was

unnecessary. In addition, Gen. Mark Clark of General Headquarters in Washington, D.C., was

convinced that evacuation was counteractive to military necessity, as it would use far too many soldiers

who could otherwise be fighting.22 Instead, he recommended protecting critical installations by using

pass and permit systems and selective arrests as necessary. 
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 8

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

23 United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Klamath Project, Annual History for 1945,

Volume 34 (Klamath Falls, OR: United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, 1946).

24 Japanese American Curriculum Project, “Wartime Hysteria.”

25 Hersey, “Mistake,” 38.

26 Richard Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1987), 31-32.

Meanwhile, people of Japanese ancestry, particularly the Nisei, were trying to establish their loyalty by

becoming air raid wardens and joining the army (when they were allowed to). Since so many in the

Issei leadership had been imprisoned during the initial arrests, the Nisei organizations, especially the

JACL, gained influence in the Japanese American community. The JACL's policy of cooperation and

appeasement was embraced by some Japanese Americans but vilified by others.

At first, there was no consistent treatment of Nisei who tried to enlist or who were drafted. Most

Selective Service boards rejected them, classifying them as 4-F or 4-C (unsuitable for service because of

race or ancestry), but they were accepted at others. The War Department prohibited further Nisei

induction after March 31, 1942, “except as may be specifically authorized in exceptional cases.” The

exceptions were bilingual Nisei and Kibei who served as language instructors and interpreters.23

While the military debated restrictions on Japanese Americans and limited their involvement in the war,

public opinion on the West Coast was growing in support of confining all persons of Japanese

ancestry.24 The anti-Japanese American sentiment in the media was typified by comments such as the

following from a columnist for the Los Angeles Times: “A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg

is hatched–so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents–grows up to be a Japanese, not an

American.”25

Despite opposition by Biddle, the JACL, and General Clark, on February 19, 1942 President Roosevelt

signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War 

to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military

Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to

which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever

restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his

discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area

who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as

may be necessary in the judgement of the Secretary of War or said Military Commander.

In mid-February Congressional committee hearings headed by California congressman John Tolan were

held on the West Coast to assess the need for the evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry. The

overwhelming majority of the witnesses supported the removal of all Japanese, alien and citizen, from

the coast. California Governor Culbert L. Olson and State Attorney General Earl Warren supported

removal of all Japanese from coastal areas, stating that it was impossible to tell which ones were loyal.26

As de facto spokesmen for the Japanese community, JACL leaders argued against mass evacuation, but

to prove their loyalty pledged their readiness to cooperate if it were deemed a military necessity. 
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 9

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

27 Davis, Behind Barbed Wire, 43; Bert Webber, Silent Siege - III: Japanese Attacks on North America in World

War II - Ships Sunk, Air Raids, Bombs Dropped, Civilians Killed (Medford, OR: Webb Research Group, 1992).

28 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 86.

29 Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (New York: Morrow Quill,

1976), 301n.

Other events in California contributed to the tense atmosphere. On February 23 a Japanese submarine

shelled the California coast. It caused no serious damage but raised fears of further enemy action along

the coast. The following night the “Battle of Los Angeles” took place. In response to an unidentified

radar echo, the military called for a blackout and fired over 1,400 anti-aircraft shells. Twenty

individuals of Japanese ancestry were arrested for supposedly signaling the invaders, but the radar echo

turned out to be a loose weather balloon.27

Even prior to the signing of Executive Order 9066, the U.S. Navy had begun the removal of Japanese

from near the Port of Los Angeles: on February 14, 1942, the Navy announced that all persons of

Japanese ancestry had to leave Terminal Island by March 14. On February 24 the deadline was moved

up to February 27th.28 Practically all family heads (mostly fisherman) and community leaders had

already been arrested and removed by the FBI.29

Evacuation

Even after Executive Order 9066, no one was quite sure what was going to happen. Who would be

“excluded;” where would the “military areas” be; and where would people go after they had been

“excluded”?

General DeWitt originally wanted to remove all Japanese, German, and Italian aliens. However, public

opinion (with a few vocal dissenters) was in favor of relocating all those of Japanese ancestry, citizen

and alien alike, but opposed any mass evacuation of German or Italian aliens, much less second

generation Germans or Italians. Provost Marshall Gullion, who had always supported relocation of the

Japanese, had only figured on males over the age of fourteen–about 46,000 from the West Coast and

40,000 from Hawaii. 

As the military negotiated possibilities, the Japanese American community continued to worry. Most

followed the lead of the JACL and chose to cooperate with evacuation as a way to prove their loyalty. 

A few were vocally opposed to evacuation and later sought ways to prevent it, some with court cases

that eventually reached the Supreme Court.

DeWitt issued several public proclamations about the evacuation, but these did little to clear up

confusion; in fact, they created more. On March 2, Public Proclamation No. 1 divided Washington,

Oregon, California, and Arizona into two military areas, numbered 1 and 2. Military Area No. 1 was

sub-divided into a “prohibited zone” along the coast and an adjacent “restricted zone.” Ninety-eight

smaller areas were also labeled prohibited, presumably the locations of strategic military sites. The

announcement was aimed at “Japanese, German or Italian” aliens and “any person of Japanese

ancestry,” but it did not specifically order anyone to leave. However, an accompanying press release

predicted that all people of Japanese ancestry would eventually be excluded from Military Area No. 1,
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 10

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

30 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 84.

31 DeWitt, Final Report, 107-111.

but probably not from Military Area No. 2.30

At this time, the government had not made any plans to help people move, and since most Issei assets

had been frozen at the beginning of the war, most families lacked the resources to move. However,

several thousand did try to relocate themselves voluntarily. Over 9,000 persons voluntarily moved out

of Military Area No. 1: of these, over half moved into the California portion of Military Area No. 2,

where Public Proclamation No. 1 said no restrictions or prohibitions were contemplated. Later, of

course, they would be forcefully evacuated from Military Area No. 2. Somewhat luckier were those

who moved farther into the interior of the country: 1,963 moved to Colorado, 1,519 moved to Utah, 305

moved to Idaho, 208 moved to eastern Washington, 115 moved to eastern Oregon, 105 moved to

northern Arizona, 83 moved to Wyoming, 72 moved to Illinois, 69 moved to Nebraska, and 366 moved

to other states.31 But many who did attempt to leave the West Coast discovered that the inland states

were unwilling to accept them. The perception inland was that California was dumping its

“undesirables,” and many refugees were turned back at state borders, had difficulty buying gasoline, or

were greeted with “No Japs Wanted” signs.

On March 11 the Army established the Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA) to organize

and carry out the evacuation of Military Area No. 1. Public Proclamation No. 2, on March 16,

designated four more military areas in the states of Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Utah, and 933 more

prohibited areas. Although DeWitt pictured eventually removing all of the Japanese from these areas,

these plans never materialized. 

Public Law No. 503, approved on March 21, 1942, made violating restrictions in a military area a

misdemeanor, liable up to a $5,000 fine or a year in jail. Public Proclamation No. 3, effective March 27,

instituted an 8:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew in Military Area No. 1 and listed prohibited areas for all enemy

aliens and “persons of Japanese ancestry.” Public Proclamation No. 3 also required that “at all other

times all such persons shall only be at their place of residence or employment or traveling between those

places or within a distance of not more than five miles from their place of residence.” 

Voluntary evacuation ended March 29, when Public Proclamation No. 4 prohibited all Japanese from

leaving Military Area No. 1 until ordered. Further instructions established reception centers as

transitional evacuation facilities and forbade moves except to an approved location outside Military

Area No. 1. The first evacuation under the auspices of the Army began on March 24th at Bainbridge

Island near Seattle, and was repeated all along the West Coast. In all, 108 "Civilian Exclusion Orders"

were issued, each designed to affect around 1,000 people. After initial notification, residents were given

six days in which to dispose of nearly all their possessions, packing only “that which can be carried by

the family or the individual” including bedding, toilet articles, clothing and eating utensils. The
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 11

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

32 Japanese American Curriculum Project, “Wartime Hysteria,” 18.

33 Davis, Behind Barbed Wire, 57.

34 ibid., 118.

Oakland, California, April 1942

government was willing to store or ship some

possessions “at the sole risk of the owner,” but many did

not trust that option. Most families sold their property

and possessions for ridiculously small sums, while

others trusted friends and neighbors to look after their

properties. 

By June 2, 1942, all Japanese in Military Area No. 1,

except for a few left behind in hospitals, were in army

custody. The common image is that they passively

accepted evacuation. There is a Japanese philosophy of

“shikataganai” (“it can't be helped”). So, indeed the

vast majority were resigned to following the orders that

sent them into the assembly centers; for many this was a

way to prove their loyalty to the U.S.

But a few cases of active resistance to the evacuation occurred. Three weeks after he was supposed to

evacuate, Kuji Kurokawa was found, too weak to move due to malnutrition, hiding in the basement of

the home where he had been employed for 10 years. He decided that he would not register or be

evacuated; “I am an American citizen,” he explained.32 In another story, perhaps apocryphal, Hideo

Murata, a U.S. Army World War I veteran, committed suicide at a local hotel rather than be evacuated.33

Three Japanese Americans challenged the government's actions in court. Minoru Yasui had volunteered

for military service after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was rejected because of his Japanese ancestry. 

An attorney, he deliberately violated the curfew law of his native Portland, Oregon, stating that citizens

have the duty to challenge unconstitutional regulations. Gordon Hirabayashi, a student at the University

of Washington, also deliberately violated the curfew for persons of Japanese ancestry and disregarded

the evacuation orders, claiming that the government was violating the Fifth Amendment by restricting

the freedom of innocent individuals. Fred Korematsu changed his name, altered his facial features, and

went into hiding. He was later arrested for remaining in a restricted area.34 In court, Korematsu claimed

the government could not imprison a group of people based solely on ancestry. All three lost their

cases. Yasui spent several months in jail and was then sent to the Minidoka Relocation Center,

Hirabayashi spent time in jail and several months at a Federal prison in Arizona, and Korematsu was

sent to the Topaz Relocation Center.

According to one author, the only act of "sabotage" by any Japanese individual was a product of the

relocation process. When told to leave his home and go to an assembly center, one farmer asked for an

extension to harvest his strawberry crop. His request was denied, so he plowed under the strawberry

field. He was then arrested for sabotage, on the grounds that strawberries were a necessary commodity
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 12

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

35 Hersey, “Mistake,” 5.

36 Japanese American Curriculum Project, “Wartime Hysteria,” 20-21.

37 Clifford I. Uyeda, Due Process: Americans of Japanese Ancestry and the United States Constitution (San

Francisco: National Japanese American Historical Society, 1995), 32.

38 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 88.

Santa Anita Assembly Center

April 1942

for the war effort.35 No one was allowed to delay evacuation in order to harvest their crops and

subsequently Californians were faced with shortages of fruits and vegetables; 95 percent of the state's

strawberries and one-third of the state's truck crops were grown by Japanese farmers.36

Even though the justification for the evacuation was to thwart espionage and sabotage, newborn babies,

young children, the elderly, the infirm, children from orphanages, and even children adopted by

Caucasian parents were not exempt from removal. Anyone with 1/16th or more Japanese blood was

included. In all, over 17,000 children under 10 years old, 2,000 persons over 65 years old, and 1,000

handicapped or infirm persons were evacuated.37

Assembly Centers

After reporting to collection points near their homes, each group was moved to hastily contrived

reception or assembly centers. Two centers on vacant land, at Parker Dam in Arizona and in the Owens

Valley in California, were originally intended for use as reception centers to expedite the voluntary

evacuation. Both would later become WRA-run relocation centers as well (Poston and Manzanar).

The Parker Dam Reception Center was on the Colorado

River Indian Reservation in Arizona. Permission from the

Department of Interior was contingent on the center being

a “positive program . . . not merely . . . a concentration

camp.” The Owens Valley Reception Center was on land

leased from the City of Los Angeles. The Owens Valley

was (and still is) a major source of water for Los Angeles. 

City officials were worried that the evacuees would poison

the water supply, but were assured that they would be kept

under heavy guard.38 Generally, the first to arrive at the

reception centers were volunteers, mainly JACL leaders

and their families. 

Since the Owens Valley and Parker Dam centers could

only hold a small fraction of the West Coast Japanese and

little time was available for additional large-scale

construction, existing facilities were converted into

temporary assembly centers. Eleven of the assembly

centers were at racetracks or fairgrounds. Others were at

the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Facilities (Portland, Oregon), a former mill site (Pinedale,

California), migrant workers camps (Marysville and Sacramento, California), and an abandoned Civilian
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 13

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

39 Dorothy Swaine Thomas, The Salvage: Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1952), 84.

40 DeWitt, Final Report, 152.

41 U. S. Department of the Interior, “Klamath Project, 1945.”

42 Carey McWilliams, “Moving the West Coast Japanese,” Harpers Magazine, 1942, 185:361.

43 DeWitt, Final Report, 183.

Conservation Corps (CCC) camp (Mayer, Arizona).39

Two additional assembly centers were partially readied. Toppenish, in eastern Washington, ultimately

was not used because of unsuitable sanitation facilities, and because there was enough room in the

California assembly centers for the evacuees. A refurbished CCC camp at Cave Creek, Arizona, was

not needed due to considerable voluntary migration from the southern part of the state.40

Living conditions at the assembly centers were chaotic and squalid. Existing buildings were used, and

supplemented with temporary “theater of operations”-type army barracks, 20-by-100-foot buildings

divided into five rooms. These barracks were originally designed for temporary use by combat soldiers,

not families with small children or elderly people.41

At the racetracks, stables had been hastily cleaned out before their use as living quarters, but the stench

remained. Still, the converted stables were described as “somewhat better shelter than the newly

constructed mass-fabricated houses.”42 At the Santa Anita Assembly Center, 8,500 of the total

population of over 18,000 lived in stables. At the Portland Assembly Center over 3,000 evacuees were

housed under one roof in a livestock pavilion that was subdivided into apartments.43

The atmosphere in the assembly centers was tense. Many of the evacuees were demoralized, convinced

that they would never be accepted as full-fledged Americans. Some Nisei who had been very patriotic

became very bitter and sometimes pro-Japanese. Most tried to do everything possible to make living

conditions better, organizing newsletters and dances and planting Victory Gardens. Jobs were available

in the assembly centers, but the decision was made that no evacuees should be paid more than an Army

private (which was then $21 per month) to combat charges of coddling. Initially, unskilled laborers

were paid $8 per month, skilled laborers $12, and professionals, $16. These were later raised to $12,

$16, and $19, respectively.

Evacuees worked as cooks, mechanics, teachers, doctors, clerks, and police. At the Santa Anita and

Manzanar assembly centers, camouflage net factories, managed by a private company under military

contract, were set up. Only citizens could be employed on this war-related work.

Privacy at the assembly centers was next to non-existent, with communal lavatories and mess halls and

thin walls in the barracks. Families were crowded into small apartments, usually 20 feet square. The

evacuees fixed up their new homes as best they could with whatever salvaged lumber and other supplies

they could find, in an attempt to make them more liveable.

Shortages of food and other materials and deplorable sanitation were common at many of the centers. 
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 14

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

44 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 80-82.

45 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 99-101.

46 Davis, Behind Barbed Wire, 79.

47 Anthony L. Lehman, Birthright of Barbed Wire: The Santa Anita Assembly Center for the Japanese (Los Angeles:

Westernlore, 1970).

48 Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial, 57.

The 800 Nisei working at the net factory at Santa Anita conducted a sit-down strike complaining about

weakness due to lack of food as well as low pay and unfair production quotas.44

Some opportunities for leaving the assembly centers were available. California educators made an effort

to allow college-age Nisei to attend school outside of the prohibited area. Many colleges refused to

accept them, but around 4,300 students were eventually released from the assembly and relocation

centers to attend school.45 The war had created a massive labor shortage, so the WCCA agreed to allow

seasonal agricultural leave for those they deemed loyal. Over 1,000 evacuees were granted temporary

leave to harvest cotton, potatoes, and sugar beets.

The evacuees for the most part took their hardships in stride. However, the effects of overcrowding and

stress became apparent at the Santa Anita Assembly Center on August 4, 1942. On that day a routine

search for contraband (including Japanese language books and phonograph records), and an

unannounced confiscation of hot plates turned violent. Rumors and complaints spread as crowds

gathered. The internal police and suspected informers were harassed and one suspected informer was

severely beaten. In the end 200 military police were called in to silence the 2,000 protesters.46 That

night the residents were confined to their barracks and no meals were served. The military patrolled

inside the center for three days.47

Relocation Centers

On March 19, 1942, a civilian organization, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), was created to

reduce the diversion of trained soldiers to the relocation program. This new agency was left to figure

out how to handle the relocation of all persons of Japanese ancestry en masse from Military Areas No. 1

and 2. Milton S. Eisenhower, then an official of the Department of Agriculture, was chosen to head the

WRA. Eisenhower initially hoped that many of the evacuees, especially citizens, could be resettled

quickly. He expected that evacuees could be either directly released from the assembly centers and sent

back to civilian life away from the military areas, or sent to small unguarded subsistence farms.

However, after meeting with governors and other officials from ten western states on April 7,

Eisenhower realized that anti-Japanese racism was not confined to California. Few governors wanted

any Japanese in their state; if any did come, they wanted them kept under guard. The common feeling

was expressed by one of the governors: “If these people are dangerous on the Pacific coast they will be

dangerous here!”48 But, their chief concern was that the Japanese would settle in their states and never

leave, especially once the war was over. However, at a meeting with local sugar beet growers on the

same day, a different view prevailed. Desperate for labor, S. J. Boyer of the Utah Farm Bureau said that
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 15

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

49 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 94.

50 Dillon S. Myer, Uprooted Americans: The Japanese Americans and the War Relocation Authority During World

War II (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971), 3.

51 Milton Thomas Madden, “A Physical History of the Japanese Relocation Camp Located at Rivers, Arizona,” 

(master’s thesis, University of Tucson, 1969), 23-25.

52 DeWitt, Final Report, 280.

farmers “don't love the Japanese, but we intend to work them, if possible.”49

Eisenhower was forced to accept the idea of keeping both the Issei and Nisei in camps for the duration

of the war. The idea of incarcerating innocent people bothered him so much, however, that he resigned

in June 1942. He recommended Dillon S. Myer to succeed him, but advised Myer to take the position

only “if you can do the job and sleep at night.”50

Setting up the Relocation Centers

Sites for the relocation centers were selected by the WRA, but acquisition was left to the War

Department. Over 300 possible sites were reviewed; primary consideration was given to locations with

railroad access and agricultural potential.51 The assembly centers at Manzanar and Poston were redesignated relocation centers and eight new sites in seven states were selected. The relocation centers

were primarily established on unused or underutilized federal lands. In some cases, however, private

land was confiscated and the owners forced to move. All of the relocation centers were in sparsely

populated areas, making them some of the largest “communities” in their respective states. 

The Tule Lake Relocation Center in California, the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho, and the Heart

Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming were located on undeveloped federal reclamation projects. 

The Jerome and Rohwer Relocation Centers in Arkansas were partially on land meant for subsistence

homesteads under the Farm Security Administration; the balance of the site at Rohwer was bought from

local farmers.

The Colorado River (Poston) and Gila River Relocation Centers in Arizona were both on Indian

reservations. Both tribal councils opposed the use of their land on the grounds that they did not want to

participate in inflicting the same type of injustice as they had suffered, but they were overruled by the

Army and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). In fact, in a verbal agreement Eisenhower had turned

over administration of the Colorado River Relocation Center to the BIA. The WRA resumed control of

the center after Dillon Myer became WRA director.

The Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) was part public domain, part county owned, and part

privately owned land. The Granada Relocation Center in Colorado was privately owned land purchased

by the Army for the WRA The Manzanar Relocation Center was located on unused land held by the

City of Los Angeles for its water rights.

Evacuees at assembly centers which had only pit latrines or which presented a fire hazard were the first

priority for transfer to the relocation centers.52 In theory, evacuees would be sent to the relocation center

with the climate most similar to their home, and each relocation center would have a balance of urban
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 16

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

53 ibid., 360.

and rural settlers. Evacuees were transferred from the assembly centers to the relocation centers by

train; this mass movement was carefully choreographed to avoid interrupting major troop movements.

The transfer process lasted from early June to October 30. Following the transfer of evacuees and

supplies to the relocation centers all but two of the assembly and reception centers were turned over to

various Army agencies or the U.S. Forest Service.

Concurrently with the transfers from the assembly centers, the military decided to remove all persons of

Japanese ancestry from the remainder of California. The eastern portion of California had been

designated Military Area No. 2, and was not supposed to be as sensitive as Military Area No. 1. But

DeWitt reported that vital military installations, important forests, and two population concentrations

immediately adjacent to Military Area No. 1 were located within the California portion of Military Area

No. 2.53 Over 9,000 people were moved directly from this area to the Tule Lake, Poston, and Gila River

relocation centers between July 4th and August 11th. This included many who had voluntarily moved out

of Military Area No. 1 prior to Public Proclamation No. 4. 

Relocation Center Layout and Building Design

General plans for the construction of the relocation centers were developed prior to the establishment of

the WRA. Initial facilities were constructed by the War Department, which also procured the necessary

equipment. Per capita construction costs ranged from $376 at Manzanar to $584 at Minidoka. The total

construction cost, for all centers, was over $56 million.

The relocation centers were designed to be self-contained communities, complete with hospitals, post

offices, schools, warehouses, offices, factories, and residential areas, all surrounded by barbed wire and

guard towers. Since the centers were supposed to be as self-sufficient as possible, the residential core

was surrounded by a large buffer zone that also served as farmland. As at the assembly centers, the

Military Police (MPs) had a separate living area adjacent to the relocation center, to reduce

fraternization. The civilian employees also had living quarters available at the camp, but these were

usually supplemented by whatever housing was available in the nearby towns.

The layout of the relocation centers varied, but certain elements were fairly constant. The perimeter was

usually defined by guard towers and barbed wire fences. There was generally a main entrance leading

to the local highway, and auxiliary routes to farming areas outside the central core. Some of the major

interior roads were paved, but most were simply dirt roads that were dusty or muddy depending on the

weather.

The layout of the two Arizona relocation centers differed from the others. Located on dead-end roads,

rather than along a major highway, they had no watch towers and little or no barbed wire. The Poston

Relocation Center consisted of three separate camps at three-mile intervals (Poston I, II, and III) and the

Gila River Relocation Center consisted of two separate camps (Butte Camp and Canal Camp).

Plans were based on a grid system of blocks. Block sizes varied in the non-residential areas such as the

administrative area, warehouses, and hospital. The remainders of the central cores were made up of

residential blocks separated by open fire breaks. Each residential block consisted of ten to fourteen

barracks, a mess hall, latrines for men and women, a laundry, and a recreation hall. Eventually, large
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 17

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

54 Msaji Inoshita, “The Story of One Japanese-American Family: Gila River Japanese Resettlement Camp,” Arizona

Historical Society Spring Lecture Series, “WWII: The Arizona Homefront,” Tucson, 1995.

sewage systems were built; sometimes these modern facilities (necessary because of the population

density of the centers) aroused the ire and envy of the local rural residents who relied on septic systems

or outhouses.

The design of buildings for the relocation centers presented a problem since no precedents for this type

of housing existed. Permanent buildings were not desired. The military had available plans for

semi-permanent "cantonment"-type buildings and temporary "theater of operations"-type buildings. A

set of standards and details was developed by the Army, modifying the "theater of operations"-type

buildings to make them suitable for housing women, children and elderly people while still meeting the

requirements of quick construction, low cost, and restricted use of critical materials.

These standards and details of construction were put in place on June 8, 1942, and provided for uniform

construction after that date. However, Manzanar, Tule Lake, Poston, and Gila River were already under

construction. Construction also varied because different local Engineer Divisions interpreted the rather

vague standards differently, and these local offices were responsible for developing or contracting out

the plans and specifications for each center.

Local craftsmen were used, but the requirements were not always stringent; in Millard County, Utah,

near the Topaz Relocation Center, "Topaz Carpenter" is still a derogatory term, since anyone who

showed up at the site with a hammer would be hired. Supplies were also difficult to come by in such

large quantities during wartime. In addition, some suppliers were reluctant to use valuable resources for

"Japs," making construction somewhat makeshift at times.

The five-room 20-by-100-foot plan of the assembly center barracks was supplanted by 20-by-120-foot

barracks plans with six variably-sized rooms. The barracks followed standard plans, with differentsized rooms called “apartments” to accommodate different-sized families and groups of single people. 

Each barracks had two apartments at each of the following sizes: 16 by 20 feet, 20 by 20 feet, and 24 by

20 feet. Partitions between the apartments extended only to the eaves, leaving a gap between the walls

and the roof. Each apartment had a heating unit, either coal, wood, oil, or natural gas. Furnishings

included a single drop light, army cots, blankets, and mattresses.

The exterior walls and roofs of the barracks were generally of boards covered with tarpaper on frames of

dimension lumber. In the colder climates wallboard was provided for insulation. The raised floors were

wooden boards, which quickly shrank and allowed dust and dirt to fly all over the barracks. Eventually,

“Mastipave” flooring was provided for use at the Tule Lake, Manzanar, Gila River, and Poston

relocation centers to help seal the drafty floors. The window configurations varied, but were typically

either sliding square windows or double hung, with divided lights. The gabled ends of the buildings had

rectangular vents–a standard Army construction detail.

Barracks construction varied only at the Granada and the Arizona centers. At Granada the barracks had

weatherized wallboard exterior walls and continuous concrete foundations, instead of the usual piers. 

The barracks at the Arizona centers had double roofs for insulation and the Gila River Center even had

white wallboard exterior sheathing. Clearly the Gila River Relocation Center, visited by Eleanor

Roosevelt in April 1943, was a showplace.54
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 18

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

55 Page Smith, Democracy on Trial: The Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II (New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 185.

56 ibid., 176.

Most other buildings were variations on the same theme. Recreation halls and community buildings

were basically the same as barracks, but were 20 by 100 feet and had no interior partitions. Mess halls

were 40 by 100 feet and included a kitchen, store room, and scullery.

Block latrine and laundry facilities at the earlier constructed relocation centers differed little from those

of the assembly centers. At Manzanar, Poston, Gila River, and Tule Lake there were three separate

buildings in each residential block for the men's bathroom, women's bathroom, and laundry. These

army-type facilities had no toilet partitions or bathtubs and very little hot water. A separate ironing

room was added as an afterthought after numerous power outages. At Tule Lake blocks that were

subsequently constructed had a combined laundry and ironing room and a combined men's and women's

bathroom.

After the construction standards for the relocation centers were established in 1942, block latrine and

laundry facilities consisted of large centralized H-shaped structures. One side contained the laundries,

the other side contained the men's and women's bathrooms. The hot water heater was located in the

crossbar of the “H.” In addition to the standard toilets, sinks, and communal showers provided in the

earlier centers, the women's bathrooms were equipped with partitioned toilet stalls and four bathtubs.

Administration buildings were similar to evacuee barracks, but with white clapboard exteriors rather

than tarpaper. Staff housing, also with clapboard exteriors, was divided into self-contained one, two, or

three bedroom apartments each with its own kitchen and bathroom.

Community buildings such as schools and churches were left to be constructed by the evacuees, who

initially used empty barracks for these functions. Often entire blocks of barracks were devoted to

schools. The block recreation halls, originally intended for use by that block, were usually converted to

other general community purposes, such as churches or cooperative stores. Buildings that were later

designed or built by the evacuees were often far more individualistic, and often built of more permanent

materials. For instance, school buildings at Poston were built of adobe brick made by the evacuees.

These later buildings were typically set at an angles, counter to the uniform grid of the relocation center

roads.

Agricultural enterprises at all of the centers provided much of each center's food, with surpluses sent to

the other relocation centers. However, over 40 percent of the rice produced in the U.S. went to the

relocation centers.55 Most of the centers also had hog and chicken farms, and beef or dairy cows were

raised at Gila, Granada, Topaz, and Manzanar.

The relocation centers were subject to the same rationing as the rest of the country. Victory Gardens

supplemented the rations and evacuee crews recycled fats, metal, and other material considered vital to

the war effort. The WRA intended to have industries supporting the war effort at the relocation centers,

but these plans were thwarted by industries and unions who feared unfair competition. The only venture

that enjoyed even a modest degree of success was the short-lived manufacture of camouflage nets at

three of the centers.56 The Manzanar net factory, supervised by the Corp of Engineers, was closed
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 19

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

57 ibid., 244.

58 War Relocation Authority, “Records 1942-1946,” Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles,

1943.

Granada War Relocation Center

following a December 1942 riot. Privately run net factories at the Poston and Gila River relocation

centers were discontinued in May 1943 after the completion of their original contracts.

Other war-related industries at the relocation centers included a ship model factory at Gila River that

produced models for use in training Navy pilots and a poster shop at Granada. Other planned industrial

projects were put on hold, due to outside pressures and to encourage relocation out of the centers.

Industry for internal use included garment factories at Manzanar, Heart Mountain, and Minidoka, a

cabinet shop at Tule Lake, sawmills at Jerome and Heart Mountain, and a mattress factory at Manzanar. 

In addition, factories for the processing of agricultural products were common at all of the centers. For

instance, Manzanar made all the soy sauce it used.57

Life in the Relocation Centers

The physical surroundings, while not having as profound an impact as political and philosophical issues,

had a great effect on everyday life. When the evacuees arrived at the camps, they found identical blocks

of identical flimsy barracks. They quickly improved and personalized their new lodgings, first to make

them habitable, and later to make them into homes. 

The physical changes the evacuees made in their

environment were important ways of taking

control over their own lives. The changes also

helped personalize the identical barracks, to

relieve the monotony.

Physical elements could also be reminders of their

lack of freedom. The guard towers and especially

the barbed wire fences delineated the difference

between inside and outside the camps, freedom

and confinement. Even a WRA report admitted

that “the contrast between the barbed wire and the

confinement within Manzanar and the observable freedom and motion for those immediately outside, is

galling to a good many residents.”58

The weather was another element that greatly affected the evacuees' lives. Both contemporary and later

accounts stress dust, mud, and extremes in temperature that came as great shocks to West Coast

residents used to much more temperate climates. The dust, caused by the massive disturbance of the soil

from construction of hundreds of buildings at once, eventually settled, but the harshness of the climate

stayed the same.

Originally, block leaders were appointed by the relocation center director. But the WRA decided that

the evacuees should participate in governing their own communities as much as possible. WRA policy

called for a community council with one elected representative from each block, an executive

committee, and a judicial committee. Issei were not eligible to hold elective offices. Manzanar was the
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 20

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

59 Myer, Uprooted Americans, 39-40; Smith Democracy on Trial, 253.

60 Gary Y. Okihiro, “Japanese Resistance in America’s Concentration Camps,” Amerasia Journal 2 (Fall 1973), 20-

34.

61 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 115.

only center that never elected a council. Instead it relied on elected block leaders who served as an

advisory group for the center director.59

Some conflicts were caused by relocation while others were merely brought to the surface. Many

evacuees had supported the United States and were loyal and patriotic until their government decided

that they were untrustworthy and guilty until proven innocent. Their feelings of betrayal sometimes

caused formerly loyal citizens to renounce their citizenship, in extreme cases, or merely to sympathize

with the Japanese government. It was probably most difficult for the Issei, who often still had feelings

of loyalty to Japan, even though they also felt American. Others continued to feel loyal to the United

States, even though they had lost their homes and freedom. Their major goal was to find ways to prove

their loyalty to the outside world.

Inter-generational tension was also a major problem in the relocation centers, especially since Issei and

Nisei were very distinct generations. There was a large shift in the balance of power from the Issei to

the Nisei, for many reasons. Because the majority of the Issei leadership had been arrested after Pearl

Harbor, the Nisei gained power and influence, both within families and in general. Once the relocation

centers were set up, many of the Issei were released to join their families in the centers. However, use

of the Japanese language was very restricted: all meetings had to be conducted in English, and all

newsletters and other publications were in English. Since many Issei did not speak English, or were not

very fluent, this was a further handicap. The Issei also often lost more in the arrests and relocation,

since they usually had established farms or businesses. The Nisei usually had less to lose, and some saw

the entire experience as an adventure or merely a temporary setback.

Resistance within the relocation centers took many forms. Ethnic churches, Japanese language schools,

and unofficial unions flourished. More overt resistance came in the form of strikes and protest

demonstrations. How far these went depended on whether an acceptable compromise could be

reached.60

In November 1942, Heart Mountain was beset by protests over the erection of a barbed wire fence and

watchtowers around the relocation center. A petition signed by over half of the adults in the center

stated that the fence was an “insult to any free human being.” The fence stayed, but the protests

continued.61

That same month Poston came close to open revolt. When two suspected informers were beaten,

administration officials arrested two Kibei men. Crowds demanded they be freed, workers went on

strike, and the police station was picketed. Demonstrators flew flags that from a distance resembled the

Japanese flag. However, the protest ended peacefully as the Issei leaders of the protest saw things

getting quickly out of hand and a compromise settlement was reached.

The most serious disturbance erupted at Manzanar in December 1942, following months of tension and
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 21

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

62 Myer, Uprooted Americans, 64. 

63 Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, 104.

64 Myer, Uprooted Americans, 65.

65 James M. Sakoda, “The ‘Residue’: The Unsettled Minidokans, 1943-1945,” in Yuji Ichioka, Views from Within:

The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (Los Angeles: University of California, Asian American

Studies Center, 1989), 263.

gang activity between Japanese American Citizens League supporters of the administration and a large

group of Kibei. On December 6, a JACL leader was beaten by six masked men. Harry Ueno, the leader

of the Kitchen Workers Union, was arrested for the beating and removed from the center. Soon

afterward, 3,000 to 4,000 evacuees held a meeting, marched to the administration area, and selected a

committee of five to negotiate with the administration. In exchange for a promise of no more

demonstrations, the center director agreed to bring Ueno back to the relocation center jail.

However, when Ueno was returned a crowd formed again. Fearing the worst, the director called in the

military police, who then used tear gas to break up the crowd. When a truck was pushed toward the jail,

the military police fired into the crowd, killing one and wounding at least ten others (one of whom later

died).

A group of 65 “outspoken patriots” who supported the Manzanar administration were on a reported

death list, including the JACL leader who had been beaten.62 For their protection, these evacuees were

removed to an abandoned CCC Camp in Death Valley. Sixteen alleged troublemakers, including Ueno,

were removed to local jails and then to another abandoned CCC Camp at Moab, Utah. This so-called

“Isolation Center” was moved to an Indian boarding school at Leupp, Arizona in April 1943.

Others were sent from the relocation centers to the Isolation Center for "crimes" as minor as calling a

Caucasian nurse an old maid.63 No formal charges had to be made, transfer was purely at the discretion

of the relocation center director.64 At Leupp, the military police outnumbered the inmates 3 to 1.

The Minidoka Center was continually plagued by strikes and protests. The evacuees organized a labor

council, termed the Fair Play Committee, to represent them. The main objection was the low wage scale

and the difference in wages between the evacuees and the Caucasian staff. A strike by evacuee coal

workers was broken by employing other evacuees from the center who volunteered, and a strike by

hospital workers was broken by sending the strike leaders to Leupp. Similar conflicts later arose with

block maintenance staff, mail carriers, gatekeepers, telephone operators, warehouse workers, and other

groups. A never-finished gymnasium stood as a reminder of administration-evacuee conflict. The

construction crew walked out over a dispute about work hours and no volunteers could be found to

replace them.65

Even with suspected troublemakers shipped out at a moment's notice, a crisis could erupt at any time, as

at the Topaz Relocation Center. On Sunday, April 11, 1943, 63-year-old James Hatsuaki Wakasa was

fatally shot just before sunset by military police. Either distracted or unable to hear or understand the

sentry's warnings, he was near the perimeter fence about 300 feet from the watchtower, when he was

shot in the chest. The sentry, a disabled veteran of Pacific combat, claimed that Wakasa was trying to
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 22

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

66 Sandra C. Taylor, Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1993), 141.

67 Smith, Democracy on Trial, 292-293.

crawl through the fence and that he warned him four times before firing a warning shot (guards had fired

warning shots on eight previous occasions). The relocation center residents were shocked and outraged

by the killing and a general alert was called by the military in case of trouble. However, relative calm

prevailed as both the administration and the Topaz residents’ leadership wanted to avoid a

confrontation. After a brief work stoppage, compromises on the funeral location (near, but not at, the

spot of death) and limits placed on military police were reached. The military were subsequently

restricted in their use of weapons, no MPs would be allowed inside the center, and Pacific veterans

would be withdrawn and no more would be assigned. Nevertheless, a little more than a month later, a

sentry fired at a couple strolling too close to the fence.66

Indefinite Leave Clearance

One of the goals of the WRA was to determine which evacuees were actually loyal to the United States,

and then to find places for them to work and settle away from the West Coast, outside of the relocation

centers. At first each case had to be investigated individually, which often took months, since each

person had to find a job and a place to live, while convincing the government that they were not a threat. 

Eventually, to streamline the process, every adult evacuee was given a questionnaire entitled

“Application for Indefinite Leave Clearance” whether or not they were attempting to leave. 

Unfortunately, these questionnaires had originally been intended for determining loyalty of possible

draftees and were not modified for the general population, which included women and people who were

citizens of Japan. The controversial questions were Numbers 27 and 28:

No. 27: Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty,

wherever ordered?

No. 28: Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully

defend the United States from any and all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and foreswear

any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese Emperor, or any other foreign government,

power, or organization?

The first question was a bit strange for women and the elderly, but otherwise relatively straightforward. 

However, the second question was troubling for Issei, who were not allowed to become American

citizens; answering yes effectively left them without a country. On the other hand, some of those who

already felt loyal to the United States considered it to be a trick question. No one was sure what the

consequences would be, but each family debated how to answer these questions.

Many of the relocation center directors saw the dilemma in the loyalty questionnaire and got permission

from the Washington Office to change the wording. At Manzanar the wording was changed to “Are you

sympathetic to the United States and do you agree faithfully to defend the United States from any attack

by foreign or domestic forces?” With this change many Issei at Manzanar answered in the affirmative.67

However, even with the changed wording controversy remained. While some of those who answered

“no” to both questions, the “no-no boys,” were truly more loyal to Japan than to the United States, in
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 23

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

68 John Seabrook, “The Spinach King,” The New Yorker, February 20-27, 1995, 222-235.

69 Properties in both areas associated with wartime military operations were designated as National Historic

Landmarks in the 1980s under the “War in the Pacific” National Historic Landmark theme study. 

70 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 57.

many cases people compromised to keep families together. Others answered in the negative as a way of

protesting the injustice of the entire relocation rather than suggesting loyalty to Japan. Some did not

want to imply that they wanted to apply for leave, since now that they were settled in the relocation

centers, they considered them to be a safe haven and did not want to be forced out into the unknown. 

The questionnaire was one of the most divisive events of the entire relocation.

Those who answered “yes” to the loyalty questionnaire were eligible to leave the relocation centers, if

they found a sponsor. One of the largest single sponsors, Seabrook Farms, was also one of the largest

producers of frozen vegetables in the country. The company, experiencing a labor shortage due to the

war, had a history of hiring minorities and setting them up in ethnically segregated villages. About

2,500 evacuees went to Seabrook Farms' New Jersey plant. They worked 12-hour days, at 35 cents to

50 cents an hour, with 1 day off every 2 weeks. They lived in concrete block buildings, not much better

than the relocation center barracks, and had to provide for their own food and cooking.68

Through the indefinite leave process, the overall population of the relocation centers was reduced. On

June 30, 1944, the Jerome Relocation Center was converted into a POW camp for Germans, after the

5,000 residents remaining were transferred to other centers. This closure not only saved administration

costs, but also was used to show that the relocation program was working. Over 18,000 evacuees

moved out of the relocation centers in 1944. By the war's end over 50,000 had relocated to the eastern

United States.

Alaska and Hawaii

The experiences of Japanese Americans in Alaska and Hawaii were profoundly affected by the fact that

these territories, as they then were, were the sites of active combat–Hawaii with the Pearl Harbor attack

that brought the United States into the war and Alaska with the Japanese occupation of Attu and Kiska

in the Aleutian Islands.69

Most Alaskan Issei were picked up by the Department of Justice shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor;

many of these were later transferred to relocation centers. Their families were held for a short time at

the Army’s Fort Richardson, near Anchorage, before being transferred to the Puyallup Assembly Center

in Washington. Most were later sent to the Minidoka Relocation Center. Of the 151 Japanese

Americans removed from Alaska under Executive Order 9066, about 50 were seal- and whale-hunters

who were half-Eskimo or half-Aleut.70 

The only mass relocations in Alaska involved native Aleuts. In the aftermath of the Japanese attacks in

June, 1942, U.S. authorities evacuated 800 men, women and children from the Aleutians and about 500

from the Pribilof Islands and relocated them to isolated “duration villages” in southeast Alaska. 

Conditions were primitive in the abandoned canneries and gold mines and about 75 people died. Under

the terms of Public Law 100-383, which called for restitution to relocated Japanese Americans, the

surviving relocated Aleuts also received official apologies from Congress and from the President and a
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 24

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

71 “Aleut Internment” and “Aleut Restitution,” on the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area website

<www.nps.gov/aleu/AleutInternmentAndRestitution>, January 21, 2005; M. Richard Zacharof, “Pribilof Aleut

Internment Historic District” (Juneau Census District, Alaska) draft National Register nomination, 2001. 

72 Dennis M. Ogawa and Evarts C. Fox, Jr., “Japanese Internment and Relocation: The Hawaii Experience,” in

Roger Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, and Harry H. L. Kitano, Japanese Americans From Relocation to Redress, rev. ed.

(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), 135-138; Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 404.

73 Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993),

48; Ogawa and Evarts, “Japanese Internment and Relocation,”; Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 50, 87-88, 174-5.

payment of $12,000.71

Martial law was declared in Hawaii immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and continued in force

until October 1944. All civilians were subject to travel, security, and curfew restrictions. The Japanese

fishing fleet was impounded. By December 10, approximately 400 enemy aliens considered potentially

dangerous, three-fourth of whom were Japanese American, had been detained by the FBI, military

intelligence agencies, and the local police. Of the approximately 10,000 Hawaiians investigated as

possible security risks during the period of martial law, about 1,500 were detained. Of this total, 1,250

were Japanese Americans. Because those targeted for investigation were often community leaders,

including Shinto and Buddhist priests, language school teachers and administrators, and members of the

Japanese Chamber of Commerce, the impact of the internment on Hawaii’s Japanese Americans was

greater than the small numbers might suggest. 

Most of those detained were sent first to the temporary Sand Island Detention Camp in Honolulu Harbor

and later moved to the new Honouliuli Interment Camp, both on the island of Oahu. Honouliuli was a

permanent camp ringed with barbed wire and guard towers. Small detention camps included as the

Kalaheo stockade on the island of Kauai and Haiku camp on the island of Maui. Six hundred and

seventy-five Japanese aliens were eventually sent to internment camps on the mainland; 900 family

members volunteered to join them. Some of the 117 Japanese Americans remaining in the Honouliuli

Camp in October, 1944, were transferred to the Tule Lake Segregation Camp; others were gradually

released on parole.72 

In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and other politicians,

mostly on the mainland, called for the mass incarceration of Hawaiian Japanese Americans. Knox told

the president that “all of [our] defense of the islands is now carried out in the presence of a population

predominately with enemy sympathies and affiliations.” In March 1942, the Joint Chiefs of Staff

recommended that all Japanese Americans from Hawaii should be relocated to “concentration camps”

on the mainland. Military commanders in Hawaii successfully resisted mass relocations, however. 

According to the Census of 1940, over 150,000 Japanese Americans were living in the islands, more

than a third of the total population. There weren’t enough soldiers to guard them or enough ships to

send them to the mainland. More importantly, their labor was crucial to the economy. In the end, most

Japanese stayed in the islands, although they were under strict control and surveillance.73

Japanese Americans from Hawaii played a particularly important role in the military. In June, 1942, the

Hawaiian Provisional Infantry Battalion was organized. It was made up of 1,500 Japanese American

who had been discharged from the Hawaiian Territorial Guard and Hawaiian units of the National Guard

in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, but who were anxious to serve their country. Transferred to the
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 25

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

74 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 144, 306n.

75 “100th Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team,” U.S. Army Center of Military History website

<www.army.mil/cmh-pg/topics/apam/100Bn>, April 7, 2004.

76 Daniels, “Introduction,” in Daniels et al., Japanese Americans From Relocation to Redress, 132.

77 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 182-184.

78 Gordon K. Hirabayashi, “The Japanese Canadians and World War II,” in Daniels et al., Japanese Americans

From Relocation to Redress, 139-141.

79 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 185.

mainland in secrecy, the new unit was re-designated the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate) on June 12,

and sent to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, for six month of basic training. Some of the men who could

speak Japanese were transferred to Camp Savage, where they became part of the Military Intelligence

Service Language School (MISLS). In February, the rest of the 100th Battalion was transferred to Camp

Shelby, Mississippi, for advanced training and maneuvers. Their excellent record probably contributed

to the decision to create the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team in that same month. When the

military was reopened to Japanese Americans, almost 10,000 men from Hawaii volunteered, of whom

more than 2,600 were accepted. In contrast, there were only 1,250 volunteers from the relocation

centers.74 

The 100th Battalion was combined with the 442nd in August 1944. The combined unit compiled a

distinguished record fighting in the European Theater, earning three Presidential Unit Citations and

many individual decorations, including a posthumous Medal of Honor for Sadao Munemori for

“supremely heroic action.”75

Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean

The mass evacuation from the West Coast was only part of the removals undertaken throughout much of

the Western Hemisphere. At the outbreak of World War II there were some 600,000 ethnic Japanese

living in the Americas.76

Canada, already at war with Germany and Italy, declared war on Japan within hours of the attacks on

Pearl Harbor and British Hong Kong. Of the 23,000 people of Japanese ancestry in Canada, 75 percent

were Canadian citizens. In the beginning, only Japanese aliens were arrested, but over 1,200 Japanese

Canadian fishing vessels, all owned by citizens, were impounded and later sold to finance the

relocation.77

By January 14, 1942, all Japanese alien males over 16 years of age had been removed from Pacific coast

areas. When British Columbia politicians learned of the U.S. decision to evacuate all people of

Japanese ancestry, including citizens, from the West Coast, they demanded Canada do the same.78

A total evacuation was ordered on February 24th. However, exceptions were made for those married to

non-Asians.79 On March 16, eight days before the first evacuation was carried out by the U.S. Army, the

removal of all Japanese Canadians in British Columbia began. Over 21,000 were sent through the

Hastings Park clearing station, the Canadian equivalent of an assembly center. From Hastings Park, half
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 26

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

80 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 57.

81 Daniels, “Introduction,” 132.

82 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 57.

83 ibid., 59-62.

84 C. Harvey Gardiner, “The Latin American Japanese and World War II,” in Daniels et al., Japanese Americans

From Relocation to Redress, 139-141.

85 Daniels, “Introduction,” 132.

86 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 63-64.

of the Japanese Canadians were sent to six interior housing centers at six abandoned mining towns. The

remaining were relocated to sugar beet farms, lumber camps, road construction camps, and other work

camps in interior Canada. Even after the war, the Japanese Canadians were not allowed to return to

British Columbia until April 1949.

In Mexico people of Japanese ancestry along the Pacific Coast and the U.S. border were required by the

Mexican government to liquidate property and move inland to resettlement camps.80 They were

eventually required to resettle in Mexico City or Guadalajara.81

The U.S. pressured many Central and South American counties, even those not at war with Japan, to

turn over Japanese immigrants and nationals to U.S. authorities for transportation to the U.S.82 The

government cited the safety of the Panama Canal as the rationale for this removal, but the possible

exchange of Japanese civilians for U.S. civilians interned in Japan was also a consideration. During the

early part of the war some 7,000 U.S. citizens had been captured by Japanese forces in the Philippines,

Guam, Wake Island, and China.83

A total of 2,264 Japanese were sent to the U.S. from Latin American and Caribbean counties; over 1,000

were from Peru.84 Cuba incarcerated all adult male Japanese. Brazil's 300,000 Japanese, the largest

population outside of Hawaii, were left largely alone, as were persons of Japanese ancestry in Chile and

Argentina.85

The first transfer to the U.S. occurred in April 1942. Most of the Japanese sent to the U.S. from Latin

America were confined at Crystal City, Texas, a special facility operated by the U.S. Immigration and

Naturalization Service for families.

During the war the Swedish ship M.S. Gripsholm made two voyages to Japan to facilitate the exchange

of 2,840 Japanese civilians for U.S. civilians. Nearly half of those exchanged by the U.S. were from

Latin America. Disturbed by the mass relocations of Japanese from Latin America and with the

exchange of citizens with Japan at a standstill, the Department of Justice ended the deportations to the

U.S. in early 1943.86 After the war, many of the deportees were denied reentry to their home country,

and as a result many returned to Japan or stayed in the U.S. In 1946 many went to work at Seabrook

Farms in New Jersey.
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 27

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

87 Myer, Uprooted Americans, 77.

88 ibid.

89 Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps, 110.

90 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 162.

Tule Lake Segregation Center

Those who answered “no” to the loyalty questions were classified as “disloyals.” In response to public

and congressional criticism, the WRA decided to segregate the “disloyals” from the “loyals.” One of

the Poston camps was originally chosen, but eventually, the “disloyals” were segregated to the

relocation center at Tule Lake, which already housed the highest number of “disloyals.”

The half of the original evacuees at Tule Lake who answered “yes” to the loyalty questions were

supposed to choose another relocation center to make room for more “disloyals” at Tule Lake. But

4,000 “loyals” at Tule Lake chose to stay; some did not want to leave California and others were just

tired of being pushed around, so the “loyal” and “disloyal” remained together.87 Tule Lake did not have

room to accommodate the 1,800 “disloyals” from Manzanar until the spring of 1944, when additional

housing was completed.

Ray Best, who had run the Isolation Centers at Moab and Leupp, was named the new director of Tule

Lake. The 71 inmates at Leupp were transferred to Tule Lake.88 Additional troops were assigned to

Tule Lake, including eight tanks.89 A “manproof” fence around the relocation center perimeter and

more guard towers were eventually added as well.

The Tule Lake Segregation Center maintained the same internal democratic political structure as at the

relocation centers, and the new arrivals became active in center politics.

A tragic accident set off a chain of events that fueled dissension in the center, and culminated in the

Army taking over control of the Segregation Center. On October 15, 1943, a truck transporting

evacuees from agricultural fields overturned, killing one evacuee. The center administration was

blamed since the driver was underage, and evacuees were outraged that the widow's benefits amounted

to only two-thirds of $16, the deceased's monthly wage.

A massive public funeral was conducted without administration approval and ten days later agricultural

workers decided to go on strike. The strikers did not want to harvest food destined for other centers. 

They saw themselves as the “loyals” and those who held pro-U.S. views at the other centers as traitors to

Japan.

The administration brought in 234 residents from other relocation centers to harvest the crops. For their

protection, these "loyals" were housed outside the center at a nearby former CCC camp. Further inciting

the strikers, the strike breakers were paid $1 per hour rather than the standard WRA wages of $16 per

month.90

When WRA Director Dillon Myer made a routine visit to Tule Lake on November 1, a crowd assembled

in the administration area. During the assembly a doctor was beaten and some cars were vandalized. 
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 28

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

91 ibid., 163. 

92 John J. Culley, “The Santa Fe Internment Camp and the Justice Department Program for Enemy Aliens,” in

Daniels et al., Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, 57-71; Myer, Uprooted Americans, 90.

An appointed “Committee of 17" met with Myer, but all of their demands (including removal of

Director Best) were rejected. Further, future evacuee meetings in the administration area were

forbidden. On November 4 the administration began work on a fence between the administration and

evacuee areas.

That evening a crowd of around 400 tried to prevent trucks from being used to take food to the strike

breakers and later the mob headed towards the director's residence.91 The Army, arriving with tanks and

jeeps mounted with machine guns, used tear gas to disperse crowds throughout the center. Many

evacuees were arrested and a curfew was established. The next day schools were closed and most work

was stopped.

When an assembly called by the Army on November 14 was boycotted, more evacuees were arrested

and martial law was declared. On November 26 a center-wide dragnet was conducted to find the

leaders, who had been hidden by sympathetic evacuees.

A stockade was built in the administration area to house those arrested. The stockade had 12-ft-high

wooden walls to obstruct the view and prevent communication with the rest of the center population. 

By December 1 the last of the leaders turned themselves in to authorities in a show of solidarity with

those already arrested. On January 1 those incarcerated in the stockade initiated the first of three hunger

strikes.

Within the rest of the center, however, the protests waned. On January 11, with over 350 dissident

leaders in jail, the center residents voted to end the protests. The vote was close (and one block refused

to vote) but the moderates had retaken control. In response to the vote martial law was lifted on January

15. The center administration, except for the stockade, was returned to the WRA.

The April 18 Tokyo Declaration, in which the Japanese government officially protested the treatment of

the “disloyals,” provided some recognition to those within the stockade. Shortly thereafter, 276 were

released from the stockade and on May 23, 1944, Army control of the stockade was turned over to the

WRA.

Eventually, over 1,500 Issei were removed from the Tule Lake Segregation Center to Justice

Department internment camps at Bismarck, North Dakota, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.92 But tension

still ran high. On May 24, James Okamoto was shot and killed during an altercation with a guard, and

in June the general manager of the Business Enterprise Association, one of the most stable elements in

the evacuee community, was murdered.

On August 19, 1944, soon after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) demanded a meeting with 

those in the stockade, all were suddenly released and the fence removed. The stockade jail was used

again for a short period in June 1945 when five teenagers were sentenced by the center director to the

stockade for blowing bugles and wearing Japanese-style clothing.
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 29

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

93 Commission on Wartime Relocation, Personal Justice Denied.

94 Rick Noguchi, Transforming Barbed Wire: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans in Arizona During World

War II (Phoenix: Arizona Humanities Council, 1997); Uyeda, Due Process, 75.

95 Frank Chuman, The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese Americans (Chicago, IL: Japanese American

Research Project, 1976), 179; Uyeda, Due Process, 73.

Corporal Jimmy Shohara,

picture taken when he was

visiting his parents at

Manzanar

Nisei in the Army

The initial aim of the registration questionnaire had been to determine the loyalty of draft-age males

before calling for volunteers for the army and then reinstating the draft for Japanese Americans. On

February 1, 1943, President Roosevelt declared that “Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of

race or ancestry. . . . Every loyal American should be given the opportunity to serve this country

wherever his skills will make the greatest contribution–whether it be in the ranks of our armed forces,

war production, agriculture, government service, or other work essential to the war effort.”93 While the

first call for volunteers from the relocation centers resulted in a much smaller group than expected by

the government, approximately 1,200 Nisei evacuees volunteered at the initial registration. These

volunteers from the mainland were organized into the 442nd

Regimental Combat Team. The government hoped creating a

predominantly Japanese American unit would help impress the

general public with Nisei patriotism and bravery, but some

Japanese Americans refused to volunteer for a segregated unit.

The 442nd was combined with the 100th Infantry Battalion in 1944. 

Both units fought in Europe, and were responsible for the rescue

of the "Lost Battalion" of the 36th Texas Division. Ironically, the

522nd Battalion of the 442nd Regiment discovered and liberated the

Dachau Concentration Camp, but were ordered to keep quiet about

their actions.94 The next day, another American battalion arrived

and "officially" liberated the camp. The combined 100th

Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team was one of the most

decorated units in the U.S. Army, with 18,143 individual citations

and 9,486 casualties in a unit with an authorized strength of 4,000

men.95 

More than 6,000 Nisei served in the Pacific and in Asia, performing invaluable and dangerous tasks,

mainly in intelligence and translation. In addition to the normal risks of combat duty, they risked certain

death if captured by the Japanese. Nisei women also served with distinction in the Women’s Army

Corps, as nurses, and for the Red Cross.

In the relocation centers, initial opposition to military service turned into pride, partly through the efforts

of the soldiers' families. Almost every camp built “Honor Rolls” listing men who were serving in the

Army and many windows displayed blue or gold star service flags. Awareness of the accomplishments

of the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regiment outside the camps varied according to how closely one

followed the news, but those who followed military progress closely were impressed by their

accomplishments.
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 30

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

96 Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial, 64.

97 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 125.

98 ibid., 128.

99 Jacobus tenBroek, Edward N. Barnhart, and Floyd W. Matson, Prejudice, War, and the Constitution: Causes and

Consequences of the Evacuation of the Japanese Americans in World War II (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1954), 211-223.

While many Nisei served in the military as a method of proving their loyalty, others refused to volunteer

and resisted the draft to protest the relocation. Nationwide, 293 interned Japanese Americans were tried

for draft resistance.96 The resisters did not oppose the draft itself but hoped that their protest would

clarify their citizenship status. The best organized resistance was organized by the Fair Play Committee

at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, where 54 of 315 potential draftees did not show up for

physicals.97 Committee leaders Kiyoshi Okamota and Paul Nakadate were branded as “disloyal.” 

Another leader, Isamu Horino, was arrested as he tried to walk out the front gate to dramatize his lack of

freedom. All three were sent to Tule Lake.

The 54 draft resisters and nine additional people who counseled the resisters were arrested. All 63 were

found guilty in the largest mass trial for draft resistance in U.S. history. Seven members of the Fair Play

Committee were found guilty of conspiracy, as well. However, the verdicts did not silence the

resistance: 22 more Heart Mountain evacuees were later arrested for draft evasion. In all, 85 evacuees at

Heart Mountain were convicted of draft evasion and were sent to federal prison. However, more than

700 evacuees at Heart Mountain did report for physicals, and 385 were inducted. Of these, 63 were

killed or wounded in combat.98

Supreme Court Cases

The constitutional questions raised by the relocation of American citizens and aliens of Japanese

ancestry were left to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide. The Hirabayashi, Yasui, Korematsu, and Endo

cases dealt with the curfew, exclusion, and relocation.99

On June 21, 1943, in Hirabayashi v. United States, the court avoided the issue of the legality of the

relocation, but unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the curfew imposed on Japanese Americans

based on “military necessity.” Relying on information presented to it by the government, the court ruled

that “we cannot reject as unfounded the judgement of the military authorities and of Congress that there

were disloyal members of that population, whose number and strength could not be precisely and

quickly ascertained.” Yasui v. United States, decided the same day, also involved a violation of the

curfew orders. The court again upheld the constitutionality of the curfew, but overturned the lower

court’s decision that Minoru Yasui had lost his citizenship because he had been employed with the

Japanese Consul in Chicago prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The final two cases were decided December 18, 1944. In Korematsu v. United States, in a split

decision, the court upheld the government’s right to exclude people of Japanese ancestry from the West

Coast, again based on military necessity. Temporary exclusion of all people of Japanese ancestry was

defended as a military imperative, and as in Hirabayashi v. United States, the court could not reject the

military opinion. In Endo v. United States, on the other hand, it was unanimously decided that Mitsuye
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 31

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

100 Sakoda, “The ‘Residue’.”

101 Daniels, Concentration Camps, 116.

102 Smith, Democracy on Trial, 444.

Endo, a loyal U.S. citizen, should be released unconditionally, that is, without having to follow the

indefinite leave procedure established by the WRA. The court stated that the WRA “has no authority to

subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure.” While sidestepping the constitutional

question of the right of the government to hold citizens without cause in wartime, it did in effect free all

loyal Japanese Americans still held in relocation centers.

Closing the Relocation Centers

During the war, the evacuees had wondered what would be the ultimate fate of the relocation centers. 

Some expected them to close when the war ended, while others, particularly the elderly, felt the

government owed them a place to stay, now that they had been forcibly removed from their own homes. 

Anticipating the Supreme Court decisions, on December 17, 1944, the War Department announced the

lifting of the W est Coast exclusion orders, and the WRA simultaneously announced that the relocation

centers would be closed within one year. Initial reactions of the evacuees varied; some immediately

returned to the West Coast, while others vowed never to leave the centers. Some of the first to return to

the West Coast encountered violence and hostility and had difficulty finding housing and jobs. Others

had more success and encouraged people to leave the camps and return. Many who feared returning to

the West Coast found refuge in other parts of the country, especially Denver, Salt Lake City, and

Chicago.

Evacuees had to relocate on their own. The WRA provided only minimum assistance: $25 per person,

train fare, and meals on route for those with less than $500 in cash. Many left when ordered and by

September over 15,000 evacuees a month were leaving the various centers. But many had no place to

go, since they had lost their homes and businesses because of the relocation. In the end the WRA had to

resort to forced evictions.

At the Minidoka Relocation Center, laundries, latrines, and mess halls were progressively closed until

the few remaining people had to search for food to eat. Evacuees were given 2-week, 3-day, and

30-minute eviction notices. If they still did not leave on their own, the WRA packed their belongings

and forced them onto trains.100

Eventually the relocation centers were emptied out, and all were finally closed by the end of 1945. The

Tule Lake Segregation Center operated until March 20, 1946, because so many evacuees there had

renounced their citizenship.

Enacted on July 1, 1944, Public Law 504 had allowed U.S. citizens to renounce their citizenship on U.S.

soil during time of war. Of the 5,700 Japanese Americans requesting renunciation, 95 percent were

from Tule Lake. A third of the citizens at Tule Lake applied for “repatriation” to Japan.101 On February

23, 1946, the first 432 repatriates set sail for Japan. Over 4,000 would follow. However, over the next

five years all but 357 would apply for a return of their U.S. citizenship.102

After the last internees were released, the Tule Lake facility was placed on standby use during the Cold
NPS Form, 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II Page 32

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

103 Roger Daniels, personal communication, 2000.

104 Peter Irons, Justice at War: the Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1983), viii-ix.

War for potential McCarran Act detainees, but was never used.103 All the other relocation centers were

abandoned. If the land had been privately owned, the original owners were generally given the option to

re-purchase the land. Otherwise, the land reverted to the control of the previous land-managing agency. 

Buildings were sold to veterans, auctioned off, or given to local schools and hospitals. On May 15 the

last WRA field office was closed and on June 30, 1946, the WRA was officially disbanded.

Retrospect

People still debate whether the exclusion orders and the relocation centers were just, reasonable,

constitutional, or justifiable responses to war. However, in 1982 the California legislature passed a bill

to provide $5,000 restitution to 314 Japanese Americans who were fired from their state jobs in 1942. 

Significantly, the Japanese Americans who had been convicted of violating curfew and not reporting to

the relocation centers were exonerated. Evidence surfaced that the War Department and the Justice

Department had altered blatantly racist reports and submitted false information to the Supreme Court

about the potential danger posed by the Japanese Americans.104 With this newly discovered information

Federal District Courts overturned Fred Korematsu's conviction in 1984, Minoru Yasui's conviction in

1985, and Gordon Hirabayashi's conviction in 1986. In 1988, President Reagan signed Public Law 100-

383, the Civil Liberties Act, which called for official apologies from Congress and from the President

and a symbolic payment of $20,000 to each surviving evacuee.

N:\NR-NHL\Theme Studies\Japanese Americans\study\SECTIONE.WPD
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 33

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

F. ASSOCIATED PROPERTY TYPES

This section is intended to assist agencies and individuals seeking to identify, document, and evaluate

properties under the Japanese Americans in World War II context for possible designation as National

Historic Landmarks (NHL) or for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places (NR). It is

divided into three parts. The first describes four broad property types associated with the Japanese

experience during World War II, based on the list of properties included in Public Law 102-248 and on

the historic context. The second discusses the conditions these properties must meet in order to be

considered for National Historic Landmark designation (“registration requirements”). The third outlines

the registration requirements for listing properties in the National Register. 

PROPERTY TYPES

Public Law 102-248, which directed that this theme study be prepared, identified 37 specific properties

for inclusion in the study. These properties represent four broad property types: those associated with

the exclusion of over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast of the United

States; those associated with the relocation of these men, women, and children, first to assembly centers

operated by the Army’s Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA) and then to relocation

centers operated by the civilian War Relocation Authority (WRA); those associated with the detention

of Japanese Americans classified by the U.S. government as “dangerous”; and those associated with

Japanese American military service. The 37 properties identified in the law and the property types they

represent are shown in Table 1.

1. Properties Associated with Exclusion

Western Defense Command Facilities

Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, the commander of the Western Defense Command and the U.S. 4th

Army, oversaw the exclusion of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. On

February 9, 1942, DeWitt recommended the removal of all Japanese, native-born as well as

alien, and “other subversive persons” from the entire area lying west of the Sierra Nevada and

Cascade Mountains, justifying this broad-scale removal on “military necessity.” Ten days later,

on February 19, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the Secretary of

War to establish military areas “from which any or all persons may be excluded.”

The orders that directed the removal were issued by General DeWitt. Public proclamations

created the restricted military areas and prohibited all Japanese from leaving these areas until

ordered. Further instructions issued by DeWitt established military-run reception centers as

transitional evacuation facilities and forbade moves except to approved locations. DeWitt also

issued 108 civilian exclusion orders, each designed to affect around 1,000 people. Evacuees

were directed to register at designated civil control stations in preparation for removal from the

restricted areas.

General DeWitt’s offices were located in Building 35 of the Presidio of San Francisco.

Nihonmachi/“Japantowns”

Japanese sections of towns or cities were called Nihonmachi or “Japantowns.” Early
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 34

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Table 1: Properties Identified in Title II of Public Law 102-248

NAME OF PROPERTY LOCATION PROPERTY TYPE

Angel Island Marin County, CA Places associated with detention

Bainbridge Island Kitsap County, WA Places associated with exclusion

Camp Shelby Forrest and Perry Counties, MS Places associated with military service

Camp McCoy Monroe County, WI Places associated with military service

Camp Savage Scott County, MN Places associated with military service

Crystal City Internment Camp Zavala County, TX Places associated with detention

Fort Missoula Internment Camp Missoula County, MT Places associated with detention

Fort Lincoln Internment Camp Bismarck, Burleigh County, ND Places associated with detention

Fort Snelling Minneapolis, MN Places associated with military service

Fresno Assembly Center Fresno County, CA Places associated with relocation

Gila River Relocation Center Pinal County, AZ Places associated with relocation

Granada Relocation Center Prowers County, CO Places associated with relocation

Heart Mountain Relocation Center Park County, WY Places associated with relocation

Jerome Relocation Center Chicot and Drew Counties, AR Places associated with relocation

Kenedy Internment Camp Karnes County, TX Places associated with detention

Manzanar Relocation Center Inyo County, CA Places associated with relocation

Marysville Assembly Center Yuba County, CA Places associated with relocation

Mayer Assembly Center Yavapai County, AZ Places associated with relocation

Merced Assembly Center Merced County, CA Places associated with relocation

Minidoka Relocation Center Jerome County, ID Places associated with relocation

Pinedale Assembly Center Fresno County, CA Places associated with relocation

Pomona Relocation Center Los Angeles County, CA Places associated with relocation

Portland Assembly Center Multnomah County, OR Places associated with relocation

Poston Relocation Center La Paz County, AZ Places associated with relocation

Puyallup Assembly Center Pierce County, WA Places associated with relocation

Rohwer Relocation Center Desha County, AR Places associated with relocation

Sacramento Assembly Center Sacramento County, CA Places associated with relocation

Salinas Assembly Center Monterey County, CA Places associated with relocation

Santa Anita Assembly Center Los Angeles County, CA Places associated with relocation

Seagoville Internment Camp Dallas County, TX Places associated with detention

Stockton Assembly Center San Joaquin County, CA Places associated with relocation

Tanforan Assembly Center San Bruno, San Mateo Co., CA Places associated with relocation

Terminal Island Los Angeles County, CA Places associated with exclusion

Topaz Relocation Center Millard County, UT Places associated with relocation

Tulare Assembly Center Tulare County, CA Places associated with relocation

Tule Lake Relocation Center Modoc County, CA Places associated with relocation

Turlock Assembly Center Stanislaus County, CA Places associated with relocation
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 35

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Japanese immigrants created these communities, where businesses and services were established

that catered to their needs. Large nihonmachi were located in ports of entry, such as Los Angeles,

Seattle, and Portland. Smaller ones could be found throughout California, including Terminal

Island in Los Angeles Harbor or Isleton and Walnut Grove in Sacramento County. There were

also Japanese residential enclaves that lacked business districts. Other small communities were

found throughout Washington (such as at Bainbridge Island), Oregon, and Hawaii. Prior to

World War II, most Issei settled and most Nisei were raised in nihonmachi. 

In 1941 and 1942, many of the homes, businesses, and property that Japanese Americans were

forced to sacrifice at the beginning of their journeys to assembly and relocation centers were

located in these communities. All of the nihonmachi within the West Coast military areas were

disrupted by the removal of the ethnic Japanese populace. Japanese American communities in

Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming, outside of the areas where exclusion was enforced, were

less affected.

When restrictions on West Coast resettlement were lifted in late 1944, some of the former

residents of the nihonmachi returned, but many did not. Some communities had ceased to exist;

others were drastically changed. In some cases, these communities and individual properties

within them can still testify to the effects of the exclusion and relocation and their aftermath.

Federal Courts

The major legal decisions testing relocation policies under Executive Order 9066 were rendered

in federal courts. In 1943-44, the Korematsu, Yasui, Hirabayashi, and Endo cases were heard by

the U.S. Supreme Court in the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. The mass trial of 63

Heart Mountain Relocation Center draft resisters took place in the Federal Courthouse in

Cheyenne, Wyoming. The Cheyenne courthouse was also the venue for the trials of the seven

leaders of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee. Significant legal decisions in federal district

courts in the 1980s overturned the convictions of Korematsu, Yasui, and Hirabayashi, but these

events are outside the time period of this theme study. 

2. Properties Associated with Relocation

Civil Control Stations

Posters that proclaimed the Western Defense Command’s civilian exclusion orders also named

one or more civil control stations, established by the Wartime Civilian Control Administration, to

which heads of families were to report. Here Japanese American families and individuals

underwent physical examinations and completed forms that indicated the disposition of their

property and business interests. A list of the civil control stations that were in operation at

various times while the exclusion orders were being issued appears in Appendix 1.

Most civil control stations were in existing buildings, such as schools, gymnasiums, auditoriums,

churches, and armories. Some of these have survived, but in most cases it is not clear to what

extent remaining physical features reflect the brief period during which these properties were

used by the WCCA.

Assembly Centers and Related Facilities

Beginning March 24, 1942, when Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1 was issued, temporary facilities
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 36

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

104 All immigrants from Germany, Italy, and Japan, the countries with which the United States was at war, who had

not become American citizens were classified as enemy aliens. Because immigrants from Japan were prohibited

from becoming citizens, this category included all Issei, even those who had lived in the United States for many

years.

were needed to house evacuees until construction of the relocation centers was completed. The

WCCA administered these temporary facilities, which included 15 assembly centers and two

reception centers. The reception centers, initially intended for voluntary evacuees, were located

at Parker Dam, Arizona and Owens Valley, California, and were subsequently converted to the

Poston and Manzanar relocation centers. 

The assembly centers were located at racetracks, fairgrounds, and various pre-existing camps. 

Twelve of the centers were located in California, at Fresno, Marysville, Merced, Pinedale,

Pomona, Sacramento, Salinas, Santa Anita, Stockton, Tanforan (San Bruno), Tulare, and Turlock. 

The other three were in Portland, Oregon; Puyallup, Washington; and Mayer, Arizona.

Relocation Centers and Related Facilities

The Wartime Relocation Authority, a civilian agency, was created on March 19, 1942 to

administer the permanent camps for Japanese American evacuees. Initial occupation of the

relocation centers proceeded through transfer of evacuees from assembly centers between May 26

and October 30, 1942. People from Military Area No. 2 were moved directly to the relocation

centers. The ten relocation centers were Poston and Gila River in Arizona; Jerome and Rohwer in

Arkansas; Manzanar and Tule Lake in California; Granada in Colorado; Minidoka in Idaho;

Topaz in Utah; and Heart Mountain in Wyoming. 

In addition to the relocation centers, the WRA established an isolation camp for “troublemakers”

located first at Moab, Utah, and subsequently at Leupp, Arizona; two small auxiliary camps at

Cow Creek and Tulelake, California; and a recreation area for residents of the Topaz Relocation

Center at Antelope Springs, Utah.

3. Properties Associated with Detention

Temporary Detention Stations

Immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Justice Department began arresting

“dangerous” enemy aliens residing in the United States.104 Approximately 2,000 Issei were held

in temporary detention stations, operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)

from December 7, 1941 until late January of 1942. Many of the language teachers, clergy, and

newspaper editors targeted for arrest were leaders in their communities.

According to the INS, enemy aliens were held at 20 temporary detention facilities leased or

borrowed from other federal agencies: Tujunga (Tuna Canyon) and Los Angeles (Terminal

Island), California; Hartford, Connecticut; Tampa and Miami, Florida; Chicago, Illinois;

Baltimore, Maryland; St. Paul, Minnesota; Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri; Syracuse and

Niagara Falls, New York; Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; Pittsburgh and

Nanticoke, Pennsylvania; Houston, Texas; and Salt Lake City, Utah; Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Eight existing INS detention facilities held what may have been a significant number of enemy

aliens: San Francisco, San Pedro, and San Ysidro, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Detroit,
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 37

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

105 According to the History, Genealogy, and Education website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

(successor agency to the INS) <uscis.gov/graphics/aboutus/history/eacamps>: “Nearly all INS stations had some

detention space for routine use during World War II. Districts also had standing contracts with local, state, or

Federal agencies for the routine or occasional use of additional detention space. Any or all of these facilities might

have held an alien classified as an enemy alien at one time or another during World War II.”

106 Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 380.

107 ibid., 379.

108 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 176-177.

109 Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 399.

Michigan; Gloucester City, New Jersey; Ellis Island, New York; and Seattle, Washington.105

Alien Enemy Internment Camps

In mid-December, 1941, arrested Issei began arriving at Fort Missoula, Montana, to undergo INS

immigration and loyalty hearings. Fort Missoula was one of nine permanent detention facilities

established for enemy aliens. Another camp was established at Fort Lincoln, near Bismarck in

North Dakota, as the Fort Missoula camp reached capacity. Additional camps holding Japanese

aliens were located at Sharp Park, California; Kooskia, Idaho; Fort Stanton, Santa Fe, and Old

Raton Ranch, New Mexico; and Kenedy, Crystal City, and Seagoville, Texas.106

These internment camps (also known as INS or Justice Department camps) were established at

U.S. Bureau of Prisons facilities, former Civilian Conservation Corps camps, Army bases, or

other sites that were transferred to the Department of Justice. All of the camps were used to

imprison those identified as enemy aliens, but they served different functions. The camp at

Crystal City, for instance, was intended as a camp for detained families, while Kooskia served as

a work camp for male volunteers. 

U.S. Army Internment Camps

After immigration and loyalty hearings, most of the Issei housed at INS camps were sent to U.S.

Army internment camps, where they remained through May of 1943, when all enemy aliens held

at these camps appear to have been transferred back to the custody of the INS.107

Most Army camps were established at existing bases or other facilities administered by the Army. 

Camp Lordsburg, New Mexico, was the only one constructed by the Army specifically for

interning enemy aliens. Other camps or temporary facilities were at Fort Richardson, Alaska; the

Angel Island Immigration Station (identified by the U.S. Army as the North Garrison of Fort

McDowell), California; Camp Livingston, Louisiana; Fort Sill and the Oklahoma State Prison at

Stringtown, Oklahoma; Camp Forrest, Tennessee; Fort Sam Houston and Fort Bliss, Texas; and

Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. Fort Meade, Maryland and Camp Florence, Arizona may have housed

Japanese aliens as well.108 The Army also operated detention camps for suspected enemy aliens

in Hawaii, where martial law was in effect from December 7, 1941 until October 24, 1944. The

main Army internment camps in Hawaii were Sand Island and Honouliuli; other camps were

Haiku Camp, Kalahea, Lanai, Molokai.109 
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 38

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Prisons and Federal Work Camps

Over 100 persons who challenged the policy of internment were sent to federal prisons. Most of

these were young men who refused to register for the draft for military service until their civil

rights were restored. Non-federal prisons were also involved in holding those who challenged the

internment or resisted the draft. For example, Gordon Hirabayashi was held at the King County

Jail in Seattle for nine months before he was sent to Catalina Federal Honor Camp in Arizona on

charges of violating the exclusion order and the curfew for persons of Japanese ancestry.

Federal prison facilities that held Japanese Americans during this period (as well as other draft

resisters and conscientious objectors) include the Catalina Honor Camp, Leavenworth Federal

Prison in Kansas, and McNeil Federal Penitentiary in Washington. The sole draft resister at the

Jerome Relocation Center was sent to an unidentified prison in Texas.

4. Properties Associated with Japanese American Military Service

Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS) Training Facilities

In the summer of 1941, the Intelligence Division of the War Department began to recruit Nisei

and Kibei, as well as some Caucasians, to be trained in the Japanese language. The Kibei had

lived and studied in Japan and some others had studied in Japanese language schools in the U.S.,

but most recruits had minimal experience with the language. By the time of the attack on Pearl

Harbor, 60 students were training to interpret and translate Japanese. The school’s first graduates

were sent into the Pacific Theater in April 1942; graduates would go on to serve in most of the

campaigns in the Pacific. The MISLS graduates used their knowledge to translate enemy

documents and interrogate Japanese soldiers, helping to shorten the war in the Pacific.

MISLS training facilities were established at three locations between 1941 and 1946. The first

was Building 640 at Crissy Field within the Presidio of San Francisco. Subsequently, training

facilities were established at Camp Savage, and then Fort Snelling, both located in Minnesota.

U.S. Army Training Camps

The segregated Japanese American U.S. Army units formed during World War II were the 100th

Infantry Battalion (Separate) and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The excellent training

record of the 100th Battalion led to plans for a mainland all-Nisei regiment and to re-opening the

draft to Japanese Americans. On February 1, 1943, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was

officially activated by President Roosevelt. Training for the 100th Battalion and the 442nd

Regimental Combat Team took place at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, and Camp Shelby,

Mississippi. 
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 39

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS FOR NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARKS

National Historic Landmarks designated under the Japanese Americans in World War II theme study

must be acknowledged to be among the nation’s most significant historic properties associated with the

detention, exclusion, and relocation of Japanese Americans, or with the military service of Japanese

Americans during the war. The association must have occurred between 1941 and 1946. The properties

must be located within the wartime boundaries of the United States and its possessions. In addition to its

nationally significant associations, any property designated under this theme study must possess the

ability to testify to those associations. Finally, all potential NHLs must be evaluated against comparable

properties with the same national associations before their eligibility for designation can be confirmed.

1. Association

A property identified as a potential NHL under this theme study must have played a definitive or

crucial role in the course of Japanese American history between 1941 and 1946. It must possess

exceptional value or quality in illustrating this theme. To have exceptional value the property

must be directly associated with one or more of the nationally significant events, decisions, or

persons identified in this theme study. 

2. National Historic Landmark Criteria

According to National Historic Landmarks regulations the quality of national significance is

ascribed to districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess exceptional value or

quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States in history, architecture,

archeology, engineering, and culture and that possess a high degree of integrity of location,

design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and:

Criterion 1: 

that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to, and are identified

with, or that outstandingly represent, the broad national patterns of United States history and from

which an understanding and appreciation of those patterns may be gained; or

Criterion 2:

that are associated importantly with the lives of persons nationally significant in the history of the

United States; or

Criterion 3:

that represent some great idea or ideal of the American people; or

Criterion 4:

that embody the distinguishing characteristics or an architectural type specimen exceptionally

valuable for the study of a period, style, or method of construction, or that represent a significant,

distinctive, and exceptional entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or

Criterion 5:

that are composed of integral parts of the environment not sufficiently significant by reason of

historical association or artistic merit to warrant individual recognition but collectively compose

an entity of exceptional historical or artistic significance, or outstandingly commemorate or

illustrate a way of life or culture; or
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 40

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Criterion 6:

that have yielded or may be likely to yield information of major scientific importance by

revealing new cultures, or by shedding light upon periods of occupation of large areas of the

United States. Such sites are those which have yielded, or which may reasonably be expected to

yield, data affecting theories, concepts, and ideas to a major degree.

Applying the Criteria

To be considered for designation as a National Historic Landmark, a property associated with the

Japanese Americans in World War II theme study must meet one or more of the criteria. Most

properties are likely to be eligible for Landmark designation under Criterion 1. Properties eligible

under this criterion will retain the ability to testify to nationally significant aspects of the Japanese

American wartime experience that are not as well represented at other comparable properties. 

Examples might include relocation centers whose remaining physical features are strongly

associated with the strict regimentation and lack of privacy of evacuee housing areas, with

opposition to or commemoration of Japanese American military service, or with the segregation

and incarceration of evacuee “troublemakers.”

Some properties associated with this theme study may be eligible under National Historic

Landmark Criterion 2. Properties eligible under this criterion will be associated with the lives of

individuals who are significant in the history of the United States as a whole. The person or

persons with whom the property is associated must have played a definitive or crucial role in the

events, decisions, or activities related to the internment or military service of Japanese Americans

between 1941 and 1946. For additional information on determining a definitive national role, see

National Register Bulletin Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Properties Associated

with Significant Persons. General guidance in applying the criteria and assessing integrity for

potential NHLs is found in the National Register Bulletin How to Prepare National Historic

Landmark Nominations. 

The archeological study of properties associated with this theme study, usually relocation centers,

has provided or may be expected to provide information on important research questions

addressing such issues as day-to-day life in the relocation centers or the ways in which the

evacuees worked to maintain their ethnic identity. Information on these questions often is not

available from any other source. These properties may be eligible for NHL designation under

Criterion 6.

3. National Historic Landmark Exceptions

Ordinarily, cemeteries, birthplaces, graves of historical figures, properties owned by religious

institutions or used for religious purposes, structures have been moved from their original

locations, reconstructed historic buildings and properties that have achieved significance within

the past fifty years are not eligible for designation. If such properties fall within the following

categories they may, nevertheless, be found to qualify:

Exception 1:
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 41

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

A religious property deriving its primary national significance from architectural or artistic

distinction or historical importance; or

Exception 2:

A building removed from its original location but which is nationally significant primarily for its

architectural merit, or for association with persons or events of transcendent importance in the

nation's history and the association consequential; or

Exception 3:

A site of a building or structure no longer standing but the person or event associated with it is of

transcendent importance in the nation's history and the association consequential; or 

Exception 4:

A birthplace, grave or burial if it is of a historical figure of transcendent national significance and

no other appropriate site, building, or structure directly associated with the productive life of that

person exists; or

Exception 5:

A cemetery that derives its primary national significance from graves of persons of transcendent

importance, or from an exceptionally distinctive design or an exceptionally significant event; or

Exception 6:

A reconstructed building or ensemble of buildings of extraordinary national significance when

accurately executed in a suitable environment and presented in a dignified manner as part of a

restoration master plan, and when no other buildings or structures with the same association have

survived; or

Exception 7:

A property primarily commemorative in intent if design, age, tradition, or symbolic value has

invested it with its own national historical significance; or

Exception 8:

A property achieving national significance within the past 50 years if it is of extraordinary

national importance.

Applying the Exceptions

Many buildings at former WRA relocation centers were salvaged and moved to other locations

after the camps closed. These buildings must be carefully evaluated to determine whether they

meet the requirements of NHL Exception 2. Moved properties also must have an orientation,

setting, and general environment that are comparable to those of the historic location and that are

compatible with the property’s significance. A building that has been removed from a isolated

relocation center and converted to a private home in a nearby town will not be eligible for NHL

designation under this theme study, because its new setting cannot convey the cramped conditions

and regimented layout that characterized the center. On the other hand, if a fully intact relocation

center barracks survived on a different, but compatible, site, it might retain sufficient integrity to

qualify for NHL designation under Exception 2 for its architectural significance as an extremely

rare example of the relocation center barracks building type. For more information on
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 42

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

determining whether moved properties meet the requirements of Exception 2, refer to National

Register Bulletin How to Prepare National Historic Landmark Nominations or to the discussion

of the corresponding National Register Criteria Consideration B in National Register Bulletin

How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation.

Relocation center cemeteries that contain monuments constructed by evacuees to honor those who

died while living at the center or who were killed in military service may meet the requirements

of NHL Exception 5.

4. Areas of Significance

Properties being considered for designation as National Historic Landmark or for listing in the

National Register must be associated with one or more specific areas of significance. Each area

of significance must be explicitly justified. Areas of significance associated with properties

identified under this theme study are likely to include the following:

Archeology–Historic for the important research questions that archeological remains surviving at

relocation centers and other sites can answer.

Politics/Government for the critical role of the federal government in the relocation of Japanese

Americans and Japanese aliens and for the actions of private individuals and state and local

officials supporting or objecting to federal policies.

Law for the role of the courts in reviewing the actions of federal authorities related to persons of

Japanese ancestry during this period, the constitutional questions that were raised by these

actions, and the protection of civil liberties in time of war.

Military for the role of the U.S. Army in directing and carrying out the exclusion and removal of

Japanese Americans and Japanese resident aliens from the West Coast and in detaining enemy

aliens, for the definition of “military necessity” that was used as the basis for the relocation, and

for Japanese American military service in the Army and the Military Intelligence Service.

Ethnic Heritage for the central role of the internment in the history of Japanese Americans and the

importance of Japanese American military service as soldiers and linguists.

Social History for the internment as part of the story of the treatment of minority populations on

the home front during World War II, as part of the general history of minorities in the U.S., and as

part of the history of civil rights in the U.S.

5. Integrity

In order to be designated as National Historic Landmarks, properties must retain integrity, that is,

their ability to convey their significance, to a high degree. Potential NHLs must retain the

physical features that define both why they are significant (criteria and themes) and when they

were significant (periods of significance). These are the features that identify a property as, for

instance, a relocation center or a military training camp. For more information on assessing

integrity, see National Register Bulletins How to Prepare National Historic Landmark

Nominations and How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 43

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Many of the property types associated with the Japanese American experience during World War

II were quickly and cheaply built and intended only for temporary use. The WRA dismantled or

sold most of the buildings at the relocation centers, for example, when the camps were closed. 

Other buildings have been altered out of all recognition. No single relocation center has survived

intact. Nevertheless many of the centers contain elements that reflect important aspects of the

relocation. There are impressive evacuee-constructed buildings at Manzanar and Minidoka, some

of which seem to incorporate traditional Japanese stylistic elements. A jail, military police

compound, and other security-related features survive at the Tule Lake Segregation Center. 

There is an elaborate evacuee-built school complex at one of the Poston camps. Granada and

Topaz look very much as they did when the barracks and other buildings were removed in 1946. 

The size of the camps and the regimentation imposed on the evacuees by the military can be

clearly read in their intact layouts, where historic foundations, roads, and walk-ways still survive. 

Taken together, these elements give a good sense of what a wartime relocation center would have

looked like. As so much is gone, it is particularly important to recognize those elements that

remain.

Those properties that were constructed prior to the period of exclusion, relocation, and detention,

and adapted for use as assembly centers or places of detention during World War II often retain

relatively high levels of integrity. It will be difficult in many cases to determine what, if any,

physical evidence of their wartime use survives, however. This is also true of the nihonmachis. 

The appearance of most of the surviving “Japantowns” dates from the pre-war period; only in rare

cases is there any physical evidence of the relocation of the 1940s. Many of these properties may

be eligible for NHL or NR status for their prewar significance. It may be that only a few largely

unaltered individual properties with strong associations with themes identified in this study (such

as the Hashidate Yu, in Seattle, Washington, discussed below) will be eligible for NHL listing.

NHL and National Register regulations recognize seven aspects or qualities of integrity: location,

design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association. The aspects are discussed

below specifically in terms of this theme study:

Location is the place where the historic property was constructed or the significant events

occurred. Most properties associated with the context will remain in their original location by

virtue of their scale.

Design is the combination of elements that creates the historic form, plan, space, structure, and

style of a property. Design includes such things as organization of space, proportion, scale,

technology, ornamentation, and materials. 

In cases where few historic buildings survive, the ability of the property to testify to its original

planned layout may determine whether integrity of design is retained. Imposed on otherwise

“featureless” landscapes, the designs of relocation centers were based on rigid, right-angle grids,

which imbued the centers with a sense of military order. Residents often sought to alleviate this

rigidity; evacuee-constructed buildings were often oriented counter to the grid. Gardens, pools,

and other landscape features created by the residents helped alleviate the sense of confinement

conveyed by the layouts of the centers and their security features. The survival of these features
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 44

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

110 Burton, Confinement and Ethnicity, 44. 

contributes to the design integrity of the properties.110

Most of the properties evaluated in this theme study were created to confine people. Surviving

remains of fences, watchtowers, jails, MP compounds, etc. are therefore particularly important to

the design integrity of these properties. In some cases, surviving evidence of a center’s functional

division into agricultural, residential, administrative, industrial, military police, and other areas

may contribute to its integrity of design.

Civil control centers and assembly centers were established at existing facilities. Most buildings

chosen to be civil control centers were ones with enough space to handle large numbers of people,

such as auditoriums, churches, and gymnasiums. Fairgrounds and racetracks were probably

selected for assembly centers because they had both existing buildings and open space for new

construction, they were near the people to be confined, and they could be fenced for security. 

Design integrity for these properties would depend on the nature of the existing facilities as well

as the changes made in converting them

Setting is the physical environment of a historic property. In the case of the camp properties

considered under this theme study, setting includes the character of the places in which they were

located, as well as how they were situated in those places. Most of these properties were built in

sparsely populated areas with harsh environmental conditions. The isolated settings of the

relocation centers affected the experiences of the residents and, it could be argued, had an effect

on the experience of other Americans as well. Isolation placed the internment out of sight and out

of mind for most Americans. In order for such properties to be eligible for NHL designation or

NR listing under this theme study, much of the harshness and isolation of the original setting

should remain.

Materials are the physical elements that were combined or deposited during a particular period of

time and in a particular pattern or configuration to form a historic property. 

Most lumber, tarpaper, and other materials associated with camp-type properties are gone. What

remains are generally the most durable or unsalvageable materials, such as concrete and stone. In

some cases, these materials preserve the footprints of buildings and structures, and indicate the

placement of gardens, sidewalks, roads, and other landscape features. Landscaping done by

center residents often remains, including trees and other plantings, concrete garden pools, and

other features.

Workmanship is the physical evidence of the crafts of a particular culture or people during any

given period in history. Workmanship is also of importance for illustrating a time period

associated with an event. This quality is particularly important for architecturally significant

properties; in the case of properties associated with this theme study, however, low-quality or

expedient construction may be the sense of workmanship that is important.

The workmanship of extant camp buildings and structures generally illustrates the military

standardization of their plans and their temporary character. Some surviving buildings show the

differences between housing for relocation center staff members and evacuee housing. Others
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 45

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

illustrate evacuee workmanship, such as the police post and military police post buildings at

Manzanar. Names, dates, and other expressions incised into the concrete sometimes document

the builders’ identities. Retention of such features contributes significantly to integrity of

workmanship.

Feeling is a property’s expression of the aesthetic or historic sense of a particular period of time. 

It results from the presence of physical features that, taken together, convey the property’s

historic character. 

Association is the direct link between an important historic theme, event, or person and a historic

property. A property retains integrity of association if it is the place where the event occurred and

can still convey that historic relationship to an observer.

Establishing integrity of feeling and association for properties considered in this theme study

requires that the surviving site plan, buildings, structures, and security features, and setting work

together to give a strong sense of the historic character of the property.

REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS FOR LISTING IN THE NATIONAL REGISTER

To be eligible for listing in the National Register a property must be associated with or be able to

illustrate or interpret the detention, exclusion, and relocation of Japanese Americans, or with the military

service of Japanese Americans. The association must have occurred between 1941 and 1946. The

properties must be located within the wartime boundaries of the United States and its possessions. They

must possess associations that are significant at the state or local level under one or more of the National

Register Criteria and must retain their ability to testify to those associations. Finally they must be

evaluated against comparable properties before their eligibility for listing in the National Register can be

confirmed.

1. Association

Properties nominated to the National Register within the historic context of the Japanese

Americans in World War II theme study must be associated with or be able to illustrate or

interpret Japanese American history during the 1941-1946 period at the state or local level. 

2. National Register Criteria

According to National Register regulations, the quality of significance in American history,

architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings,

structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship,

feeling, and association, and:

Criterion A:

that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of

our history; or

Criterion B:

that are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or

Criterion C:
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 46

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

111 See Jeffery F. Burton, Three Farewells to Manzanar: the Archeology of Manzanar National Historic Site,

Western Archeological and Conservation Center Publications in Anthropology 67 (Tucson, AZ: National Park

Service, 1996); Orit Tamir, Scott C. Russell, Karolyn Jackman Jensen, and Shereen Lerner, “Return to Butte Camp:

A Japanese-American World War II Relocation Center,” Cultural Resources Report 82 (Tempe, AZ: Archaeological

Consulting Services, Ltd., 1993); Monique Sawyer-Lang, “Recovery of Additional Information from the Gila River

Farms Expansion Area: A Study of a Japanese-American Relocation Center,” Cultural Resource Report No. 53

(Tempe, AZ: Archaeological Consulting Services, 1989); Sheri Murray Ellis, “Site Documentation and Management

Plan for the Topaz Relocation Center, Millard County, Utah” (Salt Lake City, UT: SWCA, Inc. Environmental

Consultants, 2002).

that embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction or that

represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant

and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction;

Criterion D:

that have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

Applying the Criteria

Most properties associated with this theme study are likely to be eligible for listing under

Criterion A, B, or D. Properties eligible under Criterion A will be associated with one-time

events or patterns of events associated with this historic context, as described above under NHL

Criterion 1. Properties eligible under Criterion B will be associated with the lives of significant

individuals. The properties must be associated with the individuals’ activities within the historic

context. See National Register Bulletin Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Properties

Associated with Significant Persons for general guidance on nominating properties under this

criterion. 

Properties eligible under Criterion D, primarily archeological sites, will have already yielded, or

be likely to yield, information important to understanding this historic context. Many of the

properties considered under this theme study can be profitably evaluated under this Criterion, as

demonstrated by the archeological work done at the Manzanar, Gila River, and Topaz relocation

centers. Archeological artifacts and features remaining at these properties have the potential to

address important research questions regarding confinement, ethnicity, resistance, and daily

conditions of life.111 General guidance in applying the criteria is found in the National Register

Bulletin How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation.”

3. National Register Criteria Considerations

Ordinarily cemeteries, birthplaces, graves of historical figures, properties owned by religious

institutions or used for religious purposes, structures that have been moved from their original

locations, reconstructed historic buildings, properties primarily commemorative in nature, and

properties that have achieved significance within the past 50 years shall not be considered eligible

for the National Register. However, such properties will qualify if they are integral parts of

districts that do meet the criteria or if they fall within the following categories: 

Criteria Consideration A

A religious property deriving primary significance from architectural or artistic distinction or

historical importance; or 
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 47

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Criteria Consideration B

A building or structure removed from its original location but which is primarily significant for

architectural value, or which is the surviving structure most importantly associated with a historic

person or event; or 

Criteria Consideration C

A birthplace or grave of a historical figure of outstanding importance if there is no appropriate

site or building associated with his or her productive life; or 

Criteria Consideration D

A cemetery that derives its primary importance from graves of persons of transcendent

importance, from age, from distinctive design features, or from association with historic events;

or 

Criteria Consideration E

A reconstructed building when accurately executed in a suitable environment and presented in a

dignified manner as part of a restoration master plan, and when no other building or structure with

the same association has survived; or 

Criteria Consideration F

A property primarily commemorative in intent if design, age, tradition, or symbolic value has

invested it with its own historical significance; or 

Criteria Consideration G

A property achieving significance within the past 50 years if it is of exceptional importance. 

Applying the Criteria Considerations

As discussed above, many buildings significant in the historic context of this theme study have

been moved. Criteria Consideration B sets forth the conditions that a moved property significant

under the NR Criteria must meet in order to be eligible for listing. Moved properties also must

have an orientation, setting, and general environment that are comparable to those of the historic

location and that are compatible with the property’s significance. Properties significant for their

historic associations under this theme study are particularly dependent on their location. When

such properties are moved to new locations they are not likely to meet the conditions of Criteria

Consideration B.

4. Areas of Significance

As is the case with National Historic Landmarks, all properties being considered for National

Register listing must be associated with one or more areas of significance. The areas of

significance with which properties nominated under this theme study are likely to be associated

are described briefly in the “Areas of Significance” section under Registration Requirements for

NHL Designation. Each area of significance must be explicitly justified.

5. Integrity

Properties listed in the National Register do not have to have the high integrity required of

National Historic Landmarks, but they still must retain enough of their character-defining features

to enable them to testify to their historic significance. The seven qualities listed above under the
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 48

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

discussion of integrity for National Historic Landmarks are also used to guide assessments of

integrity for National Register listing. For more information on assessing integrity, see National

Register Bulletin How to Apply the National Register Criteria for Evaluation.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 49

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

G. GEOGRAPHICAL DATA

Although the mass exclusion of Japanese Americans under the provisions of Executive Order 9066

occurred only on the West Coast, the scope of this study has been the entire wartime United States and its

territories and possessions. Relocation centers were located as far east as Arkansas. Enemy aliens

arrested by the FBI after the attack on Pearl Harbor were detained and processed by the INS at facilities

throughout the United States and its territories. INS detainees were transferred to U.S. Army

installations across the country before being returned to the custody of the INS. Persons of Japanese

ancestry detained in Peru and other countries of Central and South America were transferred to the

United States for detention in INS or Army camps. Military service took Japanese Americans to

California, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Wisconsin. 

The European and Pacific theaters of war, where Japanese American servicemen made significant and

notable contributions, are outside the geographic scope of this study.

N:\NR-NHL\Theme Studies\Japanese Americans\study\sectionf&g.wpd
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 50

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

 H. SUMMARY OF SURVEY AND IDENTIFICATION METHODS--

METHODOLOGY FOR EVALUATION OF PROPERTIES

 

The initial properties chosen for consideration in this theme study were the 37 identified in Title II of

Public Law 102-248. Some of these properties are already included within the National Park System,

have been designated as National Historic Landmarks, or have been listed in the National Register of

Historic Places. Brief discussions of each of the 37 properties are included in Part 1 of this section,

“Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” along with information on the current level of federal

recognition, if any, and recommended actions. This material is summarized in Table 2. 

Public Law 102-248 also provided that “the Secretary shall identify possible new national historic

landmarks appropriate to this theme and prepare a list in order of importance or merit of the most

appropriate sites for national historic landmark designation.” Several additional properties have been

discovered during the course of this theme study that should be considered for possible designation as

National Historic Landmarks, for their national significance, or for listing in the National Register, for

their significance at the state or local level. These properties are included in Part 2 of this section,

“National Historic Landmark Study List,” and Part 3, “National Register Study List.” Part 4, “Other

Properties,” includes places where further action is needed, such as amending existing documentation or

conducting additional research. Recommendations for all of properties not identified in PL 102-248 are

summarized in Table 3.

Information on many of these properties was found in the National Park Service publication

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

study, written by Jeffery F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord for the

Western Archeological and Conservation Center, was undertaken to provide an overview of properties

for the National Historic Landmark theme study called for in Public Law 102-248. It provides a detailed

overview of the physical remains at the relocation centers, as well as information on assembly centers

and some INS and Army detention facilities. 

Additional properties were identified through printed secondary sources and online resources, such as

the Japanese American National Museum and the Citizenship and Immigration Services (successor to

the Immigration and Naturalization Service) websites. In some cases, only the names of properties

appeared in these documents and it has not been possible to locate any additional information. The

National Register of Historic Places database was also searched for properties associated with this theme

study. Some additional research was conducted on crucial events to determine whether associated

properties existed. 

Because so little remains at most of the relocation centers, assembly centers, detention centers, and

military training bases, decisions on integrity have been critical in making recommendations for

appropriate recognition. These decisions, often difficult, have been based on the registration

requirements outlined in Section F, above.

1. PROPERTIES IDENTIFIED IN PUBLIC LAW 102-248

Angel Island, U.S. Immigration Station – Angel Island State Park, Marin County, California

Property Type: Places associated with detention

On December 19, 1939, crew members of the German liner Columbus scuttled their ship to prevent its
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 51

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

113 Philip P. Choy, “U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island” National Historic Landmark Nomination, National

Register History and Education, Washington, D.C., 1995, 5. 

Barracks Block at Camp McCoy

capture by the British. Rescued by American vessels, the 512 men were first housed at Ellis Island, then

sent to Angel Island to await transportation back to Germany. When the U.S. entered the war, the crew

of the Columbus was transferred to an alien enemy internment camp at Fort Stanton, New Mexico. 

The immigration station and fortifications on Angel Island were under the administration of the U.S.

Army from 1941 to 1946. The immigration station, re-designated as the North Garrison of Fort

McDowell, served as an intake and transfer station for German and Japanese prisoners of war bound for

inland camps. The former immigration station detention barracks housed some of these POWs. Italian

POWs, organized into Italian Service Units after Italy’s surrender, were stationed at Angel Island

starting in May 1944; they performed non-combatant work and were able to move about in relative

freedom.113 No conclusive evidence of Japanese enemy alien detention at Angel Island was found in

the course of preparing this theme study. Angel Island is designated a California Historical Landmark. 

The Angel Island Immigration Station was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997 for its

significance as the major West Coast processing center for immigrants between 1910 and 1940. It

served as the port of entry to the United States for many Japanese Issei. 

Recommendation: No additional federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Bainbridge Island/Eagledale Ferry Dock – Bainbridge Island, Washington

Property Type: Places associated with exclusion

On March 30, 1942, the Japanese residents of Bainbridge Island were put aboard the ferry Kehloken,

leaving behind their homes, businesses, and neighbors. Within two hours, these families had been

transported to Seattle and placed on a train bound for the Owens Valley Reception Center (later renamed

the Manzanar Relocation Center). The proximity to Fort Ward Naval Radio Station, an important U.S.

Navy installation for the Pacific Theater, caused the residents of Bainbridge Island to become the first

community forced to evacuate, under Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1. The Bainbridge Island evacuees

were later moved to the Minidoka Relocation Center. Approximately half of the residents decided not

to return to Bainbridge Island after the war. The ferry dock has been removed and a municipal water

supply well and pump house have been installed in the middle of the road leading to the dock. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition for the Eagledale ferry dock is recommended

pending evaluation for National Memorial status. Other properties on Bainbridge Island should be

identified and assessed for possible historic recognition.

Camp McCoy - Fort McCoy, Monroe County, Wisconsin

Property Type: Places associated with Japanese American

military service; places associated with detention

The Hawaiian Provisional Battalion, transferred to the mainland

and re-designated as the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate) in June

1942, received its basic training at a new, “temporary”

cantonment, then under construction, at Camp McCoy. In

February 1943, it was transferred to Camp Shelby in Mississippi

for advanced training and maneuvers.

A U.S. Army Internment Camp was located on the old part of the

camp, across the road from the new cantonment. The first enemy
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 52

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

114 Heather L. Spencer, “Archaeological and Documentary Investigation of Fort McCoy’s Japanese Prisoner of War

Camp, South Post, Fort McCoy,” Reports of Investigation No. 5, Fort McCoy Archaeological Resource Management

Series (Fort McCoy, WI: 1996), 15.

115 Dell Greek, USAR Cultural Resources Program Manager, Fort McCoy; personal communication, 2001. The

World War II and the American Home Front National Historic Landmark theme study (Washington, D.C.: National

Park Service, U. S. Department of the Interior, forthcoming) recommends that the new cantonment at Camp McCoy

be considered for NHL designation for its significance as one of the few remaining intact examples of a WWII

“temporary” training camp.

116 Scott Anfinson, Minnesota Historical Society, personal communication, 2001; Susan Roth, Minnesota Historical

Society, personal communiction, 2004.

aliens held here, Germans and Japanese, arrived in March 1942. Individuals of Japanese ancestry were

transferred here from the Sand Island Detention Camp in Hawaii, but were subsequently dispersed to

other INS camps. The number of enemy aliens held at Camp McCoy was limited to 100 during the time

that the 100th Battalion was stationed there. When the Japanese American battalion was transferred to

Camp Shelby, the internment camp returned to its 1,000-person capacity, but all enemy aliens were soon

transferred back to INS camps. The internment camp was de-activated and the area subsequently was

used as a prisoner-of-war camp. The camp at Camp McCoy operated until 1946, holding more Japanese

prisoners of war than any other POW camp in the U.S.114 Little remains of the enemy alien and POW

camp, but the new cantonment area maintains high integrity to the World War II period.115

Recommendation: The new contonment should be evaluated for possible NHL designation under this

theme study for its association with Japanese American service in the military; the former

internment/POW camp should be studied for possible listing in the National Register for its association

with detention.

Camp Savage – Savage, Scott County, Minnesota

Property Type: Places associated with Japanese American military service

In 1942 the Military Intelligence Service Language School moved from the Presidio in San Francisco to

Camp Savage, Minnesota. One reason that Minnesota was chosen for the school’s new home was that

relatively little racial discrimination was expected in that state. On June 1, 1942, the first classes began

at Camp Savage, with 200 students. As the school grew, three separate camps were occupied. The

accelerating war in the Pacific fueled the demand for more translators. Additional facilities were

constructed, but eventually the school outgrew Savage and in August 1944 it was moved to Fort

Snelling. Camp Savage is commemorated by a Savage Chamber of Commerce historical marker, but

much of what remained of the camp was destroyed by construction of an industrial park in the 1980s. 

Two surviving buildings are reported to be in their original locations and other buildings were relocated

in the surrounding area, but the site as a whole has lost integrity.116 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Camp Shelby - Forrest County, Mississippi

Property Type: Places associated with Japanese American military service

Camp Shelby served as the training base for the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team;

the 100th Battalion was stationed there for advanced training and maneuvers. The 100th Battalion was

transferred to Camp Shelby in February 1943; the battalion left for North Africa in August. The 442nd

Regimental Combat Team was at Camp Shelby from early summer, 1943 until the spring of 1944; on

May 1st, the unit was on its way to Europe. While in Italy, the 100th Battalion was attached to the 442nd,
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 53

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

117 Dottie Gibbons, Mobile District, Army Corps of Engineers; personal communication, 2001.

becoming the first battalion of the all-Nisei unit, but retaining its separate numerical designation. All

that remains from the World War II period at Camp Shelby is the road network and four small buildings,

two of which are listed in the National Register; everything else has been torn down and replaced with

cinder block structures. None of the surviving buildings can be directly associated with the 100th or the

442nd.

117 

Recommendation: No additional federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Crystal City Internment Camp - Crystal City, Zavala County, Texas

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The INS camp at Crystal City was established to house members of interned families together; many

interned fathers had been separated from their wives and children. The camp was in operation from

November 2, 1942 until November 1, 1947. Its peak population was 4,000. Two-thirds of the internees

were persons of Japanese ancestry from the U.S. and Latin America, but German, Italian, and

Indonesian aliens were interned here as well. German aliens and their families were the first to arrive, in

December 1942. In March 1943, the first Japanese aliens arrived at the Crystal City camp. As other

internment camps were closed, Crystal City continued to operate, holding those transferred from the deactivated camps. Japanese Peruvians interned at the camp were refused re-entry by the Peruvian

government at the end of the war; they were finally allowed to stay in the U.S. The camp was closed in

1947. While subsequent development of the site has left few remains of the camp, some cottage

foundations, one of which has had a commemorative monument erected on it, remain. 

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible listing in the National Register.

Fort Lincoln Internment Camp - Bismarck, Burleigh County, North Dakota

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Located at a former Army base and CCC state headquarters, Fort Lincoln INS Internment Camp opened

on April 26, 1941. The first internees were German and Italian seamen. The first group of Issei arrived

in 1942, but was transferred shortly thereafter. Until February 1945, the camp was occupied solely by

German internees; at that time, 650 Japanese internees were brought to Fort Lincoln, about half of

whom were “recalcitrants” from the Tule Lake Segregation Center and the Santa Fe Internment Camp. 

These internees had renounced their American citizenship and were to be repatriated to Japan. Fort

Lincoln is now the campus of the United Tribes Technical College. Removal of temporary internment

camp buildings and the subsequent development of the college campus has apparently resulted in a loss

of historic integrity for the internment camp site as a whole. 

Recommendation: With the support of the college, any remaining buildings that appear to have been

used for the internment camp should be studied for possible individual listing in the National Register.

Fort Missoula Internment Camp - Missoula County, Montana

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Located at a former Army base and CCC regional headquarters, this INS camp operated from April

1941 until July 1, 1944. Italian aliens were detained here as early as May 1941. On December 18,

1941, hundreds of Issei arrested by the FBI began arriving at Fort Missoula to undergo immigration and

loyalty hearings. Within weeks the camp reached capacity and another internment camp was established

at Fort Lincoln in North Dakota. After the hearings, most of the Issei were transferred to Army

internment camps or to relocation centers. In April 1942, the population of the internment camp peaked
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 54

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

118 Masaharu Ano, “Loyal Linguists–Nisei of World War II Learned Japanese in Minnesota” Minnesota History

45:7 (1977), 282.

119 Steve Osman, Director, Historic Fort Snelling; personal communication, 2001.

120 Gene Itogawa, California Department of Parks and Recreation, Office of Historic Preservation, personal

communication, 2001. 

at approximately 2,000, about half Issei and half Italian aliens. Only 29 Japanese aliens were still

interned here at the end of 1942. Before being transferred to the Santa Fe Internment Camp, 258

Japanese from Hawaii were temporarily held here in March 1944. 

Fort Missoula was listed in the National Register in 1987. Some traces of the internee barracks and

other buildings were visible. One original guard tower cabin is exhibited on the site along with a

commemorative monument; another is in the collection of the Fort Missoula Historical Museum. One

original CCC barracks has been returned to the fort museum to be used for internment exhibits. 

Recommendation: No additional federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Fort Snelling - Minneapolis, Minnesota

Property Type: Places associated with Japanese American military service

The MISLS was moved to Fort Snelling in August 1944, after outgrowing the facilities at Camp Savage. 

U.S. operations against Japan gained speed after Germany was defeated in Spring 1945; more linguists

were needed, and changes were made in the training program to produce them as quickly as possible. 

Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, but the MISLS reached its peak in 1946, as linguists were

even more in demand for the occupation of Japan. In that year, the school had 3,000 students, 160

instructors, and over 125 classrooms.118 In June 1946, the final Fort Snelling class graduated and the

MISLS moved back to the West Coast, to the Presidio of Monterey.

Several buildings associated with the Language School are extant. These include Buildings 17 and 18,

which housed MISLS students, and Building 57, the MISLS headquarters. Buildings 101, 102, and 103,

barracks which served as MISLS classrooms, are extant but in poor condition.119 Fort Snelling was

designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 for its significance as the first U.S. military

installation in present-day Minnesota and for its role as an Army training center from the Civil War until

World War II. 

Recommendation: The NHL documentation for Fort Snelling should be amended to reflect its

significance as the home of the MISLS during the school’s most productive years.

Fresno Assembly Center - Fresno, Fresno County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at the Fresno County Fairgrounds, this assembly center was in operation from May 6, 1942

until October 30, 1942, with a peak population of 5,120. Extensive reconfiguration of the fairgrounds

since the 1940s has made it difficult to identify any extant buildings used during that period. It has been

suggested that the current grandstand may date to the 1940s, but this has not been verified.120 The

Fresno Assembly Center is designated a California Historic Landmark. 

Recommendation: Assuming that its association with the assembly center can be confirmed, the

grandstand should be studied for possible listing in the National Register. 
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 55

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Gila River Relocation Center - Pinal County, Arizona

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

This center is located about 50 miles south of Phoenix on the Gila River Indian Reservation. It was

occupied for 40 months, from July 7, 1942 until July 20, 1945, the 6th longest occupation of the

relocation centers. The population reached 13,348 by December 30, 1942, making Gila River the 3rd

largest relocation center. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, from whom the land was leased, approved

construction of the relocation center over the objections of the tribe. Eleanor Roosevelt and WRA

director Dillon Myer made an inspection of Gila River in April 1943, in response to charges that

evacuees were being “coddled.” Conditions at Gila River were, in fact, better than they were at the

other centers; it is clear that this camp was considered a showplace for the relocation program. Most

security structures were removed within the first six months of the center’s operation.

The center was divided into two separate camps, about 31⁄2 miles apart. Canal Camp, the smaller of the

two, originally contained 404 buildings and Butte Camp had 821. According to Confinement and

Ethnicity, Canal Camp is in “fairly pristine condition.” None of the buildings is extant, but the site plan

and the road grid are in excellent condition, and many foundations and remains of the camp and its

infrastructure survive. Butte Camp retains some of its road grid, some foundations in the hospital,

warehouse, and administrative areas, and landscape features. Many of the foundations have been

broken up and the pieces places in piles, however, and many areas are covered with recent trash. The

most significant standing structure at Butte Camp is the honor roll monument, located on a small butte,

built to honor Japanese American from the Gila River Center who served in the military during the war. 

The monument has been recently painted, but the original ramada, flagpole, and list of names are gone. 

The area between the two camps is now intensively cultivated with orange and olive groves. 

In 1995 a historical marker and a memorial plaque were placed at the Butte Camp monument. Another

historical marker has been placed at Canal Camp and there is an exhibit and outdoor display regarding

the relocation center at the Gila River Indian Reservation Cultural Center. 

Recommendation: In the past, the Gila River Indian Tribe has opposed any official historical

designation for the camps, which it treats as a sacred site with restricted access. If the tribe is now

willing to support historic designation, Canal Camp should be evaluated for possible National Historic

Landmark designation and Butte Camp, particularly the honor roll memorial, should be studied for

listing in the National Register.

Granada Relocation Center - Prowers County, Colorado

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Granada, or Amache, as it was also known, was occupied for 38 months, from August 27, 1942 until

October 15, 19 45. This was the 9th longest-occupied relocation center. Granada’s peak population,

7,318, was the smallest of the ten relocation centers, but in the fall of 1942 it was the tenth largest city in

the state based on 1940 census data. In April, 1942, Colorado governor Ralph L. Carr was the only

western governor to indicate that evacuees would be welcomed in his state. Some local newspapers and

organizations were openly sympathetic, while others were virulently anti-Japanese. A bitter political

dispute over the cost of the high school built for the relocation center resulted in the refusal of the WRA

to go through with construction of the planned elementary school. James G. Lindley, project director

for the relocation center throughout its existence, was unusually sensitive to the difficulties facing the

evacuees. Probably for that reason, Granada avoided much of the conflict that characterized many of

the other centers.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 56

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

121 Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 113.

Hospital Boiler House

Heart Mountain

Almost all of the building foundations, roads, and landscaping survive at Granada. Because most of the

roads are still driveable, it is possible to get a sense of the extent and layout of the original camp, in spite

of the loss of all but a few minor standing structures. One of only three extant relocation center

cemeteries is located at Granada; a small historic brick building (possibly a columbarium for cremated

remains) at the cemetery contains a granite monument honoring those who died at the center. The

monument was installed by evacuees in 1945, shortly before the center closed.121 A 313.6-acre portion

of the relocation center’s central area was listed in the National Register in 1994. 

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible NHL designation.

Heart Mountain Relocation Center - Park County, Wyoming

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

The Heart Mountain Relocation Center opened on August 11, 1942 and operated for 39 months, closing

on November 10, 1945. It was the 7th longest-occupied relocation center, and the 4th largest, with a

population that reached 10,767 in January 1943. While protests took place when the security fence and

watch towers were constructed in November 1942, more significant resistance occurred after the draft

was re-opened to Japanese Americans in February 1943. Evacuees at the Heart Mountain Center

resisted the draft as a protest against the unfair and unconstitutional confinement of Japanese American

citizens. Eighty-five men were convicted and imprisoned for their stand. This represented the highest

rate of draft resistance among the relocation centers and constituted the largest single draft resistence in

U.S. history. Seven leaders of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee were convicted of conspiracy to

violate the selective service law by counseling others to resist. In

spite of the draft resistance movement in the relocation center, 700

Heart Mountain men reported for their military physicals and

approximately half of this number were inducted. Eleven Heart

Mountain servicemen were killed and 52 were wounded in battle.

Four of the approximately 650 buildings constructed for the Heart

Mountain Relocation Center survive, all on a 71-acre parcel

owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. A boiler house and

attached smokestack, a warehouse, and a mess hall are located in

the former hospital area and there is one housing unit in the

original staff housing area. The remains of a wartime monument

honoring those men from Heart Mountain who served in the

military during the war survive in the former administrative area. 

Few security features are extant, though there are portions of a

substantial perimeter fence in the warehouse section of the center. 

Other remains, such as foundations, hydrants, and trash deposits

are still in place. Little evidence of the overall site plan or road system remains and most of the

relocation center site is now cultivated. 

Thirty acres of the portion of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center site administered by the U.S.

Bureau of Reclamation were listed in the National Register in 1985. The four standing buildings and the

remains of the honor roll monument are included within the boundaries of this listing. The remainder of

the center was not included because of its poor integrity.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 57

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible NHL designation.

Jerome Relocation Center - Chicot and Drew Counties, Arkansas

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Jerome was occupied for 21 months, from October 6, 1942 until June 30, 1944. It was the last

relocation center to open, and the first to close. Its population peaked at 8,497 in November 1942,

making it the 7th largest center. The only known shooting of evacuees by local civilians happened at this

center. 

Of the more than 610 buildings constructed at Jerome, only two houses, the concrete reservoir, and the

smokestack of the hospital boiler house are standing. The two houses were originally built by the Farm

Security Administration and were moved by the WRA to the center. Some foundations remain and

gravel roads associated with the center are still in use. Most of the land associated with the center is

under intensive agricultural cultivation. Overall, the site has lost its historic integrity.

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Kenedy Internment Camp - Kenedy, Karnes County, Texas

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The INS alien enemy internment camp at Kenedy operated from April 21, 1942 until October 1, 1944;

by 1943, 705 of the approximately 2,000 single male internees held here were of Japanese ancestry. The

first internees were 456 German, 156 Japanese, and 14 Italian nationals from Latin America, extradited

to the U.S. for possible exchange for Allied prisoners held in Japan. After the internment camp was

closed, it became a POW camp, first for Germans, and then for Japanese prisoners. The site is now a

residential subdivision and virtually nothing remains of the camp. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Manzanar Relocation Center - Inyo County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Manzanar Relocation Center was the first relocation center to open; it was occupied for the second

longest period of time (44 months) and housed the fifth largest population (10,046). Opened as the

Owens Valley Reception Center for voluntary evacuees, it became the first relocation center

administered by the WRA. Many buildings at the center were constructed by paid evacuee labor,

including 18 buildings in the staff residential area, a Children’s Village for all of the Japanese American

orphans relocated from the restricted areas, an auditorium, sentry and military police posts at the

entrance to the camp, and many support structures. In December 1942, the beating of a JACL leader

and the arrest of a suspect led to a protest by internees, which quickly became a riot. Two men were

killed and ten others wounded when military police fired into the crowd. In the following days,

internees thought to be troublemakers were removed to Department of Justice camps or to the WRA’s

Moab Isolation Center. Sixty-five supporters of the center administration were removed to Cow Creek

Camp in Death Valley for their own safety.

The three buildings remaining from the more than 800 originally located at the center were all

constructed by evacuees. The dramatic stone and concrete sentry and police posts have pagoda-type

roofs and wood-grained concrete lintels over the openings, suggesting that the evacuees may have tried

to incorporate Japanese stylistic elements. The large auditorium has recently been rehabilitated for use

as a visitor center. Much of the overall site plan is intact and many foundations, sidewalks, and

landscaping features (including gardens and concrete ponds) survive. The historic site also includes the
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 58

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

122 Burton, et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 357-358.

camp cemetery, one of only three remaining, with its dramatic 1943 memorial marker. Portions of the

original barbed wire fence surrounding the central area are still extant. Manzanar is a registered State

of California historic site; it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985 and established as a

National Historic Site in 1992. 

Recommendation: No additional federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Marysville Assembly Center - Arboga, Yuba County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at a former migrant workers camp, Marysville was also known as the Arboga Assembly Center. 

It was occupied from May 8, 1942 until June 29, 1942, with a peak population of 2,451. The only

remains of the assembly center are scatters of trash and the camp trash dump. The Marysville Assembly

Center is designated a California Historic Landmark. The assembly center site as a whole has no

integrity

Recommendation: The trash dump may be significant as an archaeological feature that can reveal

information about daily life at the assembly center; it should be studied for possible listing in the

National Register.

Mayer Assembly Center - Mayer, Yavapai County, Arizona

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at a former CCC camp, Mayer was occupied from May 7, 1942 until June 2, 1942. Mayer was

the shortest-lived and smallest assembly center, with a peak population of 245. Subsequent

development has left no remains of the assembly center. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Merced Assembly Center - Merced, Merced County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at the Merced County fairgrounds, this assembly center housed 4,508 persons between May 6,

1942 and September 15, 1942. Since that time, the fairgrounds have been extensively altered; few

remains of the assembly center are apparent. Eleven concrete slab foundations within the fairgrounds

match the standard size used for barracks at the assembly centers, but they have not been conclusively

associated with the assembly center.122 Further investigation should be considered; however, the camp

site appears to have no overall integrity. The Merced Assembly Center is designated a California

Historic Landmark and a historical marker has been placed at the site. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Minidoka Relocation Center - Jerome County, Idaho

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

The Minidoka Relocation Center was occupied for 39 months, the 8th longest length of occupation of the

relocation centers, and its peak population was 9,397, making it the 6th largest center. Once service was

re-opened to Japanese Americans, nearly 1,000 men and women from Minidoka served in the military,

almost ten percent of the center’s population; two of them earned Medals of Honor for their service. 

Seventy-three were killed in action, the largest number of battlefield casualties from any of the

relocation centers.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 59

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

The most dramatic remains of more than 600 original buildings are the stone and concrete walls of a

guard house and the waist-high walls and chimney of the visitor waiting room at the center entrance. In

addition to a variety of interpretive plaques, there is a commemorative marker honoring Minidoka’s war

dead. Two small buildings survive: Firehouse No. 1 and a root cellar (close to collapse). Some former

center buildings are located on private farms within the boundaries of the relocation center; many of

these have been altered or moved from their original locations. Only one section of the barbed wire

perimeter fence is extant; a concrete slab on the western edge of the camp residential area may have

supported a searchlight. Little of the original site plan is evident; most of the land in what was the

central area of the camp is now cultivated. 

Six acres of the Minidoka Relocation Center (formerly administered by the Bureau of Reclamation)

were listed in the National Register in 1979. In 2001, 73 federally-owned acres of the relocation center

site, including the six acres listed in the National Register, were declared the Minidoka Internment

National Monument to commemorate the hardships and sacrifices of Japanese Americans interned at the

center during World War II. The Monument is administered by the National Park Service, which is

currently developing a General Management Plan and an Environmental Impact Statement.

Recommendation: National Register documentation should be prepared for the Minidoka Internment

National Monument.

Pinedale Assembly Center - Pinedale, Fresno County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Occupied from May 7, 1942 until July 23, 1942, Pinedale’s peak population was 4,792. The site is

designated a California Historic Landmark, but subsequent residential development has left no traces of

the assembly center. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Pomona Assembly Center - Pomona, Los Angeles County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, Pomona was occupied from May 7, 1942 until August

24, 1942, with a peak population of 5,434. A possible barracks building is extant but appears to have

been moved within the fairgrounds. Other buildings from the period, including the grandstand,

apparently survive. The Pomona Assembly Center is designated a California Historic Landmark. The

integrity of the site to the World War II period has not been thoroughly assessed. 

Recommendation: The Pomona site should be studied for possible listing in the National Register.

Portland Assembly Center - Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Centered around the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Pavilion, this assembly center was

occupied from May 2nd until September 10, 1942, with a peak population of 3,676. Most of the

evacuees were housed in the pavilion itself, which was subdivided into apartments. Although the

apartments are gone, the pavilion appears to have undergone few other changes; nothing remains of the

rest of the assembly center. The assembly center is commemorated by a memorial plaque placed by

Multnomah County and the Portland Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League.

Recommendation: The pavilion should be studied for possible listing in the National Register.

Poston Relocation Center - La Paz County, Arizona

Property Type: Places associated with relocation
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 60

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

123 Ruth Okimoto, Poston Restoration Project, Berkeley, CA, personal communication, August 10, 2004.

Monument to Japanese American

Servicemen, Rohwer Relocation

Center Cemetery

Poston was occupied for 43 months, from May 18, 1942 until November 28, 1945. Poston, Rohwer,

and Topaz had the third longest occupation. By September 2, 1942, the population at Poston reached

17,814 residents, making it the second largest relocation center. Poston was divided into three camps

(Poston I, II, and III) situated three miles apart. In an unusual cooperative arrangement between the

WRA and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the center was constructed on lands of the Colorado River

Indian Tribe over the objection of the Tribal Council. BIA administered the center from March 1942 to

the end of 1943, apparently as part of a long term plan to relocate members of other tribes to the area. 

WRA took over administration in December.123 In the fall of

1942, unrest was provoked by the fencing of the camp, which for

the center administration took precedence over raising food and

providing heating for the residents. In November, two male

residents were arrested for beating a suspected administration

informer. A strike to get the arrested men released was held from

November 19th until the 24th when it ended peacefully.

The most prominent remaining features at the Poston camps are

the elementary school complex at Poston I, consisting of ten

adobe classroom buildings and an auditorium connected by a

system of covered walkways. The buildings were constructed by

evacuees, but the BIA, which probably planned to use the

complex after the war as part of its relocation plan, may have

been involved in their design. The roof of the auditorium was

recently lost to fire, however, and the adobe buildings are

deteriorating rapidly. A machine shop and portions of four other

buildings survive at Poston I and the sewage treatment plants at

Poston I and III are intact, but most of the approximately 1,900

buildings constructed at the three camps are gone. The evacueebuilt irrigation system is still in use, but the center as a whole has lost integrity. Many buildings moved

from the relocation center are present in the surrounding area. A monument and kiosk with landscaping

and an interpretive plaque were erected at Poston I in 1992. 

Recommendation: Assuming that the elementary school complex at Poston I retains its ability to

convey its national significance, it should be studied for possible NHL designation.

Puyallup Assembly Center - Puyallup, Pierce County, Washington

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Also known as Camp Harmony, this assembly center was located at the Western Washington

Fairgrounds. It was occupied from April 28, 1942 until September 12, 1942, with a peak population of

7,390. The center is commemorated by a memorial sculpture and two plaques on the site, but there are

no extant buildings or visible remains. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Rohwer Relocation Center and Memorial Cemetery - Desha County, Arkansas

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

The Rohwer Relocation Center was occupied for 43 months, the same length of time as the Poston and
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 61

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

124 Other cemeteries survive at Manzanar and Granada.

125 Gene Itogawa, California Department of Parks and Recreation, Office of Historic Preservation, personal

communication, 2001.

Topaz Relocation Centers–the third longest period of occupation. Rohwer’s peak population was 8,475,

making it the 8th largest relocation center. The most important extant element is the cemetery, one of

only three relocation center cemeteries that remain.124 It contains headstones and two large

commemorative monuments erected by the evacuees. One of these, erected in 1944, is dedicated to the

24 persons who died while living in the camp. The other, designed in the shape of a tank, was erected in

1945 and is dedicated to Japanese Americans serving in the combined 100th Regiment and 442nd

Regimental Combat Team.

Of the over 620 buildings constructed at the center only the water reservoir, the hospital boiler room

smokestack, and the sewage treatment plant survive. The integrity of the site plan and the road system

is poor and there are no remains of any camp security features. Many foundations and other camp

features have been destroyed. Three hundred and sixty-three acres of the site were listed in the National

Register in 1974. The Memorial Cemetery was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992; the

rest of the center was not included in this designation because of its poor integrity. 

Recommendation: No additional federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Sacramento Assembly Center - Sacramento, Sacramento County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Also known as the Walerga Assembly Center, this center was located at a former migrant workers camp. 

It was occupied from May 5, 1942 until June 26, 1942 and had a peak population of 4,739. The center is

designated a California Historic Landmark and commemorated by a historical marker, ramada, and

grove of cherry trees at Walerga Park, within the former assembly center site. There are no extant

buildings or visible remains of the center. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Salinas Assembly Center - Salinas, Monterey County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at the fairgrounds in Salinas, this center housed 3,594 evacuees between April 27, 1942 and

July 4, 1942. The 1942 grandstand and auxiliary buildings are apparently extant, but the main area

where barracks were located is now a golf course. It has been suggested that a number of old horse stall

buildings, possibly used to house evacuees, may survive.125 The Salinas Assembly Center is designated

a California Historic Landmark; a state historical marker accompanied by a small Japanese memorial

garden is located at the Salinas Community Center, within the assembly center site.

Recommendation: Further study of the site should be undertaken to determine what remains from the

period and whether anything may be eligible for listing in the National Register. 

Santa Anita Assembly Center - Santa Anita, Los Angeles County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at the Santa Anita Racetrack, this assembly center was occupied from March 27, 1942 until

October 27, 1942. Its peak population was 18,719. The Santa Anita Assembly Center was the largest

and the longest-occupied of the assembly centers. Over 8,500 evacuees lived in converted horse stalls at

the racetrack. Extant buildings include the grandstand and track, as well as the horse stalls of Assembly

Center Districts 1 and 2. The Santa Anita Racetrack has been designated as a California Historic
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 62

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

126 Burton, et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 399

Landmark. In the year 2000, Santa Anita was included on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s

Most Endangered Sites list because of historically unsympathetic renovations being undertaken by the

private owners. Although further study of the historic integrity of buildings related to the Santa Anita

Assembly Center is needed, Santa Anita does appear to be the most intact of the surviving assembly

centers. 

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible NHL designation.

Seagoville Internment Camp - Seagoville, Dallas County, Texas

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Located at the Seagoville Federal Reformatory for Women, this INS camp operated from April 1, 1942

until June 1945, with a peak population of 647. Fifty female Japanese language teachers from the West

Coast were held here. The facility also received childless married couples from the U.S., and families

from Latin America, serving as a family camp much like Crystal City. Twelve permanent brick

reformatory buildings “retain much of the look and feel of the World War II installation.”126

Recommendation: If further study confirms the integrity of the reformatory buildings and their

association with the camp, this property should be studied for possible listing in the National Register.

Stockton Assembly Center - Stockton, San Joaquin County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds, this assembly center operated from May 10, 1942 until

October 17, 1942 and had a peak population of 4,271. The center is designated a California Historic

Landmark, and commemorated by a historical marker at the site. There are no extant buildings or

visible remains. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Tanforan Assembly Center - San Bruno, San Mateo County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at the Tanforan Racetrack, this assembly center was occupied from April 28, 1942 until October

13, 1942, with a peak population of 7,816. The site is designated a California Historic Landmark and

commemorated by a historical marker at the site. The site is now occupied by the Tanforan Park

Shopping Center and there are no extant buildings or remains. 

Recommendation: No federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Terminal Island School - East San Pedro, Los Angeles County, California

Property Type: Places associated with exclusion

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, many of the men of the Japanese fishing community on Terminal

Island were arrested by the FBI. On February 14, 1942 the U.S. Navy announced that all Japanese

residents had to leave the island by March 14th, but when Executive Order 9066 was signed five days

later, the approximately 3,000 affected residents were given 48 hours to vacate the island. No one

returned to Terminal Island after the war because all of the residences and businesses of the community

were removed. In 1988, only the Terminal School building was extant and this was being used by the

United States Marine Corps. The current status of this building is unknown. 

Recommendation: If the Terminal Island School survives, it should be studied for possible listing in the

National Register.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 63

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

127 Sheri Murray Ellis, “Site Documentation and Management Plan for the Topaz Relocation Center, Millard,

County, Utah,” prepared for the Topaz Museum Board (Salt Lake City, UT: SWCA, Inc., Environmental

Consultants, 2002).

Stockade Jail, Tule Lake

Topaz Relocation Center - Millard County, Utah

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Also known as the Central Utah, or Abraham Relocation Center, Topaz was occupied for 43 months,

from September 11, 1942 until October 31, 1945. Along with Poston and Rohwer, Topaz was the third

longest-occupied relocation center. The population of Topaz peaked in March 1943, at 8,130, making it

only the 9th largest center but still one of the largest cities in Utah at that time. On April 11, 1943, a 63

year old evacuee, James Wakasa, was shot to death by a guard because he was too close to the perimeter

fence.

None of the 623 buildings originally constructed at Topaz survive in the central area, but many

foundations and roads are still visible. Most of the gravel walkways leading to the barracks are clearly

visible in aerial photos and help convey a sense of the

center’s original extent and plan. A number of

buildings in outlying agricultural areas are extant;

some of these may pre-date the establishment of the

relocation center. Portions of the perimeter fence

remain and the foundations of three watchtowers are in

place. A barn at the former center cattle ranch may

have been the original farm kitchen; in 1999 there were

numerous graffiti written by the center residents on an

interior wall. 

An archeological survey conducted in 2002 identified many evacuee-constructed decorative rock

gardens and pools and found many artifacts associated with the relocation center. These features may

be able to provide important information on life in the center, including strategies evacuees used to

maintain their Japanese cultural identify.127 A 300-acre portion of the Topaz site was listed in the

National Register in 1974. 

Recommendation: This property should be considered for possible National Historic Landmark

designation.

Tulare Assembly Center - Tulare, Tulare County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

A total of 4,978 evacuees were housed at the Tulare County Fairgrounds between April 20 and

September 4, 1942. A grandstand and several buildings remain but none of the buildings constructed for

the assembly center is extant. The Tulare Assembly Center is designated a California Historic

Landmark.

Recommendation: Surviving buildings associated with the assembly center should be studied for

possible National Register listing. 

Tule Lake Segregation Center - Modoc County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Tule Lake opened on May 27, 1942, and remained open for 46 months; it was the longest-occupied of

all the relocation centers. In the summer of 1843 it was converted into a maximum security segregation
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 64

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

128 For more information about the questionnaire and about the conversion of Tule Lake, see the “Indefinite Leave

Clearance” and the “Tule Lake Segregation Center” portions of Section E (above).

129 Over the next five years, all but 357 of the “renunciants” applied for the return of their U.S. citizenship. Burton,

et al. Confinement and Ethnicity, 57. 

facility and subsequently became the largest of the WRA-administered centers, with a population of

18,789. Several protests occurred in 1942, even before the conversion, including a strike by farm

laborers in August, a packing shed workers’ strike in September, and a protest by mess hall workers in

October. The controversies over the WRA “Application for Indefinite Leave Clearance” questionnaire

led to the conversion of Tule Lake into a segregation center.128 Forty-two percent of the adult residents

at Tule Lake answered the questionnaire in a manner that caused them to be classified as “disloyal.” 

Because Tule Lake had the highest percentage of “disloyal” responses, it was selected to be the site of

the segregation camp. “Disloyal” internees from other relocation centers were transferred to Tule Lake,

additional troops and tanks were sent, and the perimeter security fence was strengthened. During a

strike in November 1943, 350 protest leaders were sent to the Tule Lake stockade and 1,200 Issei were

transferred to Department of Justice camps at Fort Lincoln and Santa Fe. Tule Lake remained under

martial law for two months. For a variety of reasons, 95 percent of the 5,700 Japanese Americans who

sought to renounce their U.S. citizenship were from Tule Lake. Over a third of the internees at the

center asked to be “repatriated” to Japan, even though over half of them had been born in the United

States. The center remained open until March 20, 1946 when the last 400 “renunciants” were

transferred to the INS camp at Crystal City.129 Tule Lake is unique among the ten relocation centers for

its role as a maximum security segregation facility.

Forty eight of the 1,300 buildings eventually constructed at Tule Lake were extant in 1999, the largest

number at any of the relocation centers. The most important of these are associated with the high

security presence maintained after the conversion to a segregation center. These include 33 buildings in

the military police compound, portions of the security fence, and the stockade jail, where protest leaders

were held in 1943. Pencilled graffiti inscribed by prisoners in the jail survive on the walls. Tule Lake

was designated a California State Historical Landmark in 1979.

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible NHL designation.

Turlock Assembly Center - Turlock, Stanislaus County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

Located at the Stanislaus County Fairgrounds, this center was used from April 30, 1942 until August 12,

1942, with a peak population of 3,662. Some of the fairground buildings from the 1940s appear to be

extant. The Turlock Assembly Center site is designated a California Historic Landmark.

Recommendation: Further study of this site should be undertaken to determine the association of the

surviving buildings with the assembly center and to assess their integrity. 

2. NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK STUDY LIST

Camp McCoy (New Cantonment) - Fort McCoy, Monroe County, Wisconsin

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Gila River Relocation Center (Canal Camp) - Pinal County, Arizona

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 65

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

130 Gail Dubrow, “Panama Hotel and Hashidate Yu,” National Historic Landmark Nomination, National Register,

History and Education, Washington, D.C. 2002.

Granada Relocation Center - Prowers County, Colorado

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Hashidate Yu and Panama Hotel – Seattle, Washington

Property Type: Places associated with exclusion

The Panama Hotel is an example of the single-room occupancy hotels that characterized Seattle’s

historic nihonmachi, today part of the city’s International District. The best extant example of an urban

Japanese-style bathhouse is located in the hotel basement. The basement also contains a storage area

with trunks and suitcases filled with personal treasures and everyday items left by Japanese Americans

when they were relocated in 1942. The Panama Hotel was thought to be, and was, a safe place to store

their possessions. A dozen or more of these packed trunks and suitcases remain.130

While individuals and families sent to the camp probably stored their personal belongings in other

places, this is the only known property where some of these possessions are still there. The Panama

Hotel was included as a contributing building in the Seattle Chinatown Historic District, listed in the

National Register in 1986. 

Recommendation: NHL documentation is pending.

Heart Mountain Relocation Center - Park County, Wyoming

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Nihon Go Gakko (Japanese Language School) – Seattle, King County, Washington

Property Type: Places associated with exclusion

Established in 1902, this is the oldest functioning Japanese language school in the continental United

States. Located on the outskirts of Seattle’s Japantown, it consists of three buildings constructed

between 1913 and 1920. The language school was closed and the property confiscated by the Federal

government in 1942; school facilities were subsequently used for training Army Air Forces personnel. 

Some Japanese American graduates of the school served with the armed forces, and helped interrogate

prisoners and translate captured documents. After the war, many evacuees returned from the camps to

Seattle but housing was scarce. For three years, twenty-seven families lived in the classrooms of the

language school. The Seattle Nihon Go Gakko was listed in the National Register in 1982. 

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible NHL designation.

Poston Relocation Center - La Paz County, Arizona

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Santa Anita Assembly Center - Santa Anita, Los Angeles County, California

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Topaz Relocation Center - Millard County, Utah

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Tule Lake Relocation Center - Modoc County, California
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 66

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

3. NATIONAL REGISTER STUDY LIST

Antelope Springs – Millard County, Utah

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

This former CCC camp was used as a recreation area for residents at the Topaz Relocation Center,

located 90 miles away. Youth groups were brought here for camping, swimming, and hiking, and

individual Topaz residents could obtain passes to hike in the mountains. No buildings are extant, but

remaining camp features include concrete slab foundations, terraces, rock steps, rock alignments, and a

gravel walkway. The Antelope Springs camp testifies to an aspect of life in the relocation centers that is

not represented in the extant remains at the centers themselves. 

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible listing in the National Register.

Camp Lordsburg - Hidalgo County, New Mexico

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Begun in early 1942, this was the only Army internment camp specifically constructed to house

Japanese Americans. In July, 613 Issei men were transferred here from Fort Lincoln; the total

eventually rose to 1,500. In July 27th, two critically ill evacuees were shot by a sentry. By July 1943 the

Japanese Americans were gone. The camp housed 4,000 Italian POWs between 1943 and 1945. 

The former camp site, located on POW Road, is now privately owned. One surviving hospital building

has been altered for residential use; another is used for storage. The camp water tower and water

treatment plant and a very small concrete vault-like building survive. The most important of the

remaining features is a decorative U.S. seal made of pebbles embedded in concrete survive. Otherwise

not much of the camp is left.

Recommendation: This property should be considered for possible listing in the National Register.

Camp McCoy (Internment/POW Camp) - Fort McCoy, Monroe County, Wisconsin

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Catalina Federal Honor Camp – Coronado National Forest, Arizona

Property Type: Places associated with detention

This U.S. Bureau of Prisons work camp held draft resisters, conscientious objectors, and others

convicted of crimes in federal courts. Approximately 45 Japanese American draft resisters were

imprisoned here, most from the Granada Relocation Center, but some from Poston and Topaz as well. 

The most famous individual held at the Catalina Federal Honor Camp was Gordon Hirabayashi, who

had been given concurrent sentences for violating the curfew and the evacuation order. He served nine

months in the King County Jail in Seattle but completed his sentence at Catalina. Hirabayashi’s case

was heard by the Supreme Court, and in a unanimous decision on June 21, 1943, the court upheld the

constitutionality of the curfew orders, based on the principle of “military necessity,” and judged that

race could be a basis for determining loyalty. No camp buildings are extant but many features are

present and the setting appears to be largely intact. The U.S. Forest Service has recently named the

work camp site the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site, constructed an information kiosk, and created a

trail to interpret the camp remains. 

Recommendation: The property should be studied for possible listing in the National Register.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 67

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

131 Priscilla Wegars, “The Japanese Internment Camp Near Kooskia, Idaho, 1943-1945,” Pacific Northwest Library

Association Quarterly, 63(1), 1998.

Crystal City Internment Camp - Crystal City, Zavala County, Texas

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Fort Lincoln Internment Camp - Bismarck, Burleigh County, North Dakota

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Fresno Assembly Center - Fresno, Fresno County, California

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Gila River Relocation Center (Butte Camp) - Pinal County, Arizona

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Kooskia Internment Camp - Clearwater National Forest, Idaho County, Idaho

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Located at a former U.S. Bureau of Prisons work camp, Kooskia INS Internment Camp operated from

May 1943 until May 1945, housing a total of 256 internees. The enemy aliens at Kooskia were all

males and came from many parts of the United States and from Latin America. Kooskia was a work

camp, where internees earned wages while helping to construct the Lewis and Clark Highway. While

provisions of the Geneva Convention prohibited the conscription of prisoners for this type of labor, all

of the Kooskia evacuees were volunteers from other INS camps. Interviews with former internees have

revealed that the men considered this work a positive experience; it made them feel useful and helped

restore some of the self-respect they had lost because of their internment.131 

There are no extant buildings at the Kooskia site, but remains of the camp include a concrete pad for a

water tower, a ball field area, a stone wall, fruit trees, and landscape terraces. Most of the site is

forested, so additional remains may be present but not currently visible. 

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible listing in the National Register.

Leupp Isolation Center - Leupp, Coconino County, Arizona

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Located at an abandoned Indian boarding school on Navajo lands, this WRA camp operated from April

27 until December 2, 1943. The total population was 71. At the end of April 1943, inmates held at

Moab Isolation Center were transferred to Leupp in order to be reunited with their families. 

“Incorrigibles” continued to be held in a separate compound at Leupp. When Leupp was closed, the

inmates were transferred to the Tule Lake Segregation Center. Some remains and one building are

present at the site of the Leupp Isolation Center, but the site requires further study to assess its integrity. 

Recommendation: This property should be studied for possible listing in the National Register.

Marysville Relocation Center - Inyo County, California

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Pomona Assembly Center - Pomona, Los Angeles County, California

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 68

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

132 Burton, et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 350.

Portland Assembly Center (Pavilion) - Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Salinas Assembly Center - Salinas, Monterey County, California

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Seagoville Internment Camp - Seagoville, Dallas County, Texas

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Terminal Island School - East San Pedro, Los Angeles County, California

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Tulare Assembly Center - Tulare, Tulare County, California

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)

Tulelake Camp - Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

The Tulelake CCC Camp contained 30 buildings that were built between 1935 and 1938. For several

months in the spring of 1943, over 100 men from the Tule Lake Segregation Center who refused to

answer the loyalty questionnaire were isolated here. In October 1943, workers brought in to break a

farm workers strike at the segregation center were housed at Tulelake, for their own protection. The

camp was also used for German POWs. In 1946 it was transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Most of the camp was razed at that time. Five buildings used by the WRA remained in 1999; four of

these had been altered and all were in poor condition. Although Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge

staff reported that these buildings were to be demolished, they were still there in 2004.132 

Recommendation: If the five buildings used by the WRA are still extant, the property should be

studied for possible listing in the National Register.

4. OTHER PROPERTIES

Buildings 35 and 640, The Presidio of San Francisco – Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San

Francisco, California

Property Type: Places associated exclusion; places associated with Japanese American military

service

It was from Building 35 at the Presidio that General DeWitt issued the public proclamations and civilian

exclusion orders that implemented Executive Order 9066. 

On November 1, 1941, Military Intelligence Service Language School classes began at the Presidio’s

Building 640. This former air mail hangar at Crissy Field served as classrooms and barracks for the first

class of MISLS students. After this class graduated, the school was moved to Minnesota, ostensibly

because larger and better facilities were required. The intense anti-Japanese sentiment of the public in

California and the antipathy of the Western Defense Command also played a part in the decision,

however. 
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 69

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

133 “Tenant Profile: Bay School of San Francisco,” Presidio Post Newsletter, May-June 2004. Available online at

<www.presidiotrust.gov/About_the_Presidio/PresidioPost/MayJun2004>. 

134 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 176.

135 John A. Heitmann, “Enemies Are Human,” www.foitimes.com/internment/enemy1.htm, 2001.

The Presidio of San Francisco was designated as a National Historic Landmark district in 1962,

significance as a military post used by Spain, Mexico, and the United States, and for its military

buildings, planning, and landscaping spanning many decades of development. Buildings 35 and 640

were identified as contributing elements in this historic district. In 1994, the Presidio became part of the

Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and it has been jointly managed by the National Park Service

and the Presidio Trust since 1998. 

General DeWitt’s office, on the second floor of Building 35, has a high degree of integrity. The school

that signed a long-term lease for the building in 2004 was committed to interpreting the history of the

building in the lobby and in DeWitt’s office and to opening the office to the public on a regular

schedule.133 In 1997, the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS) entered into a

memorandum of agreement with the NPS to jointly interpret the story of Japanese Americans at the

Presidio. The NJAHS has proposed rehabilitating Building 640 for use as an MISLS interpretive center.

Recommendation: The documentation for this NHL should be amended to reflect its significance to

both the relocation of Japanese Americans and the beginnings of the MISLS.

Camp Florence – Florence, Pinal County, Arizona

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The only evidence of Camp Florence’s role in interning Japanese American enemy aliens is a December

1943 manifest of relief goods for Japanese nationals being carried on the exchange ship M.S.

Gripsholm. The manifest directed a small amount of these goods to Camp Florence.134 Between 1942

and 1946, the 311 buildings constructed at this site are known to have been used as a POW camp; only

the incinerator building, water tank, nurses’ quarters, administration building, and portions of the

infrastructure survive. These buildings and remains are all located at the Florence Garden Mobile Home

Park. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on this property. Additional research is

needed before either the significance of its association with the detention of Japanese Americans or its

integrity can be evaluated. 

Camp Forrest –Tullahoma, Coffee County, Tennessee

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The Army alien enemy internment camp at Camp Forrest went into operation on May 12, 1942. The

internee population averaged about 200 until November when 600 internees from Fort Meade, Maryland

were transferred here. In January 1943, the internee population was made up of 700 Germans, 1 Italian,

2 Japanese, and one person categorized as “miscellaneous.”135 In May 1943, all civilian internees were

transferred back to INS custody. Internees at Camp Forrest with families were transferred either to

Seagoville or Crystal City; single males were sent to Fort Lincoln. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on this property. Additional research is

needed before either the significance of its association with the detention of Japanese Americans or its

integrity can be evaluated. 
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 70

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

136 Burton, et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 338, 342.

137 Linda Greene, Chief of Resources Management, Death Valley National Park, personal communication, 2002.

138 Linda Greene, “Cow Creek Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination, on file, Death

Valley National Park.

Camp Livingston – Alexandria, Rapides County, Louisiana

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The U,S. Army alien enemy internment camp at Camp Livingston housed over 800 persons of Japanese

ancestry (400 from the West Coast, 354 from Hawaii, and 160 from Panama and Costa Rica). Masuo

Yasui, the father of Minoru Yasui whose curfew violation case was taken to the Supreme Court, was

held here. Camp Livingston was used to hold enemy aliens from spring 1942 until May 1943, when

custody of civilian internees was transferred back to the INS. Camp Livingston was also the location of

a POW camp for German, Italian, and Japanese soldiers. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on this property. Additional research is

needed before either the significance of its association with the detention of Japanese Americans or its

integrity can be evaluated. 

Cow Creek Camp - Death Valley National Park, Inyo County, California

Property Type: Places associated with relocation

In December 1942, a small WRA auxiliary camp was established at Cow Creek in what was then Death

Valley National Monument. Cow Creek was a former CCC facility and the location of the park

headquarters. After the unrest at Manzanar, evacuees who strongly supported the center administration

were threatened by other residents. These individuals and their families, numbering 65 people in all,

were moved to Cow Creek for their protection. While residing at Cow Creek, the evacuees did

volunteer work for the park. Within three months, all were placed in jobs away from the West Coast

and released.

In 1942, Cow Creek Camp contained about 35 buildings; the WRA used ten of these for the

former Manzanar residents, soldiers, and WRA staff.136 Only a third of the buildings present in

1942 survive; the CCC swimming pool used by Manzanar residents is also extant. Two of the

buildings (designated CC-39 and CC-49) are believed to have been used by the WRA.137

Building 39 was constructed in 1933, and served as an army office, supply room, and recreation

hall/canteen; subsequently it was used for storage. Building 49 was constructed in 1933 as an

infirmary and subsequently served a variety of purposes. While both buildings have undergone

some exterior and interior changes, Buildings 39 and 49 are listed as contributing resources to the

Cow Creek Historic District, determined eligible for listing in the National Register for its prewar

significance.138 In 2004 the Cow Creek Camp was being used as park offices, housing, and

maintenance. 

Recommendation: The National Register documentation for this district, included within the

boundaries of Death Valley National Park, should be amended to include the December 1942-

February 1943 period when Manzanar residents were at the camp.

Ellis Island, U.S. Immigration Station - Ellis Island National Monument, New York

Property Type: Places associated with detention

During World War II, the U.S. Immigration Station at Ellis Island was used for the detention of
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 71

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

139 Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 406.

East Coast enemy aliens. The station held aliens awaiting hearings and persons who were being

deported, repatriated, or expatriated. It also served as a way station for those being transferred

between internment camps. Detainees were held in the baggage and dormitory building. In

December 1941, 279 Japanese, 248 Germans, and 81 Italians were detained here. By June 30,

1944, a single Japanese enemy alien was in INS custody at Ellis Island. Ellis Island is a part of

the Statue of Liberty National Monument, established in 1965. 

Recommendation: No additional federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Fort Bliss - El Paso County, Texas

Property Type: Places associated with detention

In 1942, 73 Japanese American Issei were reportedly transferred from the INS Santa Fe Detention

Camp to Fort Bliss. The Fort Bliss Main Post Historic District was listed in the National Register

in 1998.

Recommendation: No further information could be found on the World War II history of this

property. Additional research is needed before either the significance of its association with

Japanese American detention or its ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

Fort George G. Meade - Anne Arundel County, Maryland

Property Type: Places associated with detention

In the early spring and summer of 1942, detainees who had been examined by alien enemy

hearing boards at Ellis Island and deemed dangerous were sent to the U.S. Army’s Fort Meade in

Maryland. German seamen were already being held at Fort Meade after having been first

interned at Camp Upton, New York. In November 1942 the internees were moved to another

Army installation, Camp Forrest in Tennessee; the camp at Fort Meade was subsequently used to

hold POWs. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on the World War II history of this

property. Additional research is needed before either the significance of its association with the

detention of Japanese Americans or its ability to testify to that association can be evaluated. 

Fort Richardson - Anchorage Borough, Alaska

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Fort Richardson, near Anchorage, was used for a short time to hold family members of Japanese

American men from Alaska who had already been imprisoned. These family members were

subsequently transferred first to the Puyallup Assembly Center and then to relocation centers. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on the World War II history of this

property. Additional research is needed before either the significance of its association with the

detention of Japanese Americans or its ability to testify to that association can be evaluated. 

Fort Sam Houston - San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Property Type: Places associated with detention

A number of Japanese Americans were transferred from the Army’s Fort Missoula Alien Enemy

Internment Camp to Fort Sam Houston, where they were housed in tents within a barbed wire

enclosure.139

Recommendation: No further information could be found on the World War II history of this
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 72

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

140 The other two were Fort Missoula in Montana and Fort Lincoln in North Dakota.

141 Burton, et al, Confinement and Ethnicity, 405.

142 “Japanese American Incarceration Facts,” Manabi and Sumi Hirasaki National Resource Center, Japanese

American National Museum, www.janm.org/nrc/internfs.html, 2001.

property. Additional research is needed before either the significance of its association with the

detention of Japanese Americans or its ability to testify to that association can be evaluated. 

Fort Sill Internment Camp - Comanche County, Oklahoma

Property Type: Places associated with detention

In March 1942, 350 Issei men were transferred from Fort Missoula to a U.S. Army Alien Enemy

Internment Camp at Fort Sill. A total of seven hundred enemy aliens were eventually held there,

until civilian internees were returned to the custody of the INS in the spring of 1943. On May

13, 1942, Ichiro Shimoda was shot while trying to escape. Shimoda, a Los Angeles gardener, had

been arrested by the FBI because he was a veteran of the Japanese military. Distress over

separation from his family eventually turned into mental instability; he had been placed in the

Fort Sill Army Hospital. Fort Sill was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 for its

role in U.S. military campaigns against Indian tribes of the Southern Plains in the late 1800s.

Recommendation: The precise location of the internment camp at Fort Sill is currently unknown. 

 If further research establishes that location and if any remains survive, amending the NHL

documentation to reflect the Fort’s significance within this historic context should be considered.

Fort Stanton Internment Camp - Lincoln County, New Mexico

Property Type: Places association with detention

Located at a former military base, CCC camp, and Public Health Service reservation, Fort Stanton

was the first of three internment camps established by the INS.140 Fort Stanton was initially used

to hold the crew of the German liner Columbus. The crew members were relocated here from

Angel Island in early 1940 and were reclassified as enemy aliens when the U.S. entered the war. 

Between January 1941 and September 1945, 695 German, 21 Italian, and 62 Japanese internees

were held at Fort Stanton. A separate segregation camp held “incorrigible agitators” transferred

from other INS enemy alien camps. The exact location of the Fort Stanton segregation camp is

presently unknown.

The remains of the internment camp include two extant buildings, the remnants of two other

buildings, the camp swimming pool, and many camp features. Fort Stanton was listed in the

National Register in 1973; in 2000 the Fort Stanton Historic District was expanded to recognize

the importance of the internment camp. According to the nomination, many of the extant remains

appear to be associated with the German internees.

Recommendation: No additional federal recognition is recommended for this property.

Haiku Camp – Maui County, Hawaii

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Haiku Camp, located on Maui, is cited as a U.S. Army facility for the internment of enemy aliens

in Confinement and Ethnicity.141 The Japanese American National Museum has identified a

detention camp operating on Maui from 1942 to 1943, presumably the same facility.142 
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 73

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Recommendation: No further information could be found on this property. Additional research

is needed before either the significance of its association with the detention of Japanese

Americans of its ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

Honouliuli – Ewa, Honolulu County, Hawaii

Property Type: Places associated with detention

By March 1, 1943, most of the remaining internees at Sand Island in Honolulu Harbor were

removed to a U.S. Army camp at Honouliuli in central Oahu or to the mainland. The Honouliuli

camp held Kibei and Issei, as well as German civilians and POWs. Investigations and arrests

continued throughout the islands until shortly before the end of the war. Honouliuli appears to

have closed in Fall 1944, after martial law was lifted in Hawaii. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on this property. Additional research

is needed before either the significance of its association with Japanese American detention or its

ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

Kalaheo – Kauai County, Hawaii

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The Kalaheo stockade is mentioned in Confinement and Ethnicity and the Japanese American

National Museum lists a U.S. Army detention camp operating on Kauai from 1942 to 1944. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on this property. Additional research

is needed before either the significance of its association with Japanese American detention or its

ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

Lanai - Maui County, Hawaii

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The Japanese American National Museum website lists a U.S. Army detention camp on Lanai

that was in operation in 1942. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on this property. Additional research

is needed before either the significance of its association with Japanese American detention or its

ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary – Leavenworth County, Kansas

Property Type: Places associated with detention

In March 1944, 106 Japanese American soldiers assigned to Fort McClellan in Alabama protested

against the internment of their families by refusing to participate in combat training. Twentyeight were court-martialed and sentenced to Leavenworth Penitentiary. Older draft resisters from

the Heart Mountain Relocation Center were imprisoned here after their trials at Cheyenne,

Wyoming, along with seven leaders of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on the World War II history of this

property. Additional research is needed before the significance of its association with the

detention of Japanese Americans or its ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary - Steilacoom, Pierce County, Washington

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Younger draft resisters from the Heart Mountain Relocation Center were imprisoned here after

their convictions in Cheyenne, Wyoming. After having completed his concurrent sentences for

violating the curfew and evacuation orders, Gordon Hirabayashi was convicted of draft resistance
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 74

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

143 Tetsuden Kashima, Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment During World War II (Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 2003), 111-113.

and served his sentence at McNeil Island Penitentiary. Conscientious objectors were also

incarcerated here. The penitentiary is now known as the McNeil Island Corrections Center and is

administered by the Washington State Department of Corrections. 

Recommendation: No further information is available on the World War II history of this

property. Additional research is needed before the significance of its association with the

detention of Japanese Americans or its ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

Moab Isolation Center - Grand County, Utah

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The former Dalton Wells CCC camp was used by the WRA from January 11, 1943 until April 27,

1943. The camp was used to isolate people identified by their relocation center directors as

“troublemakers.” Restrictions on the men at Moab were more severe than those at the relocation

centers; they were not permitted to visit the town, their mail was censored, and they were not

allowed contact with their families. Twenty-six inmates at Moab came from Manzanar, 13 from

Gila River, and 15 from Tule Lake. The isolation center was moved to Leupp, Arizona on April

27, 1943. 

No buildings are extant at Moab, but some concrete foundations are visible and roads are

discernible. Some pathways are also visible. A stone reservoir is also intact. The property was

listed in the National Register in 1994 as the “Dalton Wells CCC Camp/Moab Relocation

Center.” 

Recommendation: No additional federal historic recognition is recommended for this property.

Molokai - Maui County, Hawaii

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The Japanese American National Museum has identified a U.S. Army detention camp operating

on Molokai in 1942.

Recommendation: No further information has been found on this property. Additional research

is needed before the significance of its association with the detention of Japanese Americans or its

ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

Old Raton Ranch Camp - Santa Fe County, New Mexico

Property Type: Places associated with detention

The 32 Japanese American residents of nearby Clovis, New Mexico, an important terminal for the

Santa Fe Railroad, were trucked to this INS camp in January 1942, before Executive Order 9066

was issued. The INS classified the Issei adults as enemy aliens; their Nisei children had

“volunteered” to accompany them. Located at an isolated former CCC camp in the Lincoln

National Forest with no work and no schools, the internment camp was administered from Fort

Stanton, 13 miles away. In November 1942, the WRA agreed to accept the internees from Old

Raton Ranch, most of whom went to the Poston and Gila River relocation centers. By December

the camp was closed.143

A number of foundations and other remains survive at the Baca Campground in the Lincoln
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 75

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

144 Archaeological Survey Form, Inst. #FS 151, Museum of New Mexico, Laboratory of Anthropology, 1989.

145 “193 Aliens, Chiefly Japanese, Moved to Sharp Park Camp to Ease Immigration Station,” The San Francisco

News, March 31, 1942; transcription at Museum of San Francisco website,

www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/sharppark.html, 2001.

National Forest; these were probably built for the CCC camp, which operated from approximately

1934 through 1940. The campground is heavily used and in 1988 the site was very eroded and

disturbed.144

Recommendation: Additional research is needed before the ability of this property to convey its

association with the detention of Japanese Americans can be evaluated.

Sand Island Detention Camp – Honolulu, Hawaii

Property Type: Places associated with detention

On December 8th, 1941 the U.S. Army established the Sand Island Detention Camp at the

Territorial Quarantine Hospital in Honolulu Harbor. It was here that the 1,250 Japanese

Americans detained under martial law received their initial housing and processing. Sand Island

served as an internment camp for fifteen months. It was divided into four compounds; two held

250 Japanese males each, one compound held 40 women, and one compound held 25 Germans

and Italians. Transfer of internees to mainland camps began in early 1943, but a number of

internees remained at Sand Island until it closed on March 1, 1943. 

Recommendation: No further information could be found on this property. Additional research

is needed before its ability to testify to its association with Japanese American detention can be

evaluated.

Santa Fe Internment Camp - Santa Fe County, New Mexico

Property type: Places associated with detention

This former CCC camp was expanded by the Department of Justice in 1942. It originally held

800 Issei men; some of these were later transferred either to relocation centers or to Army

detention centers at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Lordsburg, New Mexico. From the fall of 1942 until

early 1943 German and Italian aliens were housed here. In June 1945 it held 2,100 Japanese

American men, many of whom had been identified by the authorities as among the most active

pro-Japanese leaders at the Tule Lake Segregation Center. A riot in March 1945 led to the

incarceration of about 350 internees in the camp stockade and the transfer of others to the Fort

Stanton Internment Camp.

After the war, the Santa Fe Camp was used as a holding and processing center for other

internment camps. All property of the camp was sold shortly after last internee left in May 1946. 

The site has been developed into a residential subdivision and has lost all integrity.

Recommendation: No federal recognition is recommended for this property.

Sharp Park Detention Facility - Pacifica, San Mateo County, California

Property Type: Places associated with detention

Located at a former state relief camp adjacent to the Sharp Park Golf Course, the Sharp Park INS

camp began operations on March 30, 1942. The camp is included on the INS list of alien enemy

detention sites and was the subject of a newspaper article from the period that indicates that it

could hold up to 600 people.145 A December 1943 manifest of Japanese relief goods on the
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 76

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

146 Weglyn, Years of Infamy, 176.

147 American Italian Historical Association, Western Regional Chapter, “Una Storia Segreta,” www.io.com/~segreta,

2001.

148 Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity, 404.

exchange ship M.S. Gripsholm shows that a small amount of these goods was intended for Sharp

Park, suggesting that Japanese nationals were interned there.146 Italian enemy aliens were also

detained at Sharp Park “where Quonset huts had been hurriedly set up on a golf course. Some

were held for as long as one year. Later, Italian prisoners of war were also held at Sharp Park.”147

Recommendation: No further information has been found on this property. Additional research

is needed before the significance of its association with Japanese American detention or it ability

to convey that association can be evaluated.

Stringtown Internment Camp - Stringtown, Oklahoma

Property Type: Places associated with detention

This prison complex was constructed in the 1930s. During World War II it was used as an

internment camp for enemy aliens, primarily Japanese Americans. It later housed German POWs. 

Near the end of the war the facility was used as a state hospital. The complex is currently a

medium-security prison. Some original buildings survive, including the chapel, gym, the

administration building, and one of the three original barracks.148

Recommendation: No further information has been found on the World War II history of this

property. Additional research is needed before either the significance of its association with

Japanese American detention or its ability to testify to that association can be evaluated.

Turlock Assembly Center - Turlock, Stanislaus County, California

(See discussion under “Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248,” above)
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 77 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

I. BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES

Abe, Frank. Conscience and the Constitution: A Story of Japanese America. Video documentary. San

Francisco: Independent Television Service, 2000.

Adachi, Ken. The Enemy that Never Was. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976. 

American Red Cross. “Report of the American Red Cross Survey of Assembly Centers in California,

Oregon, and Washington,” Papers of the U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of

Civilians. Part 1, Numerical file archive, Reel 10, 1942.

Ano, Masaharu. “Loyal Linguists - Nisei of World War II Learned Japanese in Minnesota,” Minnesota

History 45, no. 7 (1977): 273-287.

Anonymous. “Mack Alford Correctional Center,” MS on file, Mack Alford Correctional Center,

Stringtown, OK, n.d.

Arrington, Leonard J. The Price of Prejudice: The Japanese-American Relocation Center in Utah

During World War II. Logan: The Faculty Association, Utah State University, 1962.

Badger Challenge. “Badger Challenge, A Program Overview.”

http://www.badgerchallenge.com/program.htm, 1999.

Bailey, Paul. City in the Sun: The Japanese Concentration Camp at Poston, Arizona. Los Angeles:

Westernlore Press, 1971. 

Baker, Lillian. The Japanning of America: Redress and Reparations Demands by Japanese Americans.

Medford, OR: Webb Research Group, 1991.

_____. Dishonoring America: The Falsification of World War II History. Medford, OR: Webb Research

Group, 1994.

Banks, Phyllis Eileen. “Fort Stanton and Its Past.” Southern New Mexico Online,

http://www.Zianet.com/snm/ftstant.htm, 1998. 

Bearden, Russell. “Life Inside Arkansas's Japanese-American Relocation Centers.” Arkansas Historical

Quarterly 48, no. 2 (1989):169-196.

Benedetti, Umberto. Italian Boys at Fort Missoula, Montana, 1941-1943. Missoula, MT: Pictorial

Histories, 1997.

Bureau of Public Roads. “Final Construction Report, Arizona Forest Highway Project 33, Catalina

Highway, Coronado National Forest, Pima County, Arizona. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of

Public Roads, Division Seven,” MS on file, Coronado National Forest, Tucson, AZ, 1951.

Burton, Jeffery F. Three Farewells to Manzanar: The Archeology of Manzanar National Historic Site,

California. Western Archeological and Conservation Center Publication in Anthropology 67. Tucson,
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 78 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

AZ: National Park Service, 1996.

_____ and Mary M. Farrell. This Is Minidoka: An Archaeological Survey of Minidoka Internment

National Monument, Idaho. Western Archeological and Conservation Center Publication in

Anthropology 80. Tucson, AZ: National Park Service, 2001.

_____, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord. Confinement and Ethnicity: An

Overview of Japanese American Relocations Sites. Western Archeological and Conservation Center

Publication in Anthropology 74. Tucson, AZ: National Park Service, 1999. 

Choy, Philip P. “U.S. Immigration Station, Angel Island,” National Historic Landmark Nomination,

Washington, DC: National Register History and Education, 1995.

Chuman, Frank. The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese Americans. Chicago, IL: Japanese

American Research Project, 1976.

Cohen, Irene J. “Manzanar: A Japanese American Relocation Center Memorial.” Master's thesis,

School of Architecture, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1994.

Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied. Washington,

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982.

Conard, Joseph. “Japanese Evacuation Report #8. Seattle Office of the American Friends Service

Committee, April 2, 1942.” Hoover Institution Archives, Joseph Conard Collection, Box 3, Notebook.

Conn, Stetson, Rose C. Engleman, and Byron Fairchild. United States Army in World War II: The

Western Hemisphere, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts. Washington, DC: United States

Army, Office of the Chief of Military History, 1964.

Conley, Curt. Idaho for the Curious: A Guide. Cambridge, ID: Backeddy Books, 1982.

Culley, John J. “The Santa Fe Internment Camp and the Justice Department Program for Enemy

Aliens.” In Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, rev. ed. Seattle: University of

Washington Press, 1991.

Daniels, Roger. Concentration Camps: North America, Japanese in the United States and Canada

During World War II. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1989.

_____. “Introduction.” In Japanese Americans From Relocation to Redress, revised edition. Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1991.

_____. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill and Wang,,

1993.

_____, Sandra C. Taylor, and Harry H.L. Kitano. Japanese Americans From Relocation to Redress, rev.

ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 79 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Davis, Daniel S. Behind Barbed Wire: The Imprisonment of Japanese Americans During World War II.

New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982.

DeWitt, John B. Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast 1942. Washington, DC: U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1943.

Drinnon, Richard. Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1987.

Dubrow, Gail and Connie Walker. “Hashidate Yu at the Panama Hotel,” National Historic Landmark

Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 2002.

Effland, Richard W., and Margerie Green. “Cultural Resource Assessment for the Gila River Farms

Indian Community, GRIC,” MS on file, Archaeological Consulting Services, Ltd., Phoenix, AZ, 1983.

Ellis, Sheri Murray. “Site Documentation and Management Plan for the Topaz Relocation Center,

Millard, County, Utah.” Prepared for the Topaz Museum Board. Salt Lake City, UT: SWCA, Inc.,

Environmental Consultants, 2002.

Embree, John F. “The Relocation of Persons of Japanese Ancestry in the United States: Some Cases and

Effects,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 33, no. 8 (1943): 238-242.

Embrey, Sue Kunitomi, Arthur A. Hansen, and Betty Kulberg Mitson. “Manzanar Martyr: An Interview

with Harry Y. Ueno,” Japanese American Oral History Project, California State University, Fullerton,

1986.

Erickson, Jim. “WWII Internees' Lives in Catalina Examined: Renowned Japanese-American Looks

Back,” Arizona Daily Star, August 30, 1998.

_____. “Forty-five Japanese Americans Lent Muscles to Build Highway,” Arizona Daily Star, August

31, 1998.

Farrell, Mary M. “Mount Lemmon Highway Staging Ground Cultural Resources Clearance,” MS on

file, Coronado National Forest, Tucson, AZ, 1986.

Finnerty, Margaret. Del Webb : A man, A Company. Flagstaff, AZ: Heritage Publishers, 1991.

Fox, Steve. “Fort Lincoln Internment Camp, 1941-1946.” http://humboldt1.com/~stfox/lincoln.html,

1996.

Gardiner, C. Harvey. Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States.

Seattle: The University of Washington Press, 1981.

_____. “The Latin American Japanese and World War II,” In Japanese Americans From Relocation to

Redress, rev. ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.

Garcia, Marvin. “The History of Kenedy,” English Honors Paper, Kenedy High School, Kenedy, Texas,
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 80 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

1991.

Garrett, Jessie A., and Ronald C. Larson. “Camp and Community: Manzanar and the Owens Valley,”

Japanese American Oral History Project, California State University, Fullerton, 1977.

Gates, Gerald R. “Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge Land Exchange Archaeological Reconnaissance

Report (ARR 05-09-17 [CY-82]),” MS on file, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tulelake, CA, 1982.

Geary, Edward A. A History of Emery County. Utah Centennial History Series. Salt Lake City: Utah

State Historical Society; [Castle Dale]; Emery County Commission, 1996.

Girdner, Audrie, and Anne Loftis. The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans

During World War II. London: MacMillan, 1969.

Glynn, Gary. Montana's Home Front During World War II. Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1994.

Gorman, Michael. “Heart Mountain Relocation Center,” National Register of Historic Places

Nomination: Washington, DC: National Register History and Education, 1985.

Greene, Linda. “Cow Creek Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination,

National Park Service, Denver, CO.

Hansen, Arthur A. “Gila River Relocation Center,” In Transforming Barbed Wire. Phoenix: AZ

Humanities Council, 1977.

Hayashi, Masumi. “American Concentration Camps,” http://www.csuohio.edu/art_photos/index.html,

1997.

Hayden, B.E. “Annual Report and O & M Report of the Klamath Project, Oregon-California, for

Calendar Year 1943,” U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, 1943.

Heitmann, John A. “Enemies Are Human,” Paper presented to the Dayton Christian-Jewish Dialogue,

May 10, 1998. www.foitimes.com/internment/enemy1.htm, 2002.

Hersey, John. “A Mistake of Terrifically Horrible Proportions,” In Manzanar = [Ringoen]. New York:

Times Books, 1988.

Hirabayashi, Gordon K. “The Japanese Canadians and World War II,” In Japanese Americans From

Relocation to Redress, rev. ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.

Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo, and James Hirabayashi. “A Reconsideration of the United States Military's Role

in the Violation of Japanese-American Citizenship Rights,” In Ethnicity and War. Milwaukee:

University of Wisconsin, American Ethnic Studies Coordinating Committee, 1984.

Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. “Fort Missoula Alien Detention Center,”

www.montana.com/ftmslamuseum/alien.htm, 1999.

Hoshiko, Mike. “Putting Rohwer, Arkansas on the map,” Pacific Citizen Holiday Issue, December
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 81 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

23-30, 1988.

Ichioka, Yuji. Views from Within: The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study. Los

Angeles: University of California, Asian American Studies Center, 1989.

Inoshita, Msaji. “The Story of One Japanese-American Family: Gila River Japanese Resettlement

Camp,” Arizona Historical Society Spring Lecture Series, WWII: The Arizona Homefront, Tucson,

1995.

Inouye, Mamoru. The Heart Mountain Story: Photographs by Hansel and Otto Hagel of the World War

II Internment of Japanese Americans. Los Gatos, CA: privately published, Mamoru Inouye, 1997.

Iritani, Frank, and Joanne Iritani. “Ten Visits: Accounts of Visits to all the Japanese American

Relocation Centers.” San Mateo, CA: Japanese American Curriculum Project, 1994.

Irons, Peter. Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1983.

_____. Justice Delayed: the Record of the Japanese American Internment Cases. Middletown, CT:

Wesleyan University Press, 1989.

Jacobs, Arthur D. “World War II - The Internment of German American Civilians,”

www.netzone.com/~adjacobs, 1997.

Jacoby, Harold Stanley. Tule Lake: From Relocation to Segregation. Grass Valley, CA: Comstock

Bonanza Books, 1996.

Japanese American Curriculum Project. “Wartime Hysteria: The Role of the Press in the Removal of

110,000 persons of Japanese Ancestry during World War II, a Gathering of Actual Newspaper and

Magazine Clippings.” San Mateo, CA: Japanese American Curriculum Project, 1973.

Japanese American National Museum Quarterly. “Heart Mountain Mystery Rocks Donated to

Museum,” Japanese American National Museum Quarterly, Summer 1994.

Kashima, Tetsuden, Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment During World War II. 

Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003.

Kelsey, Michael R. The Story of Black Rock, Utah. Provo, UT: Kelsey Publishing,, 1996.

_____. Hiking, Climbing & Exploring Western Utah's Jack Watson's Ibex County. Provo, UT: Kelsey

Publishing, 1997.

Kirk, Dianna. “Rohwer Relocation Center Site,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination,

Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1974.

Kowta, Makoto. “Tule Lake War Relocation Project,” In “Archaeological Overview for the Mt. Dome

and Timbered Craters Regions, North Central California,” MS on file, California Historic Resource
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 82 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Information System, California State University, Chico, 1976.

Krafft, Katheryn H. “Nihon Go Gakko [Japanese Language School],” National Register of Historic

Places Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1984.

Kreisman, Lawrence. “Seattle Chinatown Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places

Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1986.

Larson, Thomas K., Dori M. Penny, Michael Andrews, and James O. Rose. “Cultural Resources

Investigations at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Wyoming,” Paper presented at the Society for

Historic Archaeology 28th Annual Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Washington,

DC, 1995.

Lee, Georgia; Hyder, William D., and Benson, Arlene. “The Rock Art of Petroglyph Point and Fern

Cave, Lava Beds National Monument,” MS on file, Lava Beds National Monument, Tulelake, CA,

1988.

Lehman, Anthony L. Birthright of Barbed Wire: The Santa Anita Assembly Center for the Japanese. Los

Angeles: Westernlore, 1970.

Leighton, Alexander H. The Governing of Men: General Principles and Recommendations Based on

Experience at a Japanese Relocation Camp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945.

Long, Wallace. The Military History of Fort Missoula. Missoula, MT: Historical Museum at Fort

Missoula, 1991.

Louthan, Bruce, Lloyd M. Pierson, and Kurt Wall. “Dalton Wells CCC Camp/Moab Relocation Center,”

National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and

Education, 1994.

McWilliams, Carey. “Moving the West Coast Japanese,” Harpers Magazine, 185 (1942):359-369.

Mackey, Mike. “A Brief History of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center and the Japanese American

Experience,” www.nwc.when.edu/library/hmdp/history.htm, 1998.

Madden, Milton Thomas. “A Physical History of the Japanese Relocation Camp Located at Rivers,

Arizona.” Master's Thesis, History Department, University of Arizona, 1969.

Maniery, Mary L. and Judith Cunningham. “Isleton Chinese and Japanese Commercial Districts,”

National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and

Education, 1990.

_____. “Walnut Grove Japanese/American Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places

Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1991.

Manzanar Committee. Reflections in Three Self-Guided Tours of Manzanar. Los Angeles, CA:

Manzanar Committee, 1998.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 83 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Masaoka, Mike. “Final Report.” F:PT 6.115, JERS, Bancroft Library, University of California,

Berkeley, 1944.

Matthews, Mary J. and Kent Sundberg. “Mukai Cold Process Fruit Barreling Plant.” National Register

of Historic Places Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1994.

McDonald, James R. and Patricia Bick. “Fort Missoula Historic District.” National Register of Historic

Places Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1987.

Merritt, Ralph P. “Project Director's Final Report, War Relocation Authority, Manzanar Relocation

Center, California.” UCLA Special Collections, 1946.

Merritt, Ralph P., Jr. “Death Valley—Its Impounded Americans.” Death Valley ‘49ers Encampment

Keepsake 49, 1987.

Mihara, Genji and Charles T. Kato, comp. “Nihon Go Gakko [Seattle Japanese Language School],”

National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and

Education, 1982.

Mitson, Betty E., and Arthur A. Hansen, editors. Voices Long Silent: An Oral Inquiry into the Japanese

American Evacuation. Fullerton: Japanese American Project, California State University, Fullerton Oral

History Program, 1974.

Myer, Dillon S. Uprooted Americans: The Japanese Americans and the War Relocation Authority

During World War II. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971.

Nakagawa, Martha. “‘DB Boys,’ An Untold WWII Story,” Pacific Citizen, November 11, 1999.

Nakamura, Robert A. Something Strong Within. Video documentary. Los Angeles: Japanese American

National Museum, 1995.

Nakano, Takano Ujo and Leatrice Nakano. Within the Barbed Wire Fence: A Japanese Man's Account

of His Internment in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.

National Japanese American Historical Society. Due Process: Americans of Japanese Ancestry and the

United States Constitution. San Francisco: National Japanese American Historical Society, 1995.

Navrot, Miguel. “Japanese Internees to be Honored,” Albuquerque Journal, April 18, 1999.

_____. “Monument Plans Sock Survivors,” Albuquerque Journal, August 11, 1999.

Negri, Sam. “Forgotten Arizona Compound Housed Japanese-American ‘Troublemakers,’” Arizona

Republic, August 4, 1985.

Nelson, Douglas W. “Heart Mountain: The History of an American Concentration Camp.” M.A. thesis,

University of Wyoming., 1970.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 84 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Nishimoto, Richard S. Inside an American Concentration Camp: Japanese American Resistance at

Poston, Arizona. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.

Noguchi, Rick. Transforming Barbed Wire: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans in Arizona

During World War II. Phoenix: Arizona Humanities Council, 1997.

Nudd, Jean. Japanese Internment Camps in Arizona: Sources for Original Documents,” Casa Grande

Valley Histories (1992): 29-41, 1992.

Oda, James. Heroic Struggles of Japanese Americans: Partisan Fighters from Americas Concentration

Camps. North Hollywood, CA: privately printed, James Oda, 1980

Ogawa, Dennis M., and Evarts C. Fox, Jr. “Japanese Internment and Relocation: The Hawaii

Experience,” In Japanese Americans From Relocation to Redress, rev. ed. Seattle: University of

Washington Press, 1991.

Okihiro, Gary Y. “Japanese Resistance in America's Concentration Camps,” Amerasia Journal 2 (Fall

1973): 20 - 34.

Page, George. “Salvage Estimates - Two Wood Frame Buildings, Heart Mountain War Relocation

Camp, Ralston, Wyoming,” MS on file, Bureau of Reclamation, Montana Project Office, Billings, 1986.

Penny, Dori M., Thomas K. Larson, Jim C. Miller, and Keith H. Dueholm. “Results of a Cultural

Resource Inventory of Five Bureau of Reclamation Parcels in Park County, Wyoming,” MS on file,

Bureau of Reclamation, Montana Project Office, Billings, 1990.

Pinger, Julie. “Documentation for a Determination of Eligibility - Camp Tulelake,” MS on file, U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service, Tulelake, CA, n.d.

Powell, Kent. “Topaz War Relocation Center,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination,

Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1974.

The Presidio Trust. “Environmental Assessment for Rehabilitation and Use of Building 35,” The

Presidio Trust, San Francisco, CA, March 6, 2001.

Quan, Daniel. “Angel Island Immigration Station: Immigration History in the Middle of San Francisco

Bay,” Cultural Resource Management 22, no. 8 (1999):16-19.

Rose, James O. “An Assessment of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Park County, Wyoming,”

MS on file, Bureau of Reclamation, Montana Project Office, Billings, 1992.

Russell, Scott C., Karolyn Jackman Jensen, and Jon S. Czaplicki. “The Historic Archaeology and

Ethnohistory of a World War II Japanese-American Relocation Center in Central Arizona,” Paper

presented at the Society for Historic Archaeology 28th Annual Conference on Historical and

Underwater Archaeology, Washington, DC, 1995.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 85 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Saiki, Patsy Sumie. Ganbare! An Example of Japanese Spirit. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,

1982.

Sakai, Toshio and Carol Branan. “Walnut Grove Gakuen Hall,” National Register of Historic Places

Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1980.

Sakoda, James M. “The ‘Residue’: The Unsettled Minidokans, 1943-1945,” In Views from Within: The

Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study. Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center,

1989.

Santos, Robert LeRoy. “The Army Needs Men: An Account of the U.S. Army Rehabilitation Center at

Turlock, California, 1942-1945,” MS on file, University Library, California State University, Stanislaus,

n.d.

Sawyer-Lang, Monique. “Recovery of Additional Information from the Gila River Farms Expansion

Area: A Study of a Japanese-American Relocation Center,” Cultural Resources Report 53.

Archaeological Consulting Services, Ltd., 1989.

Seabrook, John. “The Spinach King,” The New Yorker, February 20-27, 1995.

Simmons, Thomas H., and R. Laurie Simmons. “Granada Relocation Center,” National Register of

Historic Places Nomination Form, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1994.

Smith, Lorayne O. “40 Years Ago Veterans Settled Hunt Project,” Times-News, June 14, 1987.

Smith, Page. Democracy on Trail: The Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation In World War II.

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Spencer, Heather L. “Archaeological and Documentary Investigation of Fort McCoy’s Japanese

Prisoner of War Camp, South Post, Fort McCoy,” Reports of Investigation No. 5, Fort McCoy

Archaeological Resource Management Series, Fort McCoy, WI, 1996.

Spencer, Robert F. “The Relocation Center at Rivers, Arizona: Concentration Camp or Community?,”

Casa Grande Valley Histories (1992): 7-20.

Spicer, Edward H., Asael T. Hansen, Katherine Luomala, and Marvin K. Opler. Impounded People:

Japanese-Americans in the Relocation Centers. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1969.

Stanley, Jerry. I am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment. New York: Crown Publishers,

1994.

Story, Kenneth and William D. Baker. “Rohwer Relocation Center Memorial Cemetery,” National

Historic Landmark Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1992.

Stuart, Colburn Cox, comp. Inside View Japanese American Evacuee Center at Rohwer, Arkansas,

1941-1945. McGehee, AR: McGehee Publishing Co., 1979.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 86 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Sullivan, Mary, Monique Sawyer-Lang, Richard W. Effland Jr., and Margerie Green. “An

Archaeological Survey of the Gila River Farms Expansion, Pinal County, Arizona,” MS on file,

Archaeological Consulting Services, Ltd., 1987.

Sumida, Kunio A. “Castroville Japanese Language School,” National Register of Historic Places

Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1995.

Suzuki, Peter T. “Anthropologists in the Wartime Camps for Japanese Americans,” Dialectical

Anthropology 6 (August 1981): 23-60.

Sze, Corrine P. “Fort Stanton Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination,

Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 2000.

Tajiri, Vincent. Through Innocent Eyes: Writings and Art from the Japanese American Internment by

Poston I Schoolchildren. Los Angeles: Keiro Services, 1990.

Takeuchi, Thomas, comp. Minidoka interlude, September, 1942-October, 1943. Hunt, ID: published by

the residents of the Minidoka Relocation Center, 1943.

Tamir, Orit, Scott C. Russell, Karolyn Jackman Jensen, and Shereen Lerner. “Return to Butte Camp: A

Japanese American World War II Relocation Center,” Cultural Resources Report 82. Archaeological

Consulting Services, Ltd., 1993.

Taylor, Sandra C. Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1993.

tenBroek, Jacobus, Edward N. Barnhart, and Floyd W. Matson. Prejudice, War, and the Constitution:

Causes and Consequences of the Evacuation of the Japanese Americans in World War II. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1954.

Thomas, Dorothy Swaine. The Salvage: Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1952.

Thomas, Gerald W., Monroe L. Billington, and Roger D. Walker. Victory in World War II: The New

Mexico Story. Las Cruces: New Mexico State University Library, 1994.

Tunnell, Michael O., and George W. Chilcoat. The Children of Topaz: The Story of a

Japanese-American Internment Camp Based on a Classroom Diary. New York: Holiday House, 1996.

Turner, Denise. “Symms Speaks at Hunt Camp Dedication,” Times-News, August 2, 1989.

Turner, Stanton B. “A History of the Tule Lake Basin. Tule Lake Historical Research Project:

1981-1982,” MS on file, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Klamath Falls, Oregon, 1982.

Ulibarri, Richard O. “Utah's Ethnic Minorities: A Survey,” Utah Historical Quarterly 40:3 (1972):

210-232. 
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 87 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation. “Klamath Project, Annual History for

1945,” vol. 34. Klamath Falls, OR: United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation,

1946.

United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation. “Klamath Project, Annual History for

1946,” Vol. 35. Klamath Falls, OR: United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation,

1947.

Uyeda, Clifford I. “Nisei Draft Resisters,” Nikkei Heritage 5, no. 4 (1993):4-7.

_____. Due Process: Americans of Japanese Ancestry and the United States Constitution. San

Francisco: National Japanese American Historical Society, 1995.

Uyeno, Tad. “Point of No Return,” Rafu Shimpo, October 10, 1973.

Van Valkenburg, Carol. An Alien Place: The Fort Missoula, Montana, Detention Camp 1941-1944.

Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories, 1995.

Vyzralek, Frank E. “Fort Lincoln,” MS on file, North Dakota State Historical Society, Bismarck, n.d.

Walls, Thomas K. The Japanese Texans. Austin: Institute of Texan Cultures, 1987.

War Relocation Authority. “Records 1942-1946,” Special Collections, University of California, Los

Angeles.

Wartime Civil Control Administration. “Civilian Exclusion Orders,” Japanese American Evacuation and

Resettlement Records, BANC MSS 67/14 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley,

1942.

Webber, Bert. Silent Siege - III: Japanese Attacks on North America in World War II - Ships Sunk, Air

Raids, Bombs Dropped, Civilians Killed. Medford, OR: Webb Research Group, 1992.

Wegars, Priscilla. “The Japanese Internment Camp Near Kooskia, Idaho, 1943-1945,” Pacific Northwest

Library Association Quarterly 63, no. 1 (1998).

_____. “A Real He-Man's Job: Japanese Internees and the Kooskia Internment Camp, Idaho,

1943-1945,” Paper presented at the Society for Historic Archaeology 32nd Annual Conference on

Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Salt Lake City, UT, 1999.

_____. The Kooskia (Idaho) Japanese Internment Camp, 1943-1945. Asian American Comparative

Collection., http://www.uidaho.edu/LS/AACC/kooskia.htm, 1998.

Weglyn, Michi. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps. New York:

Morrow Quill, 1976.

Weik, Shirley. “Introduction,” in Casa Grande Valley Histories (1992): 1-6.
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 88 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Welch, James M., Robert G. Rosenberg, and Michael A. Nash. “Class III Cultural Resource Inventory

of Shoshone Municipal Water Supply Project, Park and Big Horn Counties, Wyoming,” MS on file,

Frontier Archaeology, Cheyenne, WY, 1988.

Williams, James C. and Kent Seavey. “Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs,” National Register of Historic

Places Nomination, Washington, DC: National Register, History and Education, 1995.

Wilson, Marjorie. “Japanese Relocation Center at Rivers,” National Register of Historic Places

Nomination, Arizona State Parks Board, Phoenix, 1978.

Yamaguchi, Jack T. This was Minidoka. Tacoma, WA: Pollard Printing Group, 1989.

N:\NR-NHL\Theme Studies\Japanese Americans\study\SECTIONI.WPD
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 89

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Table 2: Summary of Recommendations for Properties Identified in Public Law 102-248

NAME OF

PROPERTY

LOCATION FEDERAL RECOGNITION RECOMMENDATIONS 

Angel Island Marin County, CA National Historic Landmark No additional federal historic recognition

Bainbridge Island Kitsap County, WA Eagledale Ferry being evaluated as

possible National Memorial

Survey island for surviving resources

Camp McCoy Monroe County, WI None Study new cantonment area for potential

National Historic Landmark (NHL)

designation; study internment/POW camp for

possible National Register (NR) listing

Camp Savage Scott County, MN None No federal historic recognition

Camp Shelby Forrest and Perry Counties,

MS

Two buildings listed in National

Register

No additional federal historic recognition

Crystal City Internment

Camp

Zavala County, TX None Study for possible NR listing

Fort Lincoln Internment

Camp

Bismarck, Burleigh County,

ND

None Study individual buildings for possible NR

listing

Fort Missoula

Internment Camp

Missoula County, MT Listed in National Register No additional federal historic recognition

Fort Snelling Minneapolis, MN National Historic Landmark Amend documentation to reflect WWII

significance

Fresno Assembly Center Fresno County, CA None Study grandstand for possible NR listing

Gila River Relocation

Center

Pinal County, AZ None Study Canal Camp for potential NHL

designation; study Butte Camp for possible NR

listing

Granada Relocation

Center

Prowers County, CO Listed in National Register Study for potential NHL designation

Heart Mountain 

Relocation Center

Park County, WY Listed in National Register Study for potential NHL designation

Jerome Relocation

Center

Chicot and Drew Counties,

AR

None No federal historic recognition

Kenedy Internment

Camp

Karnes County, TX None No federal historic recognition

Manzanar Relocation

Center

Inyo County, CA National Historic Landmark;

National Historic Site

No additional federal historic recognition

Marysville Assembly

Center

Yuba County, CA None Study trash dump for possible NR listing

Mayer Assembly Center Yavapai County, AZ None No federal historic recognition

Merced Assembly

Center

Merced County, CA None No federal historic recognition

Minidoka Relocation

Center

Jerome County, ID Listed in National Register; National

Memorial; General Management

Plan and Environmental Impact

Statement being developed

Prepare National Register documentation for

National Memorial

Pinedale Assembly

Center

Fresno County, CA None No federal historic recognition

Pomona Assembly

Center

Los Angeles County, CA None Study for possible NR listing
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 90

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NAME OF

PROPERTY

LOCATION FEDERAL RECOGNITION RECOMMENDATION

Portland Assembly

Center

Multnomah County, OR None Study pavilion for possible NR listing

Poston Relocation

Center

La Paz County, AZ None Study elementary school area for potential

NHL designation, assuming its ability to

testify to its national significance survives

Puyallup Assembly

Center

Pierce County, WA None No federal historic recognition

Rohwer Relocation

Center

Desha County, AR Listed in National Register;

National Historic Landmark

(Cemetery)

No additional federal historic recognition

Sacramento Assembly

Center

Sacramento County, CA None No federal historic recognition

Salinas Assembly

Center

Monterey County, CA None Study for possible NR listing

Santa Anita Assembly

Center

Los Angeles County, CA None Study for potential NHL designation

Seagoville Internment

Camp

Dallas County, TX None Study for possible NR listing

Stockton Assembly

Center

San Joaquin County, CA None No federal historic recognition

Tanforan Assembly

Center

San Bruno, San Mateo Co.,

CA

None No federal historic recognition

Terminal Island School Los Angeles County, CA None Study for possible NR listing

Topaz Relocation

Center

Millard County, UT Listed in National Register Study for potential NHL designation

Tulare Assembly Center Tulare County, CA None Study for possible NR listing

Tule Lake Relocation

Center

Modoc County, CA None Study for potential NHL designation

Turlock Assembly

Center

Stanislaus County, CA None Further study to determine significance and

integrity

N:\NR-NHL\Theme Studies\Japanese Americans\study\TABLE2.WPD
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 91 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Table 3: Summary of Recommendations for Additional Properties

NAME OF

PROPERTY

LOCATION FEDERAL RECOGNITION RECOMMENDATION 

Antelope Springs Millard County, UT None Study for possible National Register (NR)

listing

Buildings 35 & 640, The

Presidio of San

Francisco

Golden Gate National

Recreation Area, San

Francisco, CA

The Presidio is a National Historic

Landmark (NHL)

Amend documentation to reflect WWII

significance

Camp Florence Florence, Pinal County, AZ None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Camp Forrest Tullahoma, Coffee County,

TN

None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Camp Livingston Alexandria, Rapides Parish,

LA

None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Camp Lordsburg Hidalgo County, NM None Study for possible NR listing

Catalina Federal Honor

Camp

Coronado National Forest,

AZ

None Study for possible NR listing

Cow Creek Camp Death Valley National Park,

Inyo County, CA

None Amend draft NR nomination to include WWII

significance

Ellis Island, U.S.

Immigration Station

Ellis Island National

Monument, NY

Ellis Island is a National Monument No additional federal historic recognition

Fort Bliss El Paso County, TX Fort Bliss Main Post is listed in the

National Register

Additional research to determine WWII

significance and integrity

Fort George C. Meade Anne Arundel County, MD None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Fort Richardson Anchorage Borough, AK None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Fort Sill Internment

Camp

Comanche County, OK Fort Sill is a National Historic

Landmark

Consider amending NHL documentation if

additional research establishes location,

significance, and integrity of internment camp

Fort Stanton Lincoln County, NM Fort Stanton is listed in the National

Register

No additional federal historic recognition

Haiku Camp Maui County, HI None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Honouliuli Ewa, Honolulu County, HI None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Hashidate Yu and

Panama Hotel

Seattle, King County, WA Listed in the National Register as

part of the Seattle Chinatown

Historic District

National Park System Advisory Board has

recommended National Historic Landmark

(NHL) designation

Kalaheo Kauai County, HI None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Kooskia Internment

Camp

Clearwater National Forest,

Idaho County, ID

None Study for possible NR listing

Lanai Maui County, HI None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Leupp Isolation Camp Leupp, Coconino County,

AZ

None Study for possible NR listing
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 92 

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NAME OF

PROPERTY

LOCATION FEDERAL RECOGNITION RECOMMENDATION

Leavenworth Federal

Penitentiary

Leavenworth County, KS None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

McNeil Island Federal

Penitentiary

Steilacoom, Pierce County,

WA

None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Moab Isolation Center Grand County, UT Dalton Wells CCC Camp/Moab

Relocation Center listed in the

National Register

No additional federal historic recognition

Molokai Maui County, HI None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Nihon Go Gakko

(Japanese Language

School)

Seattle, King County, WA Listed in the NR Study for potential NHL designation

Old Raton Ranch Camp Santa Fe County, NM None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Sand Island Detention

Camp

Honolulu County, HI None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Santa Fe Internment

Camp

Santa Fe County, NM None No federal historic recognition

Sharp Park Detention

Facility

Pacifica, San Mateo

County, CA

None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Stringtown Internment

Camp

Stringtown, Atoka County,

OK

None Additional research to determine significance

and integrity

Tulelake Camp Tule Lake National Wildlife

Refuge, CA

None Study for possible NR listing

N:\NR-NHL\Theme Studies\Japanese Americans\study\TABLE3.WPD
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 93

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

1

 This list was derived primarily from digital images of Civilian Exclusion Order posters, from the collections of The

Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Appendix 1: Locations of Some WCCA Civil Control Stations1

EXCLUSION

ORDER

STATION LOCATION

No. 1 Anderson Dock Store Winslow, Bainbridge Island, WA

No. 4 1919 India Street San Diego, CA

No. 5 1701 Van Ness Avenue San Francisco, CA

No. 9 131 Magnolia Street Burbank, CA

No. 10 1157 North La Brea Avenue Hollywood, CA

No. 11 961 South Mariposa Avenue Los Angeles, CA

No. 12 322 South California Street Ventura, CA

No. 13 American Legion Building 112 West Labrillo Boulevard, Santa Barbara, CA

No. 14 Arroyo Grande High School Gymnasium Arroyo Grande, CA

No. 15 National Guard Armory Salinas and Howard Streets, Salinas, CA

No. 16 Veterans’ Memorial Building Third Street, Watsonville, CA

No. 17 2100 Second Avenue Seattle, WA

No. 18 1319 Rainier Avenue Seattle, WA

No. 19 2345 Channing Way Berkeley, CA

No. 20 Japanese American Citizens League Auditorium 2031 Bush Street, 

San Francisco, CA

No. 21 3500 Normandie Avenue Los Angeles, CA

No. 22 2314 South Vermont Avenue Los Angeles, CA

No. 23 American Legion Hall Merchant and West Streets, Vacaville, CA

No. 24 Odd Fellows Hall - Main Street Byron, CA

No. 25 Salvation Army Headquarters Building 20 Southwest Sixth Avenue, Portland, OR
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 94

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

EXCLUSION

ORDER 

STATION LOCATION

No. 26 The Navy Post, American Legion Hall 128 Northeast Russell Street, Portland, OR

No. 27 530 Eighteenth Street Oakland, CA

No. 28 1117 Oak Street - Corner, 12th and Oak Streets, 2nd

Floor

Oakland, CA

No. 29 16522 South Western Avenue Torrance, CA

No. 30 7412 South Broadway Los Angeles, CA

No. 31 839 South Central Avenue Los Angeles, CA

No. 32 Japanese Christian Church 822 East 20th Street, Los Angeles, CA

No. 33 Japanese Union Church 120 North San Pedro Street, Los Angeles, CA

No. 34 920 “C” Street Hayward, CA

No. 35 Masonic Temple Building 100 North Ellsworth Street, San Mateo, CA

No. 36 Japanese Chamber of Commerce 316 Maynard Avenue, Rooms 111-112, Seattle, WA

No. 38 1921 East Washington Street Phoenix, AZ

61 East Pennington Street Tucson, AZ

No. 39 Lonely Acres Skating Rink Renton Junction - Old Seattle, Tacoma Highway

approximately 3 miles west of Renton, WA

No. 41 1530 Buchanan Street San Francisco, CA

No. 42 Hollywood Independent Church 4525 Lexington Avenue, Los Angeles, CA

No. 43 360 South Westlake Avenue Los Angeles, CA

No. 44 Tulare Civic Memorial Building 100 Block, South “M” Street, Tulare, CA

No. 45 Hanford Civic Auditorium, Civic Center Hanford, CA

No. 46 Administration Building, Gresham Fairgrounds Gresham, OR 

No. 47 Loomis Union Grammar School Loomis, CA

No. 48 Community Hall Newcastle, CA

No. 49 American Legion Hall Eleventh and June Streets, Hood River, OR

No. 50 Winter Garden Auditorium 1125 Tenth Street, Modesto, CA

No. 51 Veteran’s Memorial Hall 17th Street, Between P and Q Streets , Merced, CA

No. 52 Civic Memorial Auditorium 15th and I Streets, Sacramento, CA

No. 53 National Guard State Armory Building 1420 North California Street, Stockton, CA

No. 54 38 East California Street Pasadena, CA

No. 55 American Legion Hall Valencia Street and San Bernardino Road, Covina,

CA

No. 56 805 Garvey Boulevard Monterey Park, CA

No. 57 Christian Youth Center 2203 East Madison Street, Seattle, WA
NPS Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86) OMB No. 1024-0018

JAPANESE AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II. Page 95

United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

EXCLUSION

ORDER

STATION LOCATION

No. 58 City Hall Auditorium South Meridian Street, Puyallup, WA

No. 59 Japanese School House Area known as Little Tokio, 1⁄4 mile north of

Oceanside on Highway No. 101, CA

No. 60 249 East Center Street Anaheim, CA

No. 61 Memorial Hall Sixth and Magnolia Streets, Huntington Beach, CA

No. 62 American Legion Hall 1705 Second Street, Selma, CA

No. 63 Memorial Hall Corner G and Sixth Streets, Madera, CA

No. 64 2107 Inyo Street Fresno, CA

No. 65 201 B Street Corner Third and B Street, Santa Rosa, CA

No. 66 Old Southern Pacific Depot Fifth Avenue and Central Avenue, Second Floor,

Los Angeles, CA

No. 69 California State Guard Armory 300 B Street, Yuba City, CA

No. 77 Gilroy High School Gymnasium IOOF Avenue, Gilroy, CA

No. 78 American Legion Hall Bush Street, Woodland, CA

No. 79 Auburn High School Gymnasium 711 East Main Street, Auburn, WA

No. 80 122 Kirkland Avenue Kirkland, WA

No. 81 Raphael Weill School Auditorium San Francisco, CA

No. 83 3557 Main Street Riverside, CA

No. 84 522 Sierra Highway Palmsdale, CA

719 Front Street Needles, CA

No. 85 Kern County Exhibit Building, Kern County Fair

Grounds

North Chester Avenue, Bakersfield, CA

No. 86 Japanese Baptist Church 2923 East Second Street, Los Angeles, CA

No. 87 45 North Fir Street Medford, OR

34 West Sixth Avenue Eugene, OR

No. 92 Masonic Hall Elk Grove, CA

No. 98 Schoolhouse Lyle, WA

U.S. Employment Service Office, Columbia Hotel

Building

Wanatchee, WA

Gymnasium 202 West 2nd Street, Wapato, WA

No. 99 Clarksburg Grammar School Clarksburg, CA

No. 101 319 C Street Marysville, CA

No. 102 Municipal Civic Auditorium Lincoln, CA