WWII Concentration Sites that Imprisoned People of Japanese DescentOnline version
"War Relocation Centers": These sites were guarded by military police, surrounded by barbed wire, and equipped with watchtowers, a stark contrast to their "relocation center" name.
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Heart Mountain
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Manzanar and Tule Lake- Winters are long and cold and summers hot and dry with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees in the summer and below freezing in the winter.
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Topaz- Located in high desert, temperature ranged from 106 degrees in summer to -30 degrees in winter.
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Minidoka- Temperatures ranged from the low 100s in summer to –30 in the winter. When the rains came in autumn the entire camp turned to mud, often knee deep.
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Granada (Amache)- Located on a hilltop at 3,500 ft., Granada was arid and dusty.
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Gila and Poston- Temperatures reached 125 degrees in Gila with frequent dust storms. Poston was perhaps the hottest of all the camps.
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Rohwer and Jerome- Rohwer was a swampy area intertwined with canals, creeks, and bayous.
Jerome was marshy, situated 12 miles from the Mississippi River.
Explanation
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More than 10,000 people were imprisoned here from Los Angeles, Santa Clara, and San Francisco counties in California and Yakima and Washington counties in Washington.
Incarcerees grew crops on 1,100 acres of farmland. Heart Mountain Relocation Center camp had one of the most successful agriculture programs of all the camps, introducing new crops that had never before been grown in the region.
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In 1942, the United States government ordered more than 110,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent to leave their homes and imprison them in remote, concentration camps.
Tule Lake: More than 3,000 people came from Sacramento, Pinedale, Pomona, Salinas, and Marysville assembly centers.
Manzanar: Most people were from the Los Angeles area, Terminal Island, and the San Fernando Valley. Others came from the San Joaquin Valley and Bainbridge Island, Washington; the latter transferred to Minidoka in 1943.
On December 6, 1942, at the Manzanar concentration camp, military police fired into a crowd of protestors, killing two men and injuring nine others.
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More than 11,000 people of Japanese descent were sent here, primarily from the San Francisco Bay Area, predominantly from Tanforan Assembly Center.
Topaz internment camp in Central Utah is known for the fatal shooting of an internee, James Hatsuki Wakasa, by a sentry, which led to protests, and the vibrant art community that flourished there, including an art school established by Chiura Obata.
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Minidoka held nearly 13,000 people of Japanese descent, mostly American citizens from Washington, Oregon, and Alaska.
Prisoners, including children, lived in crowded, tar-papered barracks and endured extreme temperatures and dust storms.
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The barracks were hastily constructed with inadequate insulation, allowing dust, cold, and heat to seep in.
Most people came from Los Angeles, Sonoma, Yolo, Stanislaus, Sacramento, and Merced counties.
Amache had the second-highest rate of military volunteers among the camps, with 953 men and women entering military service. Thirty-one of those service members died while serving.
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People primarily came from Fresno, Santa Barbara, San Joaquin, Solano, Contra Costa, Ventura and Los Angeles Counties via the Turlock, Tulare, and Santa Anita assembly centers.
The Gila River War Relocation Camp in Arizona was notable for being a relatively less oppressive, and more attractively built. It encouraged self-governance and recreational activities like baseball.
Gila's relatively nicer conditions led to a surprise visit by Eleanor Roosevelt in April 1943.
Poston was notable as the largest Japanese American incarceration camp, located on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. It was notable for its draft resistance movement.
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Both were located in Jim Crow South.
Jerome's overcrowding contributed to a severe flu epidemic. It had the lowest rate of military volunteers among the camps.
Jerome was the last camp to open and the first to close. After its closure, it was repurposed to hold German POWs.
Rohwar incarcerees endured extreme heat, humidity, heavy rains, and biting insects like chiggers and mosquitoes.
Mabel Rose Jamison (Jamie) Vogel was hired to teach art and became a beloved teacher and mentor. Among those she helped was renowned Japanese American artist Henry Sugimoto.
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