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United States - Incarceration - Resources by Site

see also United States -- Incarceration -- General Resources

Alaska

"Feared because of the possibility of collaborating with the enemy, Alaska's small number of Japanese aliens, barred from citizenship by the alien laws of the period, and their Alaskan-born children were evacuated to the lower-48 and treated as were the other Japanese-Americans evacuated from the West Coast states and interned in remote camps."
  • Sandi McDaniel, "Painful Memory". Originally published in the Daily News (May 22, 1997); republished on Sandi McDaniel Gerjevic's web site.
"Japanese Alaskans recall imprisonment during World War II."
"This project was begun in 1990 in order to gather and establish a resource of primary information about Japanese pioneers in Alaska. ... The project's focus was oral history interviews of Japanese pioneers defined as those who arrived in Alaska up to 1942. Nineteen interviews were conducted."
Material from the oral histories was subsequently published; cf. Ron Inouye, Carol Hoshiko and Kazumi Heshiki, Alaska's Japanese Pioneers: Faces, Voices, Stories - A Synopsis of Selected Oral History Transcripts (University of Alaska Press, 1994).


Arizona

"'Through Our Parents' Eyes: History & Culture of Southern Arizona' brings to the Web the history, culture and experiences of the many peoples who live in this vibrant region. Through the use of digital histories presented as images, text, audio, and video, Southern Arizona's history and culture is available to anyone with access to the Internet."
Bibliography includes books, manuscripts, ephemera, and photographs.

Gila River

Reprinted with permission from "Echoes of Silence: The Untold Stories of the Nisei Soldiers Who Served in WWII". Includes a list of Americans of Japanese ancestry who enlisted from Gila River and subsequently died in World War II.
Describes a return to the Gila River camp site by members of the camp's baseball team.
Photo collages by artist Masumi Hayashi.

Poston

" Poston Restoration Project is actively working to preserve the physical artifacts as well as the stories and memories of life in the Poston camps and on the Colorado River Indian Reservation during World War II. We want to emphasize the significant links and relationships between the Japanese American detainees and the Colorado River Indian Tribes."
  • The National Park Service has produced a collection of facts and figures about the Poston Relocation Center.
Photo collage by artist Masumi Hayashi.
"Passing Poston tells the moving and haunting story of four former internees of the Poston Relocation Center. Each person shadowed by a tragic past, each struggling in their own painful way to reconcile the trauma of their youth, each still searching and yearning during the last chapter of their lives, to find their rightful place in this country."
-- Posting, with video trailer, in the Community Forum
-- Director Joe Fox describes his inspiration for the project at IMDiversity
Describes the growing appreciation, among Native Americans in western Arizona, of the role played by Japanese Americans incarcerated at Poston in developing the agricultural infrastructure on which tribal economies now depend.


Arkansas

California


Colorado

Amache / Granada

Includes extensive list of web links to Amache-related websites, including archival finding aids, photographic archives, etc. See the Colorado State Archives record in the Discover Nikkei Directory of Nikkei Collections.
Four collections of material related to the Granada Relocation Camp ("Camp Amache"), including materials that document day-to-day management and activities of the camp.
Scanned and transcribed 1943 pamphlet giving a detailed description of the Amache camp.
"All that is left of this once tenth largest city in Colorado, Camp Amache, is a memorial, the camp cemetery, and the haunting foundations overgrown with prairie grass. The internment camps are a black spot on America's soul. It is Colorado's only monumental reminder of the role it played in the nation's tragic internment history."
In a press release dated February 10, 2006, Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton announced today that the Granada Relocation Center, located in Grenada, Colo. and Colorado Chautauqua Park, located in Boulder Colo. have been designated as National Historic Landmarks.


Hawai'i

Includes government documents (many of which are copies of documents from the National Archives and Record Administration); correspondence; memos; letters and other materials relating to the issues of Japanese internment and relocation in Hawai'i. Also included are taped oral history interviews and transcripts of 24 internees from Hawai'i, journals, diaries, literature, autobiographies and photographs. Some Japanese language items are translated into English. (Some diaries and interviews are not open to the public.)and private documents, oral histories, and photographs that document the experiences of Japanese internees from Hawai'i during World War II.
"The First Battle is about the networks of people – principally nisei, their acquaintances and allies -- who resisted the pressure for internment. At the heart of the story are two previously unheralded individuals – educator Shigeo Yoshida and YMCA executive Hung Wai Ching. As such, it is a David-and-Goliath story, a reminder that the contest does not always go to the obviously powerful, but to those of humble status who are clear-minded and focused. ... Along the way, The First Battle also puts internment in a new light, as well as the unreliability of constitutions in times of crisis. It will answer the unanswered question: Why was there no mass internment in Hawaii, where the large Japanese community potentially posed a security threat, in contrast to the West Coast, where the tiny Japanese community posed none? It will show that Hawaii not only was shaped by the war but helped shape post-war America. The first battle, that of the homefront in Hawaii, will become known as the seminal story of contemporary multicultural Hawaii."


Idaho

Brief essay and bibliography of materials in the Boise Public Library relating to the internment camps in Idaho.

Kooskia

Minidoka

  • Jeffrey F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord and Richard W. Lord, "Chapter 9: Minidoka Relocation Center, Idaho". In: Confinement and Ethnicity: Chapter 9, Minidoka Relocation Center]. Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Tucson: Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1999.
A collaborative project of six students in the University of Washington's Asian American Studies 372 course (2004), to further knowledge of the children in the Minidoka camp. The site incorporates essays written by 18 incarcerated children; articles related to children published in the Minidoka Irrigator between 1942-1945; and articles published in the federal newsletter Education for Victory dealing with Japanese Americans.
Proclamation by President William J. Clinton, on January 17, 2001.
"Kim Ima's father, as a boy during World War II, spend most of his grade-school years in an American concentration camp--the Minidoka internment facility in Hunt, Idaho. It was a place to which Japanese Americans, their loyalty suspect, were forcibly moved from the West Coast shortly after the outbreak of the war. Their years in the camp were memorialized in a glossy bound yearbook, published in 1943, titled 'The Minidoka Interlude.' Ms. Ima has created a multimedia theater piece, 'The Interlude,' to recall this dark episode and to try to understand the legacy of her father's past."
Review: Jerry Tallmer, "Contrasting lives: being Japanese during WWII". The Villager 74, no. 24 (October 13-19, 2004).
"Many have wondered how one can possibly do a musical comedy based on the Internment Camps and still have an authentic show. Amazingly enough, Gary Iwamoto was able to accomplish such a feat. Iwamoto was working on Gordon Hirabayashi’s coram nobis case when he was inspired to write a play about the internment camps. But rather than focusing on the negative aspects of camp life, he focused instead on the Issei (first-generation Japanese) trait of enduring and making the best of the situation (gaman) and their feelings of "it can’t be helped" (shikata ga nai). He wanted to concentrate on the fun times people had experienced in camp without losing sight of the many injustices."

Montana

Fort Missoula

8th-grade web project of the Target Range School (Missoula, MT), with historical information about the Fort's use as a detention center; includes details of the lives of two men incarcerated at the camp, Masuo Yasui and Torao Takahashi.
  • Gary Glynn, "Fort Life". The Missoulian, November 18, 2001. (Part III of a four-part special, "A Salute to the Greatest Generation.")
"The relaxed atmosphere at Fort Missoula changed somewhat after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and President Franklin Roosevelt's declaration of war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. The Italian detainees were now enemy aliens, as were the 650 Japanese men who were shipped to Fort Missoula immediately following the attack."
Vikki Gray, County Coordinator for Missoula County, has produced a web site with links to genealogical resources, including lists of the Japanese Americans who were transferred from Fort Missoula to Fort Sill, Oklahoma and Fort Sam Houston, Texas.



New Mexico

Fort Stanton

Describes new research by University of Washington professor Tetsuden Kashima into the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Excerpt: "Who was sent to Fort Stanton? Of the 17 segregants of Japanese ancestry, 10 were born in America but faced an unusual situation when, in 1944, the U.S. allowed Americans to renounce their citizenship in time of war, on American soil. 'Anyone who renounced his or her citizenship was treated as an alien,' says Kashima, 'and many were scheduled for deportation to Japan. But these inmates were instead first brought to the DOJ camp at Fort Stanton.'"

Gallup

"It was the ONLY community that refused to intern its Japanese residents."

Lordsburg

Santa Fe

Although this web site focuses on documenting the experiences of Japanese Americans interned at the Santa Fe, NM, camp, it also includes material on Lordsburg and other Department of Justice and War Relocation Authority sites. Includes poetry, historic photographs, audio oral histories (with transcripts), and guidelines for requesting declassified government documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
Residents of Santa Fe reminisce about their experiences of, and attitudes toward, the Japanese Americans incarcerated at the camp.
Archival sources
Collection includes 19 drawings; an artistic portrayal of the Japanese American Internment Camp in Santa Fe, New Mexico, done by Harold (Hal) E. West (1902-1968), entitled "A Local Santa Fe Bystander's View of the War Years and of the Japanese Internment Camp, 1941-1945.
Collection consists of a typed publication titled "Art Takes a Hand in Education" written in 1945 by Robert Slate, Head Teacher of Vocational and Industrial Arts. It discusses the establishment and experiences of Canal High School at the Japanese American Internment Camp in Rivers [Gila River?], Az. The focus is on teaching art.
Archival material gathered by Koichiro Okada for his dissertation, Forced Acculturation: A Study of Issei in the Santa Fe Internment Camp during World War II (New Mexico Highlands University, 1995).

North Dakota

Fort Lincoln

" Snow Country Prison: Interned in North Dakota o ened October 4, 2003, in Bismarck at the site of the former camp, now United Tribes Technical College. The exhibition examined the internment experience of German and Japanese nationals, as well as Japanese American citizens deemed "enemy aliens" following the renunciation of their citizenship during World War II. The exhibition, curated by Laurel Reuter, Director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, and organized jointly by the Museum and the United Tribes Technical College, featured historic photos and murals of the camp, floor-to-ceiling cloth banners imprinted with images of people interned there, and wall text drawn from the haiku poems of one of the Japanese internees, Itaru Ina, the father of Dr. Satsuki Ina, a consultant to the exhibition."
Martha Nakagawa, "Snow Country Prison Exhibit Opening Brings Internees Back to Internment Camp". United Tribes News, 18 November 2003.
Edward Morris, "Cover Story: Snow Country Prison: Provocative exhibit looks at civil liberties in wartime". High Plains Reader vol. 10, issue 30 (April 8, 2004).
Personal web site recording the visit of a Sansei to Bismarck, North Dakota, in October 2003 to participate in events surrounding the exhibition "Snow Country Prison: Interned in North Dakota".
Excerpt: "My grandfather, Shokichi Ishimaru was a successful farmer before the War. He built up a successful business in potatoes, asparagus and onions in the San Joaquin Delta on Bacon Island on the Middle River. He was put into Bismarck at the age of 65 years in February of 1942. His crime was that of being a Christian community leader."
"Sixty years ago, U.S. authorities imprisoned nearly 4,000 German and Japanese men at a camp in Bismarck, North Dakota. When World War II began, the government rounded up thousands of "enemy aliens." A new exhibit at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks remembers those men and their stories."


Oregon

A special edition of the newspaper that was published to inform internees at the Portland Assembly Center about their upcoming relocation to permanent internment camps in Idaho and Wyoming.
Article describing the Japanese American experience in Oregon immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Includes the personal recollections of numerous Japanese American alumni of Reed College.
On September 10, 2003, "the 61st anniversary of the Portland Assembly Center's closure, TriMet held a dedication ceremony to remember the impact WWII had on our community. The Expo Center MAX Station—part of the Interstate MAX project—features artwork that recalls the history of the internment, including permanent processing tags that were given to each family for identification as they reported to the Assembly Center."

Texas

  • The Photo Archive Catalog of the Institute of Texan Cultures at the University of Texas, San Antonio, includes over 150 photographs related to Nikkei in Texas; try the keyword search "Japanese" to see a selection, including many from the camps at Crystal City and Kenedy.

Crystal City

Kenedy

Seagoville

Excerpt: "Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II. In March of 1942, the Seagoville facility’s mission changed to a Federal Detention Station monitored by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. German, Italian, and Japanese families were held even after they had immigrated from their home countries to enjoy the freedom of America."
  • Oral history: "An Interview with Dr. Amy N. Stannard". Conducted by Paul F. Clark on November 30, 1978 for the California State University, Fullerton Oral History Program Japanese American Project. Department of Justice Internment Camps Administration Experience, O.H. 1615.
"Dr. Amy N. Stannard was the only woman to command a United States civilian internment compound during World War II. As the officer-in-charge of the Immigration and Naturalization camp at Seagoville , Texas, Stannard offers a view of that facility from its beginning as a prison through its tenure as a unique link in the U.S. Justice Department's chain of alien enemy camps."
Artist Kathy Lovas created an art installation based on her mother's experience as an officer at the Seagoville Detention Station, and incorporating material from her mother's diary. The work was exhibited at the Handley-Hicks Gallery in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2002.

Utah

Topaz

Online exhibition by Roy Webb, multimedia archivist at the University of Utah Library. Includes segments on Topaz and Tule Lake.
"The photographs in this exhibit represent a sampling of the available resources in the Special Collections Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, and other private collections, which were generously lent for this exhibit."
Illustrated personal recollection of visiting the Topaz site after the 2002 Association of Asian American Studies Conference.
Pathfinder from the Logan (UT) Public Library; includes bibliography of library holdings on Topaz, plus several useful web links.

Washington

One of a series of articles celebrating the newspaper's centennial. Includes a set of "Table Topics" for use in stimulating family or classroom discussion.

Bainbridge Island

Camp Harmony (Puyallup)

Describes the building of a replica of a Camp Harmony barracks by Puyallup's Karshner Museum.


Wyoming

Heart Mountain

"We are a non-profit organization established to memorialize and to educate the public about the significance of the historical events surrounding the tragic and illegal internment of Japanese Americans at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center near Powell, Wyoming, between 1942 and 1945."
Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel
Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel
"Hansel Mieth and her husband Otto Hagel were working for Life Magazine when they were assigned to photograph the Heart Mountain camp during World War II... However, their photographs of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming were never published during the war and remained out of the public's eye until the 1990s."
Eiichi Edward Sakauye (1912-2005), a Nisei farmer from California's Santa Clara Valley, was the first internee permitted to photograph and film life within a War Relocation Authority camp. A selection of his 8-millimeter films has been made available on the Densho web site.
Photo collages by artist Masumi Hayashi.
The online news center for a PBS documentary on the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee.
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