Report on Japanese-Americans in Relocation Centers

WAR RELOCATION AUTHORITY s. TRUMAK Washington, D. C. ARCHIVES 'NATIONAL AND RECORDS JAPANESE-AMERICANS IN RELOCATION CENTERS s SERVICE" Of the 127,000 persons of Japanese ancestry in the United States, approximately 107,000 are in ten relocation centers under supervision of the War Relocation Authority. Roughly two-thirds are American citizens, almost all of whom are under 40 years of age, and the remainder are aliens, most of whom have been in the United States since 1924, when the Exclusion Act went into effect. The population includes about 19,000 citizen men between the ages of 18 and 37. The people ñow living in relocation centers were residents of stra- tegic military areas on the West Coast, which were evacuated last spring and summer, by order of the Commanding General of the Western Defense Com- mand.. The evacuated area includes the entire state of California, the western half of Washington and Oregon, and the southern third of Arizona. The evacuation was announced and at first was placed on a voluntary basis. People of Japanese ancestry were instructed to move out of the region, but might go anywhere they liked. With Japanese invasion not unlikely and infiltration of Japanese agents always a threat, their presence in the coastal and border areas constituted a danger to the national security, but away from those areas. it was considered that the evacuees need not be re- stricted. Several thousand moved out but many of them encountered diffi- culties of many kinds growing out of suspicion and general public antagonism. When it became evident that voluntary movement would not be sufficiently rapid, voluntary evacuation was halted, on March 29, 1942, and after that date, evacuation was carried out by military authorities on a planned and ordered basis, area by area. The War Relocation Authority was established by Presidential Execu- tive Order 9102 on March 18, 1942, to aid the military authorities in evacuation of any persons or groups from any designated areas and to re- locate evacuated persons. Its immediate task was the relocation of the people of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast areas. As soon as it was determined that voluntary evacuation was not effective, and that public sentiment was opposed to large scale relocation in ordinary communities, the War Relocation Authority, in cooperation with the Army, began looking for locations for temporary communities where the evacuees might be maintained under protection until opportunities in pri- vate employment could be found. In the meantime, the Army hurriedly built 15 temporary "assembly centers" inside the evacuated area, at race tracks and fair grounds, where the evacuees could be housed until the relocation centers were ready. Ten sites were chosen for relocation centers, to be supervised by the War Relocation Authority. Each one had enough land suited to agricul- tural development so the evacuees might produce much of their own food. The centers, their location, and their approximate populations are as follows: CCAC-D 6-5439-pl of 4-BU-COS-WP