Relocation Communities for Wartime Evacuees. A Relocation Center

摘要

When war came to the United States in the latter days of 1941, there were more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in our far western states. Roughly two-thirds of them, born in this country, were American citizens. Yet the presence of all these people clustered along the Coast and scattered throughout the interior valleys enormously complicated the problem of far western defense. And soto insure efficient, unhampered military operations-the Commanding General of our western defenses, acting under Executive Order of the President, announced on March 2, 1942 that all persons of Japanese ancestry would be excluded from designated military areas. At first the Army urged these people to leave voluntarily and resettle on their own initiative in the interior States. During the month of March, several thousands did leave, but their arrival in-land in such large numbers in such a short period of time aroused so much protest that the great majority remained behind in the prohibited and restricted zones. Because of this situation, the Army decided on March 27 that all voluntary evacuation must cease on midnight of March 29 and that the evacuation should be carried forward there-after in accordance with an orderly and systematic plan. In the weeks that followed, the Wartime Civil Control Administration, an agency set up by the Western Defense Command, began the evacuation. Area after area in the far western States was designated and cleared of people of Japanese descent. Assembly centers where the evacuees could be gathered, housed, and fed were thrown up almost over-night. By midsummer all people of Japanese ancestry had been evacuated from the State of California, the western half of Washington and Oregon, and the southern third of Arizona.