Prison Camps

This map shows the facilities in which the U.S. government imprisoned Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals from Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona.

Following Executive Order 9066, the Western Defense Command established the Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) to set up 17 Temporary Detention Centers – often at former fairgrounds and racetracks – to house people of Japanese ancestry. Soon after, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) built 10 “permanent” Incarceration Camps in deserts, forests, and swamps away from the West Coast.

Government leaders planned the building of two of the Incarceration Camps on tribal land prior to getting approval from the Native Americans living there. In Arizona, the Tribal Council at the Gila River Indian Community rejected the War Department’s plan twice. Only after the WRA agreed to develop 9,000 acres of the land did the Council narrowly approve the plan in October 1942…three months after the WRA had already opened the camp.

Similarly, the Poston camp was established on the lands of the Colorado River Indian Tribes despite the objections of the tribal authorities. The camp was administered by the Office of Indian Affairs and the WRA, with the goal of having Japanese Americans develop infrastructure, such as irrigation, so that the government could then relocate other tribal communities to the site after the war.