It was the end of the incarceration. But not the end of hate.
June 30, 1946: The U.S. government officially shut down the War Relocation Authority (WRA), ending the federal incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans.
The camps had already begun to empty the year prior, but by mid-1946, it was official: The U.S. government ended its wartime incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. The barbed wire fences came down. The guards left. The government closed its books on what it had done.
But for the people who had lived behind those fences, the story didn’t end.
Most left camp with little to nothing. Each incarceree received a train ticket and $25 in government assistance — a meager sum that barely covered a few days’ needs. Many had no homes to return to. Their properties had been sold, vandalized, or seized. Some were lucky — white neighbors had protected their farms or businesses. But those were rare exceptions.
For returning Japanese Americans, the racial landscape was different, but familiar: communities without full civil rights, forced to navigate prejudice, segregation, and limited opportunity.
Temporary housing became a patchwork solution. In Seattle, the old language school turned into makeshift housing — dubbed the Hunt Hotel — where three residents tragically died by suicide in the 14 years that followed. In Burbank, the Winona Housing Project trailer park hosted dozens of families. It wasn’t home. But it was something.
In Los Angeles, Japanese Americans came back to a city that had changed. During the war, Black Americans had migrated to Southern California from the South in search of wartime jobs. Entire neighborhoods — including parts of Little Tokyo — had transformed.
Some found solidarity. Some found tension. But many found themselves in the same cycle: excluded, blamed, and left to rebuild on their own.
The job market was brutal. Employers were hesitant to hire Japanese Americans. Many ended up in low-wage, labor-intensive jobs. Some returned to farming. Others scraped together enough to open small businesses. Still others faced homelessness.
Not everyone even made it out of camp. Some died before they had the chance. Others left on the same train that had taken them into incarceration. Pets, too, had been left behind — hundreds of dogs and cats, killed as a so-called humane measure.
The federal government spent $80 million on the incarceration program. The economic losses to Japanese Americans? Estimated at $250 million. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. The human cost — the trauma, the broken families, the lost time — remains incalculable.
The camps closed. But the injustice didn’t. The racism didn’t. The trauma didn’t.
June 30, 1946 marked the end of the War Relocation Authority. But the aftermath had only just begun.