150 Military Police Guarded Fewer Than 60 Men. No One Could Explain Why.
April 27, 1943: the War Relocation Authority established the Leupp Isolation Center in northern Arizona.
Leupp did not begin in isolation. It began with unrest.
In December 1942, tensions inside the Manzanar War Relocation Center erupted into what became known as the Manzanar Riot. Protests over arrests, informants, and camp conditions turned violent. Military police fired into a crowd. Two men were killed.
The War Relocation Authority responded by removing those it considered “troublemakers.”
They were sent to a remote site in Utah. It was called Moab. But the Moab Isolation Center was never meant to last. It was a makeshift holding site — isolated, loosely organized, and intended as a temporary solution for men the government did not know how to handle.
When Moab closed in April 1943, its inmates were transferred to Leupp Isolation Center.
Sketch by Eddy Kurushima
Military police fire into a crowd of unarmed Japanese American inmates at Manzanar, killing two and injuring at least ten more.
Harry Ueno, a Kibei inmate at Manzanar, was arrested for allegedly beating JACL leader Fred Tayama — without any evidence. His arrest escalated into the Manzanar Riot.
Inmates at the Moab Isolation Center, 1943. They were already imprisoned. Speaking up sent them farther away. For many, it meant being pushed further and further out.
Courtesy of U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Leupp, Arizona was chosen by the War Relocation Authority for an isolation center, not just for space, but for distance from the rest of the country.
Joseph Kurihara was a World War I veteran involved in the Manzanar Riot, later transferred to Leupp, Arizona from a federal prison near Moab.
Stuck In A “Permanent” Leupp
This time, the system tried to make it permanent.
Located on the Navajo Nation in Arizona, about 18 miles from Winslow, Leupp occupied the grounds of a former Indian boarding school. Barbed wire surrounded the compound. Guard towers stood watch.
Armed military police patrolled the grounds. There were 150 of them. They guarded fewer than 60 unarmed Japanese American men at any given time.
The men sent to Leupp came from other incarceration camps, including Moab, Topaz, and Tule Lake. They were described as “refractory,” “troublemakers,” and “security risks.”
But those labels were often vague.
Gestapo Methods No One Could Explain
At Leupp, confusion wasn’t just among the incarcerated. It reached the people running the system.
Some administrators did not know why certain men had been sent there. The men themselves did not know. Requests for information often went unanswered.
The system had created a prison it could not explain. As concerns grew, even government officials began to question Leupp.
A War Relocation Authority legal officer warned that the center was: “an un-American institution… premised on Gestapo methods.”
Men were separated from their families and sent to a remote desert compound — indefinitely. No warrants. No trials. No explanations.
Leupp Isolation Center. A former boarding school, repurposed to isolate those the government deemed “troublemakers.”
Five inmates at Leupp. Many of them were taken to Leupp Isolation Center, without being told why.
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Raymond Best. From Manzanar to Minidoka to Leupp to Tule Lake, he moved through the camps and isolation centers that defined the system.
CSU Japanese American History Digitization Project
Paul G. Robertson and his wife Georgia Day. Many inmates said Paul Robertson listened — a contrast to others they had known.
A System Under Scrutiny
For the first three months, Leupp operated under director Raymond Best, formerly of Manzanar.
When Paul Robertson took over leadership at Leupp in mid-1943, he began reviewing the cases. What he found raised serious concerns.
Many of the men had been transferred on vague accusations. Some had little or no evidence against them. Even internal records failed to explain their presence.
Robertson brought these concerns to Washington. Others inside the government had already begun raising similar alarms.
Seven Months of “Permanence”
Leupp had been created to replace a temporary system with something more permanent. It didn’t last.
Faced with mounting internal criticism and legal concerns, the War Relocation Authority moved to shut it down. On December 2, 1943, the remaining inmates, just 52 men, were transferred to the Tule Lake Segregation Center.
The “permanent” solution had lasted just over seven months. Leupp Isolation Center was small. Fewer than 60 men at a time. 83 in total. Less than a year in operation. But it exposed something larger: a system that could removed people without charges.
Men who were incarcerated there were labeled “criminals” and “disloyal,” and carried that stigma for the rest of their lives — even within their own communities.
And still, no one could fully explain why.
The Baltimore Sun, March 23, 1906
Francis E. Leupp, President Theodore Roosevelt’s commissioner of Indian Affairs. The school, named in his commemoration, closed in early 1942 — soon to be repurposed.
Courtesy of the Cline Library Special Collection
Leupp Indian School, 1923. A federal boarding school — decades before it would be repurposed as an isolation center, leaving scars on people’s lives.