Heart Mountain War Relocation Center
Heart Mountain, Wyoming: the WRA camp that became a city of 10,700 Japanese Americans, chosen for being close to nowhere.
Wartime Incarceration
Santa Anita Riot
On August 4, 1942, a routine search for contraband at the Santa Anita Assembly Center escalated into a riot involving 2,000 Japanese American detainees.
Gila River War Relocation Center
Gila River was considered one of America’s least oppressive concentration camps. But even Eleanor Roosevelt left appalled after seeing it for herself.
Willie Ito
Inside an incarceration camp, a Sears catalog was Willie Ito’s sketchbook. Those childhood drawings at Topaz eventually led to Disney, Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and decades later, helped him tell the story of incarceration to a new generation through Hello, Maggie!
Estelle Ishigo
Artist Estelle Ishigo voluntarily entered a Japanese American concentration camp during World War II, where she found acceptance and created some of the most important visual records of incarceration.
Karl Bendetsen
Karl Bendetsen conceived, drafted, and processed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the mass removal of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Decades later, he denied responsibility while lying about his own identity.
Miné Ōkubo
Artist Miné Ōkubo created more than 2,000 sketches while incarcerated during World War II. Her memoir, Citizen 13660, became one of the most important firsthand accounts of the Japanese American incarceration.
Evacuation Claims Act
They were welcome to file a claim. Compensation was another matter. Although the Evacuation Claims Act offered reimbursement for wartime property losses, many Japanese Americans recovered only a small fraction of what they had lost.