Anonymous

This account of life at the Gila relocation camp in Arizona was given by a Japanese American watch repairman from central California who was initially sent to the assembly center at Tulare, near Fresno. The conditions found by the evacuees upon their arrival at Gila were primitive. Families were supplied nothing more than a bare room and a few cots to sleep on. As the internees settled in, however, they began to build livable homes in the dusty surroundings of the Arizona desert. Many settled into a day-to-day routine—working, going to school, attending church services—that was similar to life before evacuation. The following essay is excerpted from an interview contained in The Salvage, a book compiled by Dorothy Swaine Thomas for the University of California Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS).

When it was announced that...