War Relocation Authority

Military Areas 1 and 2 were created soon after, encompassing all of California and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, and subsequent civilian exclusion orders informed Japanese Americans residing in these zones they would be scheduled for "evacuation."

[6] This, along with proposals for helping Japanese Americans resettle in labor-starved farming communities outside the exclusion zone, was met with opposition from the governors of these interior states, who worried about security issues and claimed it was "politically infeasible," at a meeting in Salt Lake City in April 1942.

Site selection was based upon multiple criteria, including: The camps had to be built from the ground up, and wartime shortages of labor and lumber combined with the vast scope of each construction project (several of the WRA camps were among the largest "cities" in the states that housed them) meant that many sites were unfinished when transfers began to arrive from the assembly centers.

Residents were more often concerned with the problems of day-to-day life: improving their often shoddily-constructed living quarters, getting an education, and, in some cases, preparing for eventual release.

The "enemy alien" Issei were excluded from running for office, and inmates and community analysts argued that the WRA pulled the strings on important issues, leaving only the most basic and inconsequential decisions to Nisei leaders.

[10] While some community analysts viewed the Japanese American inmates merely as research subjects, others opposed the incarceration and some of the WRA's policies in their reports, although very few made these criticisms public.

Morris Opler did, however, provide a prominent exception, writing two legal briefs challenging the exclusion for the Supreme Court cases of Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu.

Initially, applicants were required to find an outside sponsor, provide proof of employment or school enrollment, and pass an FBI background check.

Administrators sponsored patriotic activities and clubs, organized English classes for the Issei, encouraged young men to volunteer for the U.S. Army, and touted inmate self-government as an example of American democracy.

"Good" inmates who toed the WRA line were rewarded, while "troublemakers" who protested their confinement and Issei elders who had been leaders in their prewar communities but found themselves stripped of this sway in camp were treated as a security threat.

Resentment over poor working conditions and low wages, inadequate housing, and rumors of guards stealing food from inmates exacerbated tensions and created pro- and anti-administration factions.

[7] The leave clearance registration process, dubbed the "loyalty questionnaire" by inmates, was another significant source of discontent among incarcerated Japanese Americans.

Originally drafted as a War Department recruiting tool, the 28 questions were hastily, and poorly, revised for their new purpose of assessing inmate loyalty.

Under pressure from War Department officials, Myer reluctantly converted Tule Lake into a maximum security segregation center for the "no-nos" who flunked the loyalty test, in July 1943.

[16] Angry young men joined the Hoshi-dan and its auxiliary, the Hokoku-dan, a militaristic nationalist group aimed at preparing its members for a new life in Japan.

[17] When the Renunciation Act was passed in July 1944, 5,589 (over 97 percent of them Tule Lake inmates) expressed their resentment by giving up their U.S. citizenship and applying for "repatriation" to Japan.

(The vast majority of those who had renounced their U.S. citizenship later regretted the decision and fought to remain in the United States, with the help of civil rights attorney Wayne M. Collins.

[7] Tule Lake closed on March 20, 1946, and Executive Order 9742, signed by President Harry S. Truman on June 26, 1946, officially terminated the WRA's mission.