Camp Kohler

Coordinates: 38°40′27″N 121°21′59″W / 38.674042°N 121.366481°W / 38.674042; -121.366481
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

38°40′27″N 121°21′59″W / 38.674042°N 121.366481°W / 38.674042; -121.366481

Interned Japanese-American family arriving at the Sacramento Assembly Center (May 20, 1942)

Camp Kohler was located in the northeast corner of unincorporated

Sacramento County, California, United States, until it was destroyed by a fire in 1947.[1] Initially a camp for migrant farm workers, it became the Sacramento Assembly Center a temporary detention center for interned Japanese Americans in 1942. The site is one of 12 California assembly centers that share designation as California Historical Landmark No. 934. From 1943 to 1945 the camp was a training center for US World War II
forces.

History

Camp Kohler had many uses throughout its existence. It began as a migrant farm worker camp and was later used to house over 4,700 Japanese Americans who had been removed from the West Coast during World War II. One of 15 temporary detention sites known as "assembly centers" and run by the Wartime Civilian Control Administration, the Sacramento site, called the Sacramento Assembly Center, confined Japanese Americans from Sacramento and San Joaquin Counties while they waited to be transferred to a more permanent and isolated War Relocation Authority camp. Also known as the Walerga Assembly Center, it was one of the smaller WCCA camps and operated for 52 days, from May 6 to June 26, 1942.[2]

Upon closure of the assembly center, the site was turned over to the

Southern Pacific Railroad line supported the camp. The camp closed in December 1946. On June 20, 1947, a fire burned many of the wood buildings remaining.[3]

After the war, returning Japanese Americans, prevented from owning their pre-war homes by discriminatory legislation and faced with a severe housing shortage, were often unable to find housing, and 234 families temporarily lived at Camp Kohler in late 1945.[4]

Today, the former Signal Corps camp site is part of a residential subdivision just outside the city of Sacramento, in a community called

California Historical Landmark #934, Temporary Detention Camps for Japanese Americans-Sacramento Assembly Center.[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Camp Kohler (Sacramento Assembly Center)". California Military History Museum.
  2. ^ militarymuseum.org Camp Kohler
  3. ^ militarymuseum.org Camp Kohler Final
  4. ^ "Sacramento (detention facility)". Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  5. ^ "Sacramento". California State Parks, State of California.