Camp Tulelake
Camp Tulelake | |
---|---|
Fish and Wildlife Service | |
Condition | Restoration |
Site history | |
Built | 1933-1935 |
Built by | Civilian Conservation Corps |
In use | March 1943 - 25 April 1946 |
Camp Tulelake was a federal work facility and
During
Renamed the Tule Lake Isolation Center, this facility was adapted in the wartime years to shelter Japanese-American strikebreakers used against resisters at the main segregation camp, imprison Japanese-American dissidents, and house Italian and German
History
The Camp Tulelake was built in 1933 as a public
The enrollees were paid $30 a month, $25 of which was sent home or put into a savings account. The program provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of
Tule Lake Isolation Center
The CCC's Camp Tulelake became a War Relocation Authority (WRA) Isolation Center (a prison like that of Moab, UT and Leupp, AZ) in February 1943. It was approximately 10 miles from the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, which was one of 10 WRA concentration camps built in 1942 to incarcerate Japanese Americans evicted from their homes on the West Coast. In March 1943, over 100 men from the Tule Lake Concentration Camp were arrested and housed at the hastily created WRA Isolation Center after they had protested their unjust incarceration by refusing to answer, or answering "no—no," to the Army's and WRA's two clumsily worded questions on the loyalty questionnaire.[3] While imprisoned at the maximum-security camp, inmates completed around $2,500 in repairs to the abandoned buildings, including installing new stove pipes, and repairing the sewer and electrical systems.[2] After several months, they were either released back to the Tule Lake Segregation Center or transferred to other facilities run by the Justice Department or the U.S. Army.[1]
During July 1943, Tule Lake became the only WRA concentration camp to be converted to a Segregation Center used to punish inmates who refused to cooperate with the War Relocation Authority's (WRA) demand they answer a confusing and ill-conceived loyalty questionnaire or who were active in resisting camp authorities. "Of all the wartime incarceration sites, Tule Lake tells the most extreme story of the government's abuse of power against people who dared to speak out against the injustice of their incarceration," said Barbara Takei, whose mother was incarcerated at the Tule Lake concentration camp during World War II.[4]
The WRA also used the WRA Tule Lake Isolation Center as a shelter for 243 Japanese-American inmates brought in from other concentration camps as strikebreakers, to undermine the hundreds of Tule Lake prisoners who refused to harvest crops, seeking to leverage their demands for safer working conditions. The strikebreakers were brought in to harvest the local crops and were paid significantly higher wages than what Tule Lake inmates could earn. For their safety, they were housed at the WRA's Tule Lake Isolation Center to protect them from angry protesters.
Since 1994, following the United States government's formal apology for injustices in 1988 and payment in 1988 and 1992 of reparations to survivors of all the camps, the Tule Lake Committee has sponsored the annual Tule Lake Pilgrimage. It has advocated for preservation of the entire Tule Lake site, both the Tule Lake War Segregation Center and Camp Tulelake.
Frank Tanabe
A notable inmate was Frank Tanabe, who volunteered to serve in a mostly Japanese-American military unit, interrogating Japanese prisoners in
Italian and German POWs
With so many local farmers and workers participating in the military during World War II, the Tulelake Growers Association petitioned the US Government for
At its peak in October 1944, the camp housed 800 German POWs who were able to travel freely in the area, a privilege not bestowed on the American citizens of Japanese descent who were imprisoned in the camps. They helped plant, tend, and harvest onion and potato crops. The POWs lived and worked in the Tule Lake area until the camp closed in 1946. Although some of the POWs applied for the lottery of local homesteads in order to stay in the area, none gained a homestead.[2]
Proposed airport fencing
In 2012
The opponents note that being excluded from the area would especially affect former internees and their descendants, who make regular pilgrimages to the former incarceration site and their specific assigned barracks. Those who make the pilgrimage want the ability to walk throughout the massive camp and imagine the experiences of the internees.[4][6] "They want to traverse the site to experience the dimension and magnitude of the place, to gain a sense of the distances family members walked in their daily routine to eat meals, attend school, to do laundry and use the latrines. They want to summon up the ghosts of the place, to revive long-suppressed memories and to mourn personal and collective loss."[8]
Actor George Takei, held as a child with his family at the concentration camp, has worked in support of the petition against the fence. Takei has said, "We must not permit this history to be erased and minimized by destroying the integrity of the site or making it inaccessible to future generations."[4]
See also
References
- ^ a b c California State Military Museum. Historic California Posts: Tule Lake Branch Prisoner of War Camp (Camp Tulelake). Posted 16 August 2010.
- ^ a b c d e Tule Lake Unit; Camp Tulelake World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument pamphlet. Published by the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.
- ^ Tule Lake Committee: History
- ^ a b c d e "Historic Tule Lake Site Threatened by a Proposed Fence". Pacific Citizen. June 21, 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-08-21.
- ^ Tule Lake Committee: Pilgrimages
- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-11-20.
- ^ "WWII vet from Hawaii dies at age 93 after casting last ballot". Honolulu Star-Advertiser. 2012-10-24. Retrieved 2018-02-08.
- ^ Manzanar Committee Blog: "Manzanar Committee Opposes Construction Of Proposed Perimeter Fence At Tule Lake" (July 6, 2012)
Further reading
- Barbara Takei and Judy Tachibana, Tule Lake Revisited: A Brief History and Guide to the Tule Lake Concentration Camp Site, Second Edition; Tule Lake Committee, 2012.
External links
- The Tule Lake Committee website
- Densho Encyclopedia: Tulelake (detention facility)
- New York Times: "Seeking Answers at Tule Lake Internment Camp" — slideshow images
- The Tule Lake Committee: photo galleries
- Mimeograph material relating chiefly to the Young Buddhist Association's activities during the World War II internment, ca.1943-1945, The Bancroft Library