Dorothea Lange, A grandfather and his grandchildren awaiting an evacuation bus in Hayward, California, May 1942; gelatin silver print; courtesy the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley

From Home to Internment Camp

All residents of Japanese ancestry, citizens and noncitizens alike, living on the West Coast were ordered to report to temporary assembly centers. Within a few months, many were sent to the newly established internment camps spread throughout the inland West: Tule Lake and Manzanar in California; Poston and Gila River in Arizona; Topaz in Utah; Granada in Colorado; Minidoka in Idaho; Heart Mountain in Wyoming; and two others in Arkansas.

All told, about 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry participated in a forced migration, primarily from West Coast cities, to the barren hinterlands. Another 33,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry simultaneously heeded the draft and served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

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