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WWII Japanese American Assembly Center newsletters

About this Collection

While Executive Order 9066 called for the forced imprisonment of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast of the United States, there was no existing infrastructure in place for these Japanese-Americans to go. The eventual concentration camps were not yet completed, or were not yet in a condition to house the vast numbers of prisoners needing shelter. Given this, the United States military established temporary detention camps across California, as well as centers in Arizona and Oregon, to act as stop-over locations until the larger concentration camps were "habitable." There were six such temporary detention camps (otherwise known as “Assembly Centers”) constructed in the San Joaquin Valley—Fresno, Merced, Pinedale, Stockton, Tulare, and Turlock. This collection features the prisoner-produced newsletters for the temporary detention camps of Merced, Pinedale, Stockton, Tulare, and Turlock.

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