Listes des détenus des camps de concentration, États-Unis, 1944 à 1946

About the U.S., Final Accountability Rosters of Evacuees at Relocation Centers, 1942-1946

General collection information

This collection contains the final accountability rosters from the 10 camps used to incarcerate people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Original records were created by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and include the years between 1941 and 1946.

Using this collection

Records in the collection may include the following details:

Notes on your family member's type of entry and departure can tell you about their life before and after incarceration. The list of abbreviations below are helpful for noting your family member's circumstances.

If your family member arrived from a temporary confinement site known as an "assembly center," you may find the following code:

If your family member was transferred from another "relocation center," you may find the following abbreviations:

Other common abbreviations include:

When the camps began to close, most people left either indefinitely ("Ind"), terminally ("Term"), or were transferred to another camp. Indefinite and terminal departures often included insight on where people went after incarceration. Codes for indefinite and terminal plans include:

"T" indicates your family member was transferred to another center. The last of the camps to close was Tule Lake, which closed seven months after the war ended. Tule Lake Camp was where those who were considered dissidents were held. "T-S" concludes that your family member was sent to Tule Lake.

Although many of these records are arranged alphabetically by surname, not all family members share the same last name. If you are looking for a family member with a different last name, you may be able to locate their records by matching the family numbers in column four. Some of the camps, such as Granada (aka Amache) list the family members in groups. Some women who married during camp would not be listed with their birth family group but are often listed with their husband and any children they may have.

Please note, that the terms in this collection are from the original government documents, which often diminished the hardships faced by those in these records and may include offensive language.

Collection in context

Immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese immigrants, who like all Asian immigrants were barred from becoming naturalized, were classified as "enemy aliens" and thousands were immediately arrested by the Department of Justice and local law enforcement agencies and taken to inland internment camps. German and Italian immigrants who had not naturalized were also considered enemy aliens and subject to the same loss of freedoms.

On February 19, 1942, about two months later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that led to the incarceration of all people of Japanese descent on the West Coast. Most were US citizens by birth. Altogether, more than 120,000 persons of Japanese descent, citizens and non-citizens, were incarcerated.

People of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were forced out of their homes with only a week to gather what they could carry. They were taken to incarceration camps, where they were met with barbed wire fences, communal living spaces with little-to-no privacy, extreme temperatures, and food shortages. Many were even initially forced to sleep on dirt floors.

To combat the hardships of the camps, they established newspapers, markets, and schools. Some camps also had post offices, work facilities, and land to grow food and raise livestock. Detainees protested when there were food shortages and overcrowded living conditions. Most people of Japanese ancestry remained incarcerated in these camps throughout the war, and it took several months after the war ended for the last camps to be closed in March 1946. Some Japanese Americans were released to serve in the U.S. military, and others were allowed to attend college in the midwest and east coast.

Japanese Americans lost about $400 million in property during their four years of internment. In 1948, the U.S. government paid $38 million in reparations, and in 1988, the government began paying $20,000 to each surviving detainee. Japanese Latin Americans who were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to the United States were excluded from these reparations, although many stayed in the country after being released. A 1982 Congressional study found that the incarceration camp system was based on a false premise because there was never evidence of espionage or sabotage by Japanese Americans during the war. The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Citizens, appointed by the U.S. Congress, said the broad historical causes of incarceration were "race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership."

Bibliography

Densho. "Assembly Centers." Last Modified August 24, 2020. https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Assembly_centers/.

Densho. "Form WRA-26." Last Modified August 10, 2022. https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Form_WRA-26/.

Densho. "WWII Incarceration: Part Three." Last Modified June 8, 2023. https://densho.org/learn/introduction/american-concentration-camps/.

History.com. "Japanese Internment Camps." Last Modified October 29, 2021. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation.

Ho, Connie. "Enlisting to Escape Internment: A Japanese American's Story." Discover Nikkei. Last Modified July 30, 2013. https://discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2013/7/30/enlisting-to-escape-internment/.

Hunter, Brittany. "The Government's Internment of Japanese Americans Was A Grave Violation of Human Rights." Pacific Legal Foundation. Last Modified May 13, 2021. https://pacificlegal.org/the-governments-internment-of-japanese-americans-was-a-grave-violation-of-civil-rights/.

Library of Congress. "Behind the Wire." Accessed October 5, 2023. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/japanese/behind-the-wire/.

National Archives. "Japanese-Americans Incarceration During World War II." Last Modified January 24, 2022. https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation#background.

National Archives. "Series Description - Record Group 210." Accessed October 4, 2023. https://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s=623.

National World War II Museum. "Japanese American Incarceration." Last Modified February 18, 2022. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/japanese-american-incarceration.

National World War II Museum. "The Return of Japanese Americans to the West Coast in 1945." Last Modified March 26, 2021. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/return-japanese-americans-west-coast-1945.

National Park Service. "Tule Lake." Last Modified August 14, 2022. https://www.nps.gov/places/tule-lake.htm#.

National Park Service. "A Brief History of Japanese American Relocation During World War II." Last Modified March 20, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/articles/historyinternment.htm.

UCI Libraries. "The War Within." Last Modified 2008. https://www.lib.uci.edu/sites/all/exhibits/warwithin/index.php?page=section_6.