Sharp Park Detention Station | |
---|---|
Detainee camp | |
Coordinates: 37°37′32.42″N122°28′29.7″W / 37.6256722°N 122.474917°W | |
Country | United States |
State | California |
Opened | 1942 |
Closed | 1946 |
Founded by | War Relocation Authority |
Population | |
• Total | 2,500 [1] |
The Sharp Park Detention Station was a Japanese, Italian and German Internment camp located in northern California on land owned by San Francisco in Pacifica. [2] Open from March 30, 1942, until 1946, the camp was built to hold as many as 600 detainees, but later held approximately 2,500 detainees. [3] [1]
During the Great Depression, the area east of the Sharp Park Golf Course was used as a State Emergency Relief Administration camp to house indigent San Franciscans. [2] The Civil Works Administration employed 600 men to build the camp in 1933, providing food, lodging, medical care and 25 cents a day. [2]
After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 to detain Japanese Americans. In 1942, the relief camp at Sharp Park was selected by the Immigration and Naturalization Service as an internment camp. [2] [4]
San Francisco turned over the Sharp Park camp to the federal government in early 1942, and it was opened as an internment camp on March 30, 1942. [5] Quonset huts were built to initially hold between 450 internees. The first detainees at Sharp Park were 193 people transferred on March 31, 1942, from Angel Island Immigration Station, after it was damaged by a fire. [5]
In press coverage of the transfer, the San Francisco News stated "scores of alien Japanese today" were interned in Sharp Park, "where many of them used to spend Sundays fishing... and possibly making notes of reefs, currents and landmarks for the Japanese Navy." [6]
Expansions to the camp grew its holding capacity to 1,200 detainees, though Yamato Ichihashi, who spent six weeks at Sharp Park, wrote there were never more than 500 internees while he was there. [2] Those held included Germans, Italians and Japanese Americans, as well as Mexican, Canadian and Chinese nationals who were believed to hold anti-American sentiments. [5]
Sharp Park held individuals deemed "highly dangerous" by the U.S. government, including priests, community leaders, teachers, and newspaper editors. [7] Press coverage at the time claimed the detainees included "members of secret groups" who "possessed weapons, explosives, signal lights, short wave receiving sets, and other contraband." [2] " Detainees were often held at Sharp Park before being transferred to larger camps further inland. [8] [9]
The Sharp Park camp was torn apart several years after the war. [7] There are not currently any historical markers noting the existence of the camp, and local schools are not taught about the existence of the Sharp Park internment camp. [7] The site of the camp is used today by the San Francisco Archery Club, and the Pacifica Co-op Nursery School uses one of the camp's Quonset huts as a classroom. [2]
In 2022, a group of local Italian-Americans held a presentation on the history of the camp. The organizer, Christina Olivolo, told the Pacifica Tribune , "We didn’t know this was even here. It got to me. Why weren’t we told? We should have been told. People need to know. I found it very disturbing that we didn’t even know about it." [10]
During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), mostly in the western interior of the country. About two-thirds were U.S. citizens. These actions were initiated by Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, following the outbreak of war with the Empire of Japan in December 1941. About 127,000 Japanese Americans then lived in the continental U.S., of which about 112,000 lived on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei and Sansei. The rest were Issei immigrants born in Japan, who were ineligible for citizenship. In Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans comprised more than one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were incarcerated.
Pacifica is a city in San Mateo County, California, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Half Moon Bay.
The Atlit detainee camp was a concentration camp established by the authorities of Mandatory Palestine in the late 1930s on what is now the Israeli coastal plain, 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Haifa. Under British rule, it was primarily used to hold Jews and Arabs who were in administrative detention; it largely held Jewish immigrants who did not possess official entry permits. Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees were interned at the camp, which was surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers.
Yamato Ichihashi was one of the first academics from East Asia in the United States. Ichihashi wrote a comprehensive account of his experiences as an internee at the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, where he was detained during World War II along with other relocated Japanese Americans.
The Topaz War Relocation Center, also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center (Topaz) and briefly as the Abraham Relocation Center, was an American concentration camp in which Americans of Japanese descent and immigrants who had come to the United States from Japan, called Nikkei were incarcerated. President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, ordering people of Japanese ancestry to be incarcerated in what were euphemistically called "relocation centers" like Topaz during World War II. Most of the people incarcerated at Topaz came from the Tanforan Assembly Center and previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. The camp was opened in September 1942 and closed in October 1945.
The Rohwer War Relocation Center was a World War II Japanese American concentration camp located in rural southeastern Arkansas, in Desha County. It was in operation from September 18, 1942, until November 30, 1945, and held as many as 8,475 Japanese Americans forcibly evacuated from California. Among the inmates, the notation "朗和" was sometimes applied. The Rohwer War Relocation Center Cemetery is located here, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1992.
The Cyprus internment camps were camps maintained in Cyprus by the British government for the internment of Jews who had immigrated or attempted to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine in violation of British policy. There were a total of 12 camps, which operated from August 1946 to January 1949, and in total held 53,510 Jews.
Fort Missoula Internment Camp was an internment camp operated by the United States Department of Justice during World War II. Japanese Americans and Italian Americans were imprisoned here during this war.
On February 19, 1942, shortly after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the forced removal of over 110,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast and into internment camps for the duration of the war. The personal rights, liberties, and freedoms of Japanese Americans were suspended by the United States government. In the "relocation centers", internees were housed in tar-papered army-style barracks. Some individuals who protested their treatment were sent to a special camp at Tule Lake, California.
Internment of German resident aliens and German-American citizens occurred in the United States during the periods of World War I and World War II. During World War II, the legal basis for this detention was under Presidential Proclamation 2526, made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act.
Propaganda for Japanese-American internment is a form of propaganda created between 1941 and 1944 within the United States that focused on the relocation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast to internment camps during World War II. Several types of media were used to reach the American people such as motion pictures and newspaper articles. The significance of this propaganda was to project the relocation of Japanese Americans as matter of national security.
Taiwanese Australians are Australian citizens or permanent residents who carry full or partial ancestry from the East Asian island country of Taiwan or from preceding Taiwanese regimes.
Crystal City Internment Camp, located near Crystal City, Texas, was a place of confinement for people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent during World War II, and has been variously described as a detention facility or a concentration camp. The camp, which was originally designed to hold 3,500 people, opened in December 1943 and was officially closed on February 11, 1948.
Honouliuli National Historic Site is near Waipahu on the island of Oahu, in the U.S. state of Hawaii. This is the site of the Honouliuli Internment Camp which was Hawaiʻi's largest and longest-operating internment camp, opened in 1943 and closed in 1946. It was designated a National monument on February 24, 2015, by President Barack Obama. The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed March 12, 2019, redesignated it as Honouliui National Historic Site. The internment camp held 320 internees and also became the largest prisoner of war camp in Hawaiʻi with nearly 4,000 individuals being held. Of the seventeen sites that were associated with the history of internment in Hawaiʻi during World War II, the camp was the only one built specifically for prolonged detention. As of 2015, the new national monument is without formal services and programs.
William Minoru Hohri was an American political activist and the lead plaintiff in the National Council for Japanese American Redress lawsuit seeking monetary reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. He was sent to the Manzanar concentration camp with his family after the attack on Pearl Harbor triggered the United States' entry into the war. After leading the NCJAR's class action suit against the federal government, which was dismissed, Hohri's advocacy helped convince Congress to pass legislation that provided compensation to each surviving internee. The legislation, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, included an apology to those sent to the camps.
The Tanforan Assembly Center was created to temporarily detain nearly 8,000 Japanese Americans, mostly from the San Francisco Bay Area, under the auspices of Executive Order 9066. After the order was signed in February 1942, the Wartime Civil Control Administration acquired Tanforan Racetrack on April 4 for use as a temporary assembly center; plans called for the site to be used to accommodate up to 10,000 "evacuees" while permanent relocation sites were being prepared further inland. The Tanforan Assembly Center began operation in late April 1942, the first stop for thousands who were forced to relocate and undergo internment during World War II. The majority were U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry who were born in the United States. Tanforan Assembly Center was operated for slightly less than six months; most detainees at Tanforan were transferred to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah, starting in September. The transfer to Topaz was completed by mid-October, and the site was turned over to the Army a few weeks later.
Daisho Tana was a Buddhist missionary, leader of the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple and is best known for his detailed diaries kept during his internment in both California and New Mexico. Husband to Tomoe Tana, a well renowned tanka poet, the couple had four children, Yasuto,Shibun Tana,Chinin, and Akira Yasuto Tana, and Akira Tana.
Japanese internment at Ellis Island was the internment of Japanese-Americans living on the East Coast of the United States during World War II. They were held at an internment camp on Ellis island. The main factor that led to Japanese internment at Ellis Island was New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordering Japanese-Americans to be arrested. This was followed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 which initiated the mass internment of Japanese-Americans all over the United States. Other factors that led to the Japanese internment at Ellis Island include the Niihau Incident which increased the public's fear that Japanese residents were not loyal to the United States. This fear that Japanese-Americans might be spies for Japan was particularly threatening to the U.S. code-breaking efforts. Many people challenged the constitutionality of the Japanese internment in the Supreme Court.
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