Tulelake camp

Last updated
Camp Tule Lake
Tule Lake, California
CCC Camp Tule Lake.jpg
Coordinates 41°58′08″N121°34′05″W / 41.9688°N 121.5681°W / 41.9688; -121.5681 Coordinates: 41°58′08″N121°34′05″W / 41.9688°N 121.5681°W / 41.9688; -121.5681
Type Prisoner-of-war camp and Japanese American incarceration
Site information
Owner Fish and Wildlife Service
ConditionRestoration
Site history
Built1933-1935
Built by Civilian Conservation Corps
In useMarch 1943 - 25 April 1946

The Tule Lake camp was a federal work facility and WRA isolation center located in Siskiyou County, five miles west of Tulelake, California. It was established by the United States government in 1935 during the Great Depression for vocational training and work relief for young men, in a program known as the Civilian Conservation Corps. [1] The camp was established initially for CCC enrollees to work on the Klamath Reclamation Project.

Siskiyou County, California County in California

Siskiyou County is a county in the northernmost part of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 44,900. Its county seat is Yreka and its highest point is Mount Shasta.

Tulelake, California City in California

Tulelake is a city in Northeastern Siskiyou County, California, United States, at an elevation of 4,066 feet (1,239 m) above sea level. The town is named after nearby Tule Lake. The population was 1,010 at the 2010 census, down from 1,020 at the 2000 census. In an unusual circumstance, at least within California, Tulelake peace officers are authorized by state law, along with cooperation of the state of Oregon, to serve as and be recognized as peace officers within Malin, Oregon, along with the inverse being true for peace officers employed within Malin, wherein they are recognized as peace officers within Tulelake by the California Penal Code.

Great Depression 20th-century worldwide economic depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations; in most countries it started in 1929 and lasted until the late-1930s. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how intensely the world's economy can decline.

Contents

During World War II, in 1942 the Tule Lake War Relocation Center was built next to the camp as one of ten concentration camps in the interior of the US for the incarceration of Japanese Americans who had been forcibly relocated from the West Coast, which was defined as an Exclusion Zone by the US military. Two-thirds of the 120,000 incarcerated individuals were United States citizens.

World War II 1939–1945 global war

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

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 prisoners of war (POWs) who were assigned to work as farm laborers in the region. [2] After the war, on 25 April 1946, the camp was transferred from the Army to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which had managed it just prior to the establishment of the segregation camp. [1] The four remaining buildings are being restored in a project to return the camp to its 1940s appearance.

History

The Tulelake camp was built in 1933 as a public work relief program, part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The camp was one of several constructed for the Civilian Conservation Corps. This program provided six months to two years employment and vocational training for unemployed, unmarried men, ages 17–23 from relief families. [2] The 23-building camp included a duck hospital[ citation needed ], an administrative headquarters office, the supervisors' residences, and a lookout cabin on the bluff behind the Refuge Visitor Center. Most of the buildings were constructed by the enrollees. Mexican-American stonemasons constructed more than 300 feet of rock wall around the Refuge Headquarters.

New Deal Economic programs of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt

The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1936. It responded to needs for relief, reform, and recovery from the Great Depression. Major federal programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). They provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth and the elderly. The New Deal included new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry and efforts to re-inflate the economy after prices had fallen sharply. New Deal programs included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd president of the United States

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which realigned American politics into the Fifth Party System and defined American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II. Roosevelt is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in American history, as well as among the most influential figures of the 20th century. Though he has also been subject to much criticism, he is generally rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Civilian Conservation Corps public work relief program

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men. Originally for young men ages 18–25, it was eventually expanded to ages 17–28. Robert Fechner was the first director of the agency, succeeded by James McEntee following Fechner's death. The CCC was a major part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal that provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state, and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men and to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000. Through the course of its nine years in operation, 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a wage of $30 per month.

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 natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments; workers built water control structures of timber and concrete. The CCC camp in southern Oregon dug irrigation ditches, and overall increased the Clear Lake reservoir's capacity by about 60,000 acre‐feet. Soon after the United States entered World War II, the majority of enrollees left the camp to enlist, and it was closed in 1942.

Tule Lake Isolation Center

The CCC's Tule Lake camp 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 Concentration camp, 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 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. [5] [6] In December 2008, both sites were designated as part of the Tule Lake Unit, World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument.

Frank Tanabe

A notable inmate was Frank Tanabe, who volunteered to serve in a mostly Japanese-American military unit, interrogating Japanese prisoners in India and China. When asked why he served in the same army that imprisoned him, Tanabe replied, "I wanted to do my part to prove that I was not an enemy alien, or that none of us were — that we were true Americans. And if we ever got the chance, we would do our best to serve our country. And we did." [7] During the 2012 Presidential race, Tanabe who was then 93 and on his deathbed, gained wide publicity for having his daughter fill out his last ballot. He received mostly positive reaction for his patriotism. Tanabe died on October 24, 2012. His family declined to announce which candidate he voted for.

Italian & 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 prisoners of war to help with the harvest. In May 1944 the federal government sent 150 Italian POWs to the area. US officials converted Camp Tulelake to accommodate additional German POWs who were transferred from Camp White (near Medford, Oregon) the following month. [2] They set up fences, barbed wire, latrines, water lines, guard towers, and search lights around the camp.

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 with Japanese faces who were imprisoned in America's concentration 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 Modoc County, California officials applied for a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fund a new 8 feet (2.4 m) tall and 3 miles (4.8 km) long fence around the nearby Tulelake Municipal Airport, to keep animals off the runway. [4] The Tule Lake Committee and related groups working to preserve the historical integrity of the former Tule Lake War Relocation Center and related Camp Tulelake have opposed the airport fence. It would surround the site of most of the prison's barracks — nearly 46 complete "blocks" and portions of several others — impeding visitors and desecrating the physical and spiritual integrity of the camp. [4] The Stop the Fence at Tulelake Airport organization has explained, "A fence will prevent all Americans from experiencing the dimension and magnitude of the concentration camp where people experienced mass exclusion and racial hatred."[ citation needed ]

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

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References

  1. 1 2 3 California State Military Museum. Historic California Posts: Tule Lake Branch Prisoner of War Camp (Camp Tulelake). Posted 16 August 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 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.
  3. ↑ Tule Lake Committee: History
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Pacific Citizen.org: "Historic Tule Lake Site Threatened by a Proposed Fence", Pacific Citizen, (June 21, 2012)
  5. ↑ Tule Lake Committee: Pilgrimages
  6. 1 2 "Tulelake Journal — At Internment Camp, Exploring Choices of the Past", New York Times (July 8, 2012)
  7. ↑ "WWII vet from Hawaii dies at age 93 after casting last ballot". Honolulu Star-Advertiser. 2012-10-24. Retrieved 2018-02-08.
  8. ↑ Manzanar Committee Blog: "Manzanar Committee Opposes Construction Of Proposed Perimeter Fence At Tule Lake" (July 6, 2012)
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