Tule Lake WW II Internment Center Designated a National Historic Landmark
The Tule Lake Segregation Center, located in northern California near the Oregon border, was the largest of the ten War Relocation Authority (WRA) camps built to house the 120,000 Japanese-Americans evacuated from the west coast in World War II but was also the last one to shut down, in 1946, seven months after the end of the war.
The Tule Lake facility was renamed the Tule Lake Isolation Center during the war and it held Japanese-Americans who challenged official policies in other Relocation Centers or who were regarded as troublemakers by center officials.
Tule Lake became a National Monument in December 2008.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the evacuation of the Japanese-Americans on February 19, 1942; the program was officially terminated on December 17, 1944. It has been called the greatest single violation of civil liberties in American history.
Other Japanese Relocation Centers have also been honored. Manzanar became a National Historic Site on March 3, 1992, and Heart Mountain in Wyoming became a Historic Landmark on September 20, 2006.
National Park Service Web Site: http://www.nps.gov/tule/index.htm
Read about the Japanese American tragedy: Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese-American Internment Cases (1983)
Watch a video on the Tule Lake Relocation Center: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So6EwQscHnM
Watch a Tule Lake internee tell her great-grandson about her experience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIaRvCXmOIY