In the spring of 1942, persons of Japanese descent living on the West Coast were forcibly removed by the US Army to assembly centers while permanent incarceration camps were built. The Puyallup Assembly Center, euphemistically named "Camp Harmony," was hastily constructed at the Washington State fairgrounds in Puyallup and temporarily housed over 7,000 residents of Seattle, Tacoma and Alaska. Buses transported incarcerees to the facility and eventually to permanent camps in the fall.

In March 1942 Japanese Americans living on Bainbridge Island were the first in the country to be taken from their homes by the federal government because they were considered a threat to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on the Kitsap Peninsula. Here, transport buses and cars packed with belongings sit at an assembly point on Bainbridge Island awaiting the transport of the island's 227 residents of Japanese descent to the Puyallup Assembly Center.

Caption information source: The Seattle Daily Times, March 30, 1942, page 2

Handwritten on sleeve: PUYALLUP, Wash., Japanese colony, Camp Harmony.
Date photograph was filed at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (date of photograph and file date may differ by a month or more): June 12, 1942.