In this image Japanese American residents of the Seattle area are boarding the train at North Puyallup for their transfer to a concentration camp in Minidoka, Idaho. The Puyallup Assembly Center, better known by the euphemism Camp Harmony, was situated at the Western Washington fairgrounds in the heart of Puyallup. The assembly center was a temporary facility into which Japanese Americans were forced to gather beginning in March 1942. Minidoka was one of ten large camps operated by the War Relocation Authority in which Japanese Americans were incarcerated during WWII.
On February 19, 1942, shortly after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and United States entry into WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, calling for the exclusion of all civilians of Japanese descent from "designated military areas." More than 9,000 Japanese and Japanese American people living in the Pacific Northwest were forced into incarceration camps in Idaho and California until 1945.
Caption information source: "Camp Harmony (Puyallup Assembly Center), 1942," by Louis Fiset, HistoryLink.org Essay 8748
ID Number: PI28081
Date: 1942
Physical Description: 1 acetate negative : b&w ; 4 x 5 in.
Additional Information: Digital copy of this item available thanks to funding from a 2016 Institute for Museum and Library Services grant.
