Archival Collections
Primary source materials are available in variety of research centers around the state. The following is a select list of archival collections.
Life Interrupted Collection, UALR.MS.0250
This collection contains correspondence, books, periodicals, newspaper clippings, microfilm, photographs, videos, memorabilia, and digital media collected and created by the project, Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in World War II Arkansas, concerning the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans at Rohwer Relocation Center (Desha County) and Jerome Relocation Center (Drew and Chicot Counties) in Arkansas, and includes the project's administrative files, research files, audiovisual materials from the conference, "Camp Connections: A Conversation about Civil Rights and Social Justice in Arkansas," (2004), footage for the documentary, Time of Fear (2005), and donations received from individuals concerning Japanese American internment. (UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture)
Japanese American Relocation Center Newspapers, UALR.MS.0043
The collection contains publications from Jerome Relocation Center and Rohwer Relocation Center, the two Japanese American Relocation Centers in Arkansas. Included are newspapers written in English and Japanese concerning life and activities in the centers, such as the Communique, Denson Tribute, and Rohwer Outpost. (UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture)
Hasegawa-Kanase Family Photograph Collection, UALR.PH.0094
This collection contains digital photographs from Lisa Hasegawa, concerning her family's incarceration at Jerome Relocation Center, an internment camp in Jerome, Arkansas, for Japanese Americans during World War II. (UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture)
Rosalie Santine Gould-Mable Jamison Vogel Collection, BC.MSS.10.49
This collection contains Japanese American material collected by Mabel Rose Jamison Vogel and Rosalie Santine Gould. Vogel taught art to Japanese American children and adults at the Rohwer Relocation Center during World War II. The collection contains school related materials from the Rohwer Relocation Center, including autobiographies of Japanese American students interned at Rohwer, correspondence, clippings, pamphlets, photographs, and various other items. (Butler Center for Arkansas Studies)
This collection contains materials include a diary, school materials, and Japanese relocation camp materials. (University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections)
Jerome Relocation Center Collection, MC 629
This collection contains correspondence and memoranda of Philip M. Glick and Robert Leflar, censuses of Japanese-Americans at the camps at Jerome (Chicot County) and Rohwer (Desha County), reports, and pamphlets. (University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections)
Jerome Relocation Center Final Report, Legal Division, MC 695
This collections contains a typed carbon copy of a report including information about personnel, evacuee's property, legal assistance to evacuees, the Jerome Cooperative Enterprise Trust, the Community Council, trials for crimes at Jerome, etc. (University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections)
This collection contains correspondence, clippings, articles, and other papers. Includes material on the agency's operations, public relations program, handling of evacuee's property, resettlement problems, and constitutional principles pertaining to the relocation centers. Leflar served as an assistant solicitor with War Relocation Authority. (University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections)
Lovell, Ulys A., MS L941 273 Lovell
This collections contains correspondence, memoranda, and photographs. Lovell served project attorney at Jerome. (University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections)
Tidball, Virginia, MS T438 274 Tidball
This collection contains correspondence, school essays, clippings, and other records. Tidball taught in the high school at Jerome. (University of Arkansas Libraries, Special Collections)
U.S. Jerome Relocation Center, Denson, Ark. Records, MC 360
This collection contains correspondence, memoranda, transcripts of hearings, and records of various internment procedures. (University of Arkansas Libraries, Specials Collections)
Web Projects
To document and commemorate the Arkansas internment experience, web projects have been developed by different heritage organizations and provided to the world:
UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture
The UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture holds the collection for Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in World War II Arkansas originally premiered in 2004 as part of a joint effort by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Master's in Public History Program and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California, with funding provided by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. Life Interrupted tells the story of the 17,000 Japanese Americans who were dispossessed of their homes and property and sent to two camps in southeastern Arkansas for the duration of World War II. The project sought to raise awareness of the two internment camps in Arkansas: the Rohwer Relocation Center (Desha County) and the Jerome Relocation Center (Drew and Chicot Counties).
The project also hosted a national conference in Little Rock, "Camp Connections: A Conversation about Civil Rights and Social Justice in Arkansas." Eight coordinated exhibitions around the city accompanied the conference, including "Against Their Will: The Japanese American Experience in World War II Arkansas," which is now permanently housed at the World War II Japanese American Internment Museum in McGehee, Arkansas. Additionally, the project produced the documentary, Time of Fear, which aired on PBS stations in 2005.
Interview clips from the Life Interrupted can be viewed on the Center's YouTube channel. Clips feature internee experiences, as well as those who worked in the camps, lived near the camps, and historians.
World War II Japanese American Internment Museum & Visitor Center
The World War II Japanese American Internment Museum is housed in a renovated southern building of the McGehee Railroad Depot in McGehee, Arkansas. Opened in 2013, the museum houses the exhibit Life Interrupted – Against Their Will. The exhibit explores the 1940s history of nearby Rohwer and Jerome, two Delta towns where U.S. Government internment camps housed more than 17,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Also included in the museum are historical data, memorabilia, and artifacts. Admission is free.
Arkansas State University
On April 13, 2013, new interpretive exhibits were dedicated at the Rohwer Relocation Center in conjunction with the opening of the World War II Japanese American Internment Museum in McGehee, Arkansas. Visitors have access to eight interpretive panels and five audio kiosks situated along a designated walking route at the southern end of the former relocation center site. Today, the corn fields in Desha County cover the site of the original camp barracks, but Arkansas State University's Heritage Sites Program and Center for Digital Initiatives, funded by a grant from the National Park Service, created this interpretive tour with panoramic images that can also be viewed online.
Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive
The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA) is a collection of personal and official documents, transcribed oral histories, and works of art collected into a set by the University of California.
Densho Encyclopedia
The Densho Encyclopedia is a free on-line resources about the history of the Japanese American World War II exclusion and incarceration experience. This resource covers key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Library Resources
Allbritton, Nicole Ashley. “The Women of Japanese-American Internment, with Emphasis on Rohwer and Jerome.” MA thesis, University of Arkansas, 2010.
Anderson, William G. “Early Reaction in Arkansas to the Relocation of Japanese in the State.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 23 (Autumn 1964): 196–211
Bearden, Russel E. “The False Rumor of Tuesday: Arkansas’s Internment of Japanese-Americans.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 41 (Winter 1982): 327–339.
---. "Life Inside Arkansas’s Japanese American Relocation Centers.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 47 (Summer 1989): 170–196.
Burton, Jeffrey F. (ed.) Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2002.
Bynum, Marci K. “Rohwer and Jerome: The Elementary Education of Japanese American Students in Arkansas Relocation Camps.” MA thesis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. 1994.
Cashion, Scott. “Actions Speak Louder than Words… Sometimes: Reactions to the Wartime Evacuation and Internment of Japanese-Americans at Rohwer and Jerome.” MA thesis, University of Arkansas. 2006.
Cates, Rita Takahashi. “Comparative Administration and Management of Five War Relocation Authority Camps: America’s Incarceration of Persons of Japanese Descent During World War II.” Doctoral thesis, University of Pittsburgh. 1980.
Community analysis reports and community analysis trend reports of the War Relocation Authority, 1942-1946. United States. War Relocation Authority. Washington, [D.C.]: National Archives and Records Administration. Center for Arkansas History and Culture, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Spec Coll Film 251.
Daniels, Roger. Concentration Camps: North America. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Co. Inc. 1981.
Department of the Interior War Relocation Authority. Semi-annual Report: July 1 to December 31, 1943. Washington, [D.C.]: Department of the Interior. 1943.
Eaton, Allen H. Beauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our War Relocation Camps. New York: Harper. 1952
Field Basic Documentation of the War Relocation Authority, 1942-1946: Arkansas. United States. War Relocation Authority. Washington, [D.C.]: National Archives and Records Administration. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System. MICROFILM D769.8.A8.
Gallion, Susan. Inside View of Concentration Camps in Arkansas. McGehee, AR: Susan Gallion. 2013.
Herrelson, Parker. Rohwer Camp. Columbia College-Lake of the Ozarks: Parker Harrelson, 2014.
Howard, John. Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2008.
Inada, Lawson Fusao, ed. Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese Internment Experience. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books. 2000.
Japanese American evacuation and resettlement records, ca. 1941-1953. United States. War Relocation Authority. Washington, [D.C.]: National Archives and Records Administration. Center for Arkansas History and Culture, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Spec Coll Film 254.
Jerome Relocation Center. Duty Manual. Denson, AR: The Center. 1943. Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville.
Kim, Kristine. Henry Sugimoto: Painting an American Experience. Berkeley, California: Heyday Books, 2001.
Krug, J.A. and Myer, D.S. The Wartime Handling of Evacuee Property. Washington, [D.C.]: Department of the Interior. 1946. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System. ARK PAM 01451.
Lehman, Anthony L. Birthright of Barbed Wire: The Santa Anita Assembly Center for the Japanese. Los Angeles: Westernlore Press. 1970.
Moss, Dori Felice. “Strangers in Their Own Land: A Cultural History of Japanese American Internment Camps in Arkansas, 1942–1945.” MA thesis, Georgia State University. 2007.
Smith, Austin. Papers relating to Rohwer Relocation Center, McGehee, AR. United States. War Relocation Authority. Center for Arkansas History and Culture. University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Spec Coll Film 253.
Smith, C. Calvin. “The Response of Arkansas to Prisoners of War and Japanese Americans in Arkansas, 1942–1945.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 53 (Autumn 1994): 340–364.
Spicer, Edward H. Impounded People: Japanese-Americans in the Relocation Centers. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 1969.
Stewart, Colburn Cox. Inside View Japanese American Evacuee Center at Rohwer, Arkansas, 1941-1945. McGehee, AR: McGehee Publishing Company. 1979.
Time of Fear. VHS,DVD. PHS Home Video. 2004.
Twyford, Holly Feltman. “Nisei in Arkansas: The Plight of Japanese American Youths in the Arkansas Internment Camps of World War II.” MA thesis, University of Arkansas, 1993.
Relocation center construction specifications for Jerome and Rohwer Relocation Centers. United States. War Relocation Authority. Washington, [D.C.]: National Archives and Records Administration. Record Group 210, Series 54.
Relocation center layout drawings for Jerome and Rohwer Relocation Centers. United States. War Relocation Authority. Washington, [D.C.]: National Archives and Records Administration. Record Group 210, Series 53.
Rohwer and Jerome relocation center photographs. United States. War Relocation Authority. Washington, [D.C.]: National Archives and Records Administration. Record Group 210, series 14.
Vickers, Ruth. “Japanese American Relocation.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly. (Summer 1951): 168-176.
Ward, Jason Morgan. “‘No Jap Crow’: Japanese Americans Encounter the World War II South.” Journal of Southern History 73 (February 2007): 75–104.
Zieglar, Jan Fielder. “Listening to ‘Miss Jamison’: Lessons from the Schoolhouse at a Japanese Internment Camp, Rohwer Relocation Center.” Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies 33 (August 2002): 137–146.
---. The Schooling of Japanese American Children at Relocation Centers During World War II: Miss Mabel Jamison and Her Teaching of Art at Rohwer, Arkansas. Lewiston, NY: The Mellen Press. 2005.
*The banner photo shows the dedication of Rohwer Relocation Center Monuments with members of the 442nd Regiment, undated.
The following encyclopedia entries are from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture (EOA).
Jerome Relocation Center
Rohwer Relocation Center
Japanese American Relocation Camps
World War II Prisoner of War Camps
Civil Rights and Social Change