Tule Lake
United States. Army. Western Defense Command and Fourth Army. Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942. Washington 1943, p. 251.
The Tule Lake Relocation Center (U.S. government name), site, like Manzanar, was located within the military area of exclusion. Sited on the ancient volcanic topography of northern California near the town of Newell, the center’s 7,400 acres were obtained primarily from the Bureau of Land Management. In the summer of 1943, the center was renamed the Tule Lake Segregation Center and converted into a more heavily guarded and secured facility. It was redesigned to hold transfers from other concentration camps of people considered “disloyal” to the U.S. This required a physical reorganization and rebuilding of Tule Lake to accommodate 18,000 residents and resulted in dislocations of family, friends, and communities incarcerated at Tule Lake and other concentration camps. The first phase of construction began on April 15, 1942. The last to close, Tule Lake remained open until March 20, 1946 in order to process the repatriation of the Japanese immigrants returning to Japan and the deportation of Japanese Americans who renounced their citizenship.