Construction

CONSTRUCTION

The second phase of Col. Bendetsen’s complex plan to remove all Japanese people from the West Coast — build prison camps for them in Western states away from sensitive war-related facilities in coastal areas — began with inspection teams sent out to visit suitable sites in which to build them.  Two site selection parties, utilizing dedicated military aircraft, were dispatched to visit promising sites, previously selected in meetings attended by various governmental agencies with knowledge of the terrain in Western states; i.e., the Bureau of Reclamation.

One party was directed to visit selected sites north of the California-Oregon border and west of the Rocky Mountains.  The second party visited sites south of this border.  Four days later, based on their visits, both parties recommended proposed sites for the relocation centers.

The northern party recommended a promising site located in Northern Wyoming between the towns of Powell and Cody possessing most of the essential characteristics for a relocation center; located on Federal land (administered by the Bureau of Reclamation) in a remote area removed from any industrial complexes, access to an adequate source of water and electrical power, access to road and rail assets, potential for meaningful work in the local economy and a reasonable expectation that such a facility would be accepted by the local communities.  This site was called Heart Mountain after a commanding geological feature overlooking the site. On March 18, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9102, creating the War Relocation Authority (WRA), a civilian entity, whose purpose was to administer the relocation centers once built, including Heart Mountain.  Two inspection teams subsequently arrived at the Heart Mountain site – from the WRA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – briefly walked the land and both recommended Heart Mountain be selected as one of the ten such sites upon which relocation centers were quickly built

Of the fifteen assembly centers, three of them sent prisoners to Heart Mountain:  Pomona, Santa Anita, and Portland.  The entire population of the Pomona assembly center was transferred to Heart Mountain.  The other two centers only sent portions of their maximum populations to Heart Mountain.

The Army was ill-prepared for the task of building incarceration camps on American soil, to imprison an entire ethnic population of people – families, elders, even orphans and the infirm.   No plans existed from which such facilities could be built.  However, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had two types of blueprints for housing soldiers physically fit for combat, referred to as “Mobilization Type” and the “Theater of Operations Type (T/0)”.  Mobilization structures contained plumbing, water, electricity, central heating, some insulation, concrete foundations and were painted. These structures, designed to last from five to ten years, housed succeeding groups of soldiers during training.

The T/0 type, temporary structures, designed to last from two to four years, were constructed to house combat soldiers in the rear of committed infantry divisions in Europe.  They featured simplicity and speed of construction in place of permanence or comfort.  T/O buildings, built on wooden block foundations, usually contained no utilities (except electricity in some cases), no source of heat (except in very cold climates), or insulation. It was this blueprint for temporary structures that was selected to build the prison camps in the Western states away from the West Coast.  These camps were referred to as “relocation centers”.