WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument, Tule Lake Unit

World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument was established in 2008, in part to serve as a reminder of the grave injustices endured by Japanese Americans incarcerated at the Tule Lake Segregation Center. The Tule Lake Unit also preserves a portion of the tumultuous history of the United States from the 1930s through the end of the war, through the stories of Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees, Japanese Americans, and Prisoners of War who are part of the history of Camp Tulelake. The Tulelake Unit is a reminder to all Americans that the Constitution is no more than a piece of paper unless we are willing to defend its principles.

The Tule Lake Segregation Center was constructed in 1942 as one of ten War Relocation Centers. Initially it held 15,276 of the approximately 110,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry who were forcibly removed from their homes by the Presidential Executive Order 9066. It was transformed into a segregation center in 1943 following a deeply flawed loyalty questionnaire that was used to separate supposedly "loyal" from "disloyal" Japanese Americans. Under serration, the center's population expanded to 18,789. Overcrowding, harsh living conditions, and mismanagement contributed to the strife and controversy that led to construction of a stockade with a jail and the implementation of martial law.
Camp Tulelake was constructed as a Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) camp in 1935. Until 1942, Camp Tulelake housed young men from around the nation who were employed to rehabilitate and expand the use of of public lands. During World War II, the camp was used by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), first in February 1943 when it was used to imprison men from the Tule Lake Relocation Center who refused to answer the loyalty questionnaire. The camp was used a second time in October, to house 243 Japanese Americans from other War Relocation Centers who were brought in as strikebreakers to harvest crops at the Tule Lake Center. In 1944, after local farmers petitioned the U.S. government for additional farm labor, 150 Italian Prisons of War (POW) converted the camp into a POW camp. Soon 800 German POWs arrived at the camp and worked in the Tule Basin, helping local farmers tend and harvest their fields.

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Tule Lake
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