Miller, Edna A.

On March 18, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9102, creating the War Relocation Authority, which would supervise relocation of all persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast. Within days, thousands of Japanese-Americans had been forced from their homes and removed to assembly centers. From there they would be shipped by train to relocation centers in other parts of the country. Southeast Arkansas had two such relocation centers, one at Rohwer and one at Jerome. Construction began on the Rohwer Relocation Center on July 31, 1942. Evacuees began arriving on September 18, before the center was finished. The center, or camp, occupied five hundred acres in Desha County, much of it swampland, which was divided into numbered blocks. Each residence block contained ten to fourteen tar-papered, A-frame buildings, or barracks. Each building housed four to six families in "apartments." In addition to the barracks, each block contained a mess hall, a laundry, and a bath house. (There was no running water in the barracks.) The center also had a school, a hospital, an auditorium, a fire station, recreation facilities, administration buildings, and employee barracks. War Relocation Authority records show a peak population of 8,475 people at the Rohwer center. A total of 11, 962 people passed through the center at some point. There were 417 births and 168 deaths. The Rohwer Relocation Center closed November 30, 1945.