In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued on February 19th, 1942, Executive Order 9066--which designated military zones along the United States coast and directed the army to remove all residents of Japanese ancestry from these areas. The president then created the War Relocation Authority (WRA), a federal agency tasked with caring for the approximately 110,000 Japanese-Americans uprooted by Executive Order 9066. The WRA saw to the planning and construction of long-term internment camps located in the interior of the country where the displaced population would be held for the duration of World War II. Two of the selected sites were located in the Arkansas Delta, one at Rohwer in Desha County--which operated from September 18, 1942-November 30, 1945--and the other at Jerome in sections of Chicot and Drew counties--which operated from October 6, 1942-June 30, 1944. The internment camps at Rohwer and Jerome would incarcerate over 16,000 Japanese-Americans between October 1942 and November 1945.
This collection exhibits materials from school administrators and superintendents, pastors, teachers, social welfare workers, and WRA administrators associated with the internment camps. Materials also source from the Homer Adkins’ gubernatorial papers, articles from the McGehee Times and Dermott News, and the official closing roster of the Rohwer Relocation Center.
All materials within this online exhibit are available for research at the Arkansas State Archives. These items were digitized by the Arkansas State Archives as part of a joint project entitled “Rohwer Reconstructed,” overseen by the University of Arkansas’ Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies and funded in part by a grant from the National Park Service through the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on June 30, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on May 5, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on July 14, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on April 7, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on April 21, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on April 14, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on May 12, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on April 28, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Nov. 10, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Sept. 15, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Sept. 22, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Aug. 18, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on August 25, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Oct. 6, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Nov. 2, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Oct. 27, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Oct. 20, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on Aug. 4, 1945.
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Weekly report by project director
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center project director Austin Smith on March 31, 1945.
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Weekly report for Rohwer Relocation Center
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center for the week ending September 8, 1945.
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Weekly report for Rohwer Relocation Center
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center for the week ending June 2, 1945.
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Weekly report for Rohwer Relocation Center
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center for the week ending June 16, 1945.
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Weekly report for Rohwer Relocation Center
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center for the week ending November 26, 1945.
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Weekly report for Rohwer Relocation Center
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center for the week ending June 9, 1945.
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Weekly report for Rohwer Relocation Center
Weekly report from Rohwer Relocation Center for the week ending May 26, 1945.
