| Camp Tulelake | |
|---|---|
| Tule Lake, California | |
 | |
| Coordinates | 41°58′08″N 121°34′05″W / 41.9688°N 121.5681°W |
| Type | Prisoner-of-war camp and Japanese American incarceration |
| Site information | |
| Owner | Fish and Wildlife Service |
| Condition | Restoration |
| Site history | |
| Built | 1933-1935 |
| Built by | Civilian Conservation Corps |
| In use | March 1943 - 25 April 1946 |
Camp Tulelake was a federal work facility and War Relocation Authority isolation center located in Siskiyou County, five miles (8 km) west of Tulelake, California. It was established by the United States government in 1935 during the Great Depression for vocational training and work relief for young men, in a program known as the Civilian Conservation Corps.[1] The camp was established initially for CCC enrollees to work on the Klamath Reclamation Project.
During World War II, in 1942 the Tule Lake War Relocation Center was built nearby as one of ten concentration camps in the interior of the US for the incarceration of Japanese Americans who had been forcibly relocated from the West Coast, which was defined as an Exclusion Zone by the US military. Two-thirds of the 120,000 incarcerated individuals were United States citizens.
Renamed the Tule Lake Isolation Center, this facility was adapted in the wartime years to shelter Japanese-American strikebreakers used against resisters at the main segregation camp, imprison Japanese-American dissidents, and house Italian and German prisoners of war (POWs) who were assigned to work as farm laborers in the region.[2] After the war, on 25 April 1946, the camp was transferred from the Army to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which had managed it just prior to the establishment of the segregation camp.[1] The four remaining buildings are being restored in a project to return the camp to its 1940s appearance. It is part of Tule Lake National Monument, formerly part of World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument.
- ^ a b California State Military Museum. Historic California Posts: Tule Lake Branch Prisoner of War Camp (Camp Tulelake). Posted 16 August 2010.
- ^ Tule Lake Unit; Camp Tulelake World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument pamphlet. Published by the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.