Evacuations were swift, giving Japanese Americans very little time to dispose of homes, businesses, and possessions that they were forced to leave behind. Some were able to leave their homes and businesses in the care of friends and neighbors, but most were not as fortunate. Many sold their belongings for pennies on the dollar, while others chose to leave items with Buddhist churches, many of which were looted during the war. When time for evacuation came, incarcerees took only what they could carry as they boarded buses and trains to an uncertain future.

The military transformed fairgrounds, racetracks, and other large public venues into temporary holding areas called assembly centers where Japanese Americans were held after removal from their homes. Overall, living conditions were crowded, unsanitary, and lacked privacy. Incarcerees stood in long lines for mess halls, toilets, and showers as the government struggled to provide even basic daily needs for tens of thousands of people. The majority of incarcerees sent to Rohwer and Jerome were initially placed in the Santa Anita, Fresno, and Stockton assembly centers, although families sent to Jerome from Hawaii were temporarily held at the Immigration Station in Honolulu.

Between September and November 1942, the military loaded incarcerees onto trains and transported them for three days under armed guard to the Jerome and Rohwer War Relocation Centers. Hawaiian incarcerees did not arrive at Jerome until late December, after a five-day sea voyage and a cross-country train ride. Incarcerees arrived to find partially finished camps, muddy fields, and tarpaper barracks made of rough boards. Single-room apartments were empty except for steel cots, army blankets, a wood stove, and a single lightbulb with an electrical outlet in the middle of the ceiling. While conditions were bleak, most incarcerees considered them to be a dramatic improvement over assembly center conditions. Basic features like doors and wooden floors seemed luxurious in contrast.

In the early 1900s, the small timber and farming communities of Rohwer and Jerome were established in the Arkansas River Delta, a forested region of eastern Arkansas prone to flooding. Both areas struggled during the Great Depression, leading the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to purchase thousands of acres at both locations. The FSA was a federal New Deal program that operated from 1937 to 1946. Their goal was to establish two large farming communities that would give families a fresh start. Kelso Farms, adjacent to Rohwer, never made it out of the planning stage. At Chicot Farms, which included the town of Jerome, 89 of 241 planned 40-acre farms were occupied by 1941. One cluster of farms bordered the town, while the other, known as Deep Elm, was built several miles away. When the FSA transferred Kelso Farms and most of Chicot Farms to the WRA in 1942, both areas were still primarily wooded. The WRA moved families out of Deep Elm, but they repurposed some of the FSA structures for Jerome Relocation Center use.

The two camps were essentially identical in initial design, materials, and construction methods. The designs varied only to fit existing site conditions, like incorporating elements of the former Chicot Farms at Jerome, including Deep Elm. The WRA built the residential cores by the rail lines on the edge of each camp and surrounded them with barbed-wire fences and guard towers. Each core was divided into zones: administration, military police, warehouse/maintenance, hospital, school, residential, and undeveloped open space. Roads and utilities, including electric, water, sewer, and drainage, serviced each block. While most of the existing vegetation within the cores was removed, both camps had stands of large deciduous trees in several residential blocks, providing much-appreciated shade. The WRA intended the camps to be temporary, so most structures were timber-framed, covered with tarpaper, and placed on a concrete slab foundation or piers.

A typical residential block was 500 square feet and contained twelve barrack buildings, a mess hall, a toilet and laundry building, and a recreation hall with an adjacent open space for outdoor recreation. The WRA designed residential blocks to house between 250 and 300 people. Rohwer and Jerome each initially had 36 identical residential blocks, although some were later modified and repurposed during occupation. Electricity was provided for all buildings in the residential block, and water lines were run to the mess hall and the toilet and laundry building. Construction crews dug trenches to drain water away from the buildings into larger swales that ran alongside and drained roads throughout the camp.

The WRA recruited incarcerees arriving at the unfinished camps in the fall of 1942 to help complete the initial construction. Material shortages and construction delays caused several major changes to the original plans for the camps, such as the conversion of several residential blocks into school blocks and the decision to lay gravel roads rather than pave them. As incarcerees adapted to camp life, many customized their apartments and block landscapes to improve living conditions. The WRA also organized teams of staff and skilled incarcerees to design and build paths, bridges, parks, porches, community buildings, a cemetery, and additional school buildings.

Many Arkansans were convinced that the incarceration camps fostered a life of leisure, but this was simply not true. The WRA created programs for “productive work” that would not be perceived as an economic threat to local industries. Most working-age incarcerees were employed by the WRA and earned $16 a month, while a small percentage in skilled positions earned $19. These wages were much less than what they would have earned for similar work had they not been incarcerated. In addition, some WRA staff managers openly held prejudices against Japanese Americans or grew frustrated by unskilled and unmotivated laborers. For their part, some incarcerees saw little reason to perform in their assigned employment due to their unjust incarceration and extremely limited personal benefit. Many incarcerees were put to work clearing the forested, swampy landscape to create farmland – a task that was promoted by local newspapers as a benefit to future Arkansans. Cutting trees and digging ditches was taxing and dangerous work and was therefore generally despised by incarcerees. Jobs relating to agriculture, security, consumer services, and health and sanitation were much more popular. Incarceree construction teams installed roads, wells, and sewage pipes, made building repairs, and tackled new construction projects. The WRA supported the creation of cooperative enterprises run by incarcerees, such as beauty parlors, shoe repair shops, and other similar businesses offering goods and services.

The WRA and the military police, charged with maintaining order in the camps, needed to minimize incarceree boredom and dissatisfaction. This task was complicated by the fact that children made up nearly one quarter of the population at both camps. The WRA established schools and developed an extensive activities division headed and staffed by WRA employees with incarceree help. Newspapers published in the camps were central to keeping incarcerees informed about camp rules, world and local news, and community events. The WRA led and encouraged cultural enrichment in the form of creative arts and hobbies, religious organizations, American and Japanese holidays and cultural observances, adult education programs, youth groups, and sports. Many of these activities took place in block recreation halls (renamed “public service halls” to better reflect their purpose). The WRA and resourceful incarcerees also built extensive athletic facilities, parks, playgrounds, campgrounds, and other recreation facilities.

The design of a typical residential block provided many opportunities for social interaction that fostered a sense of community, but the arrangement also strained family structures. A block had two sides divided by the mess hall, laundry/toilet building, and a public open space, creating two distinct neighborhoods. Each side contained three lanes, or tonari gumi, created by facing barracks. The block side was an area of close personal and social relations, in which visiting and cooperation on household duties between tonari gumi was common. The central mess hall brought the entire block together several times a day for meals and served as a meeting space for a variety of other activities. Youth enjoyed the chance to eat with friends, but many parents found the loss of a family mealtime difficult.

Arriving incarcerees faced bleak conditions. The camp was a barren and muddy mess, their one-room apartments were unfinished and barely furnished, and they were only allowed to bring what they could carry. They immediately began to improvise and improve their living conditions, scavenging scrap wood from construction sites to make shelves, interior partitions, furniture, and boardwalks. As the extreme heat of the summer of 1943 approached, they built covered porches, awnings, pergolas, and other shade structures. They also added back doors to improve airflow and access clotheslines and other features in the lanes between barrack pairs. Incarcerees planted ornamental and productive gardens, particularly in the tonari gumi. In many instances, incarcerees worked together and blocks became a source of pride for both the residents and the WRA. A local newspaper recalled, “Rohwer in its heyday looked like a cross between a concentration camp and a museum garden; seldom has so much to gratify the senses been created out of so little” (“A Federal Charge,” Pine Bluff Commercial, October 17, 1961).

Incarcerees could apply for short-term leave for a variety of reasons. Social leave included visits, weddings, church conferences, and athletic events, while business leave was available for personal matters, cooperative enterprises, and shopping. In addition, the WRA and various camp clubs and organizations sponsored fieldtrips such as Boy Scout camping trips or visits to the Japanese American soldiers stationed at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. Incarcerees could request emergency leave for medical treatment, hospitalization, and funerals. The WRA granted seasonal leave for outside employment, which was typically agricultural, industrial, or domestic work. During 1943-1944, over a thousand incarcerees from Rohwer took seasonal leave to work in eleven different states.

The WRA typically granted transfers from one incarceration camp to another to reunite families. Two major events also resulted in mass transfers of incarcerees. The first was a controversial questionnaire distributed to all camps in 1943 that the War Department and the WRA claimed was an attempt to encourage resettlement. In reality, it was used to assess “loyalty” to the U.S. government. Incarcerees who answered “no” to two poorly worded questions about their willingness to contribute to the war effort and pledging their unqualified allegiance to the U.S. were branded as disloyal. In September 1943, the WRA forced these incarcerees to transfer to a “Segregation Center” within the Tule Lake Relocation Center in California. Approximately 25% of Jerome’s population was sent to Tule Lake, the highest percentage of any camp. The second major event was the closure of Jerome due to declining camp population, which the WRA announced in February 1944 and completed in June. About 38% of Jerome incarcerees chose to transfer to nearby Rohwer, 31% chose the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona, including most of the Hawaiian incarcerees, and the remainder filtered into other camps. Several months after Jerome closed, the War Department changed its name to Camp Dermott and used the residential core to hold German prisoners-of-war.

Between 1942 and 1945, the WRA encouraged incarcerees to make new, permanent homes in states outside of the West Coast exclusion zone through an indefinite leave program. The WRA increased their efforts in 1945 as the war was ending. Chicago was an especially popular destination, but incarcerees held at Rohwer also settled in at least 35 other states. College-age students and young families were particularly interested in relocation. Others were resistant to relocation and instead held out for legal action that could reopen the West Coast. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in December 1944 prompted the War Department to declare that, beginning January 2, 1945, Japanese Americans “would be permitted the same freedom of movement throughout the United States as other loyal citizens and law-abiding aliens.” In effect, this meant that incarcerees could return to their home states. In reality, Japanese Americans attempting to reclaim their lives on the West Coast and in Hawaii faced postwar housing shortage and lingering prejudice.