OPINION

OPINION | REX NELSON: Reflections at Rohwer

It's eerily quiet as I walk down the dirt road near Rohwer in Desha County. I'm the only one here, though I can hear an occasional vehicle pass on Arkansas 1 and see a farmer driving a tractor in the distance.

A couple of years ago, back before the pandemic kept me home for months, I came here with Ross Owyoung and Libby Lloyd, two Little Rock residents who grew up in McGehee. We met Cindy Smith of McGehee, who has done so much through the years to promote the heritage of southeast Arkansas.

On that day, I read every word on every marker at the former internment camp, where more than 8,000 Japanese Americans inhabited 500 acres during World War II.

They were watched around the clock by armed guards in towers that were linked by a barbed-wire fence. Some of the Japanese Americans died in this remote corner of Arkansas, a long way from their West Coast homes.

I also read the names on the markers in Memorial Cemetery, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

On this day, with my family fully vaccinated, I feel free to resume my Arkansas travels. I have lunch at the iconic Pickens Store near Dumas and then head south for a walk at the internment camp's site. With violence against Asian Americans in the news, it seems like a good place for reflection.

In "Life Is What We Make It," former internee Sam Nakamoto wrote: "Let's teach (our children) that even in a life such as this, our hearts do not despair, that, although we left behind many material things, we did not leave our courage, our fortitude and our ability to do the best with the least."

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Arkansas State University used National Park Service grants to study what happened and provide signage at this place. The scholars who worked on the project summed it up this way: "War hysteria, racial prejudice and failure of political leadership led to the forced removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast. One third of those removed were foreign-born, called Issei. Many were more than 50 years old and prohibited from becoming American citizens.

"The remaining two-thirds were American- born citizens, called Nisei; most were under 21 years old. These Americans left their entire lives behind, including jobs, possessions and community."

Those of us who have paid attention the past 15 months have learned a lot about hysteria, racial prejudice and failure of political leadership. It has been enough to make us question how far we've really come as a country since World War II. The Delta fields at Rohwer provide a fine spot to think about such things.

There were two such camps in southeast Arkansas. The other was at nearby Jerome, which straddles the line between Chicot and Drew counties. Ten camps were scattered in states west of the Mississippi River. The official name of this one was the Rohwer Relocation Center, which sounds a bit nicer than "incarceration camp."

"The Japanese American population, of which 64 percent were American citizens, had been forcibly removed from the West Coast under the doctrine of military necessity and incarcerated in 10 relocation camps in California and various states west of the Mississippi River," Russell Bearden wrote for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "This marked the largest influx of any racial or ethnic group in the state's history.

"Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and America's subsequent entry into the war, many Americans feared an eventual invasion of the West Coast by the empire of Japan. People viewed the Japanese American population -- 89 percent of whom lived in Washington, Oregon and California -- as potential spies and saboteurs.

"President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, giving the secretary of war the power to designate military areas from which 'any or all persons may be excluded' and authorizing military commanders to initiate orders they deemed advisable to enforce such action."

Executive Order 9102 followed on March 18, 1942. It created the War Relocation Authority to supervise the relocation of Japanese Americans.

"The search for sites for America's first Japanese relocation centers, as they were euphemistically labeled by the WRA, was limited to federally owned lands located 'a safe distance from strategic works,' near railway lines for the easy transport of prisoners and capable of adequately holding 5,000 to 8,000 people under supervision," Bearden wrote. "By June 4, 1942, the WRA had selected 10 sites, with the Arkansas camps being the easternmost of those incarcerating the Japanese Americans."

Eli Whitaker, who headed the federal Farm Security Administration in Arkansas, found tax-delinquent Delta lands that needed clearing, leveling and draining.

"Survey descriptions of these lands indicated that Kelso Farms, an Arkansas corporation subject to a mortgage fee held by the federal government, owned 7,582 acres of the Rohwer site," Bearden wrote. "Another 10,161 acres allotted to the Rohwer Relocation Center were located 12 miles northeast of McGehee, of which 9,560 acres were obtained from the FSA."

Construction on the two Arkansas camps took place from July 1942 until January 1943. Japanese Americans began arriving at Rohwer in September 1942 with a peak population of 8,475.

Building contracts went to the Linebarger-Senne Construction Co. of Little Rock. Construction was supervised by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The cost of the camp was about $4.8 million.

"The Rohwer site eventually became 500 acres of tar-papered, A-framed buildings arranged into specifically numbered blocks," Bearden wrote. "Each block was designed to accommodate about 300 people in 10 to 14 residential barracks with each barrack divided into four to six apartments for Japanese American families. Each block also consisted of a mess hall building, a recreational barrack, a laundry and a communal latrine.

"The residential buildings were without plumbing or running water, and the buildings were heated during the winter months by wood or coal stoves. The camp also had an administrative section or block of buildings to handle camp operations, a military police section, a hospital section, a warehouse and factory section, a residential section of barracks for WRA personnel, barracks for schools, and auxiliary buildings for such things as canteens, motion pictures, gymnasiums, auditoriums, motor pools and fire stations."

In a small 2018 book titled "Inside View of Concentration Camps in Arkansas," Susan Gallion of McGehee wrote: "The decision by the federal government to discriminate against an entire race of people--most of whom were American citizens--solely on the basis of unfounded suspicions regarding their patriotism during wartime and their physical proximity to what was considered a vulnerable area has since been widely criticized by legal and social scholars as one of the darkest and most shameful periods in U.S. history.

"They were loyal citizens and taxpayers. Most of all, they were Americans. ... You thought this couldn't happen in America, but it did."

Rohwer was the last of the camps to close. The WRA had difficulty relocating Japanese Americans back to California. Today, the cemetery and a hospital smokestack are all that's left to tell the story of this haunted place. But with the help of the interpretive markers and the rural peacefulness, perhaps that's enough.

For those wanting to learn more, an internment camp museum has been operating in the railroad depot at McGehee since 2013.

"Following their removal, the buildings left behind were used for local schools and by farmers for a variety of purposes before falling into ruin," Bearden wrote.

Yes, it's quiet here, but I must warn you that there are ghosts. Walk the cemetery and feel their presence. They cause us to reflect not only on our country's past, but also its present path.


Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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