Research Guides: Japanese American Incarceration Archives in Special Collections: Home

About Japanese American Incarceration in Arkansas

Young students instructing her peers at Rohwer

Between 1942 and 1945 thousands of Japanese Americans were forcibly "relocated" from their homes in California to concentration camps in Arkansas. The following list of collections provides an introduction to the related holdings in Special Collections. Please consult the OneSearch or contact Special Collections to obtain the latest information about additional holdings.

Reparative Description

Special Collections is currently engaged in the process of updating outdated or harmful description about the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Many finding aids related to Japanese American incarceration utilized language in titles and descriptions that refer to "internment" or "relocation" without acknowledging accurately the character of American concentration camps and the experience of the Japanese Americans who incarcerated there. Some collection titles retain inaccurate and harmful languages due to their origin. Special Collections' efforts to correct language everywhere possible are ongoing.

Manuscript Collections on Japanese American Incarceration in Arkansas

MS B266 382: Ralph Clayton Barnhart U. S. War Relocation Authority Records and Related Materials
Legal opinions, proceedings, memoranda, report, and published materials pertaining to the U.S. War Relocation Authority, especially as regards its Central Utah Relocation Project at Topaz, Utah, and to its successor agency, the War Agency Liquidation Unit of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
MS C127 209 209A-F: Arthur Brann Caldwell Papers
Caldwell served in the United States Department of Justice (1941-1968). His positions included Chief of the Japanese Section of the U. S. War Department's Military Intelligence Division during World War II and assistant to the Assistant Attorney-General for the Civil Rights Division. The papers include correspondence, memoranda, addresses, reports, and photographs.
MC 1896: Rosa A. Heinke Papers
Rosa A. Heinke (1924-1982) was an assistant art teacher at the Rohwer Internment Camp in McGehee, Desha County, Arkansas in the summer of 1944. During her stay at Rohwer she kept a diary and recounted the “social life, economic life, and general activities of the Japanese evacuees, and also general studies of character.” This collection includes materials include a diary, school materials, and Japanese relocation camp materials.
MS G88 257: U. S. War Relocation Authority, Rohwer Relocation Center Records
Nathaniel R. Griswold (1901-1991) served as Superintendent of the Community Activities Section of the Rohwer Relocation Center at McGehee, Ark. from 1943-1945. This collection includes correspondence, memoranda, reports, bulletins, lists, budgets, and scrapbooks.
MC 629: Jerome Relocation Center Collection
During World War II, the United States Government began an effort to forcibly remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast and other areas near the Pacific, to relocation camps across the country. The Jerome relocation center was one of two Japanese internment camps built in southeast Arkansas. This collections includes correspondence and memoranda of Phillip M. Glick and Robert Leflar, censuses of Japanese-Americans at the camps at Jerome (Chicot County) and Rohwer (Desha County), reports, and pamphlets.
MC 695: Jerome Relocation Center Final Report
This collection includes a report which includes information about personnel, evacuees' property, legal assistance to evacuees, the Jerome Cooperative Enterprise Trust, the Community Council, trials for crimes at Jerome, etc.
MS L52: Robert Allen Leflar Papers
Leflar served as an assistant solicitor with War Relocation Authority. This collection includes The collection contains all types of correspondence and correspondence and information concerning the War Relocation Authority, including offices and functions of the War Relocation Authority, administration highlights, wartime handling of evacuee property, evacuee resettlement, constitutional principles involved in the relocation program, and the public relations program of the War Relocation Authority.
MS L941 273: Ulys A. Lovell U.S. War Relocation Authority, Jerome Relocation Center Records
Correspondence, memoranda, photographs and other records, December 14, 1942-July 18, 1944, created or received by Lovell while he served as project attorney at the U.S. WRA center at Denson, Arkansas.
Tidball, Virginia (Loc. 824)
(315 items) Correspondence, school essays, clippings, and other records. Tidball taught in the high school at Jerome.
MC 408: Jay Friedlander, A Place Called Rohwer Videotape
Sixty-minute color 3/4" videotape, produced by University of Arkansas at Little Rock associate professor of journalism Friedlander for Arkansas Educational Television Network in the summer of 1980.

Published Sources for Background Information

Concentration camps on the home front: Japanese Americans in the house of Jim Crow by John Howard
ISBN: 9780226354767
Publication Date: 2008
A recently published history of internment camps in Arkansas, a state that already practiced institutionalized racial segregation.
After Camp by Greg Robinson
Call Number: E184.J3 R63 2012
ISBN: 9780520271586
Publication Date: 2012-02-07
This book illuminates various aspects of a central but unexplored area of American history: the midcentury Japanese American experience. A vast and ever-growing literature exists, first on the entry and settlement of Japanese immigrants in the United States at the turn of the 20th century....
Barbed Voices by Arthur A. Hansen; Lane Ryo Hirabayashi (Foreword by)
Call Number: D769.8.A6 H356 2018
ISBN: 9781607328117
Publication Date: 2018-11-05
Barbed Voices is an engaging anthology of the most significant published articles written by the well-known and highly respected historian of Japanese American history Arthur Hansen, updated and annotated for contemporary context. Featuring selected inmates and camp groups who spearheaded resistance movements in the ten War Relocation Authority-administered compounds in the United States during World War II, Hansen's writing provides a basis for understanding why, when, where, and how some of the 120,000 incarcerated Japanese Americans opposed the threats to themselves....
The Art of Gaman by Delphine Hirasuna; Terry Heffernan (Photographer); Kit Hinrichs (Designed by)
Call Number: NK839.3.J32 H57 2005
ISBN: 9781580086899
Publication Date: 2005-10-01
Imprisoned in remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by soldiers with machine guns, the internees sought courage and solace in art. Using found materials at first and later what they could order by catalog, they whittled and carved, painted and etched, stitched and crocheted. What they created is a celebration of the nobility of the human spirit under adversity....

Rising Above Digital Project

Rising Above: Rohwer Reconstructed
offers more than 500 documents and photographs, 3D visualizations, and timelines. A collaborative project from the University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections, University of Arkansas Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST), Arkansas State University, the Central Arkansas Library System, and the National Park Service.

Other Digital Archives and Collections

Densho Archive on Japanese American Confinement
Densho documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy, and promote equal justice for all.
Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA)
The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American internment, including: personal diaries, letters, photographs, and drawings;
US War Relocation Authority materials;
And personal histories documenting the lives of the people who lived in the camps, as well as of the administrators who created and worked there.
Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers, 1942 to 1946
Provided digitally from the Library of Congress, these newspapers provide a unique look into the daily lives of the people who were held in these camps. They include articles written in English and Japanese, typed, handwritten and drawn. They advertise community events, provide logistical information about the camps and relocation, report on news from the community, and include editorials.
Japanese American National Museum, Research Collections
Since its inception in 1985, the Japanese American National Museum has chronicled more than 130 years of Japanese American history—from the first Issei generation through the World War II incarceration to the present day.
Asian American Studies Institute, Japanese American Internment Resource Library
Contains oral histories, books, videos and other materials documenting the internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war.