Tule Lake Banners

Prior to 1943, Tule Lake was just one of ten relocation centers. It was converted into a segregation center for those the War Relocation Authority termed "disloyal" as a result of their answers on the mandatory loyalty questionnaire in early 1943. The internees who answered "no" to the loyalty questionnaire were considered disloyal and were sent to Tule Lake, which became a maximum security segregation facility. Tule Lake opened as one of the ten War Relocation Centers in 1942, housing roughly 15,000 Japanese Americans from northeastern California, Oregon, and western Washington. In 1943, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) administered a manditory loyalty questionnaire in all of the camps. Negative answers to two critical questions resulted in the transfer of over 12,000 people, deemed disloyal, to Tule Lake, which was reclassified as a maximum security Segregation Center. More than 2,000 of those were from Manzanar. To make room for incoming people, nearly 8,000 internees were moved out of Tule Lake to other camps. Tule Lake eventually had a population of nearly 19,000, the largest of any camp. Tule Lake Segregation Center also had twenty-eight guard towers, eight army tanks, and more than a thousand military police. Of the ten WRA camps, Tule Lake was the last to close, in March, 1946. Ultimately, 5,000 Tule Lake internees renounced their U.S. citizenship, and 5,000 (not necessarily the same people) opted to expatriate/repatriate to Japan after the war ended. On December 5, 2008, President Bush signed a proclamation establishing Tule Lake as a unit of the new World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument.