10. The WCCA camps were built mostly from barns and sheds
The order for the removal of the Japanese preceded the construction of facilities to receive them, a problem the Army faced when it created the WCCA and ordered the Japanese to assemble in its facilities, to be screened for removal to relocation camps. It also faced pressure from the general public. While the majority of Americans supported the relocation of the Japanese Americans, the majority of communities did not want to see them relocated to their area. The Army needed facilities for the temporary housing of the dislocated Japanese and it needed them quickly. The majority of the Army’s WCCA assembly sites were established at existing racetracks and fairgrounds. They used the barns and sheds to house the Japanese Americans until they could be transferred to the WRA relocation centers.
Of the fifteen WCCA sites, eleven were racetracks and fairgrounds, where the barns were cleaned out and converted to spaces which held multiple families. Temporary latrines and sanitation facilities were erected on the sites. The WCCA was by definition a temporary agency – once the Japanese had all been processed through and sent to relocation camps there was no longer the need for its existence – and in an unusual step for a government agency no permanent structures to prolong its existence were erected. From March, 1942 through August of that year more than 90,000 Japanese Americans, more than half of them US citizens, were processed through the facilities. Another Army facility was erected at Poston (and at Manzanar) for the processing of Japanese Americans which were transferred to the WRA when the assembly process was completed. In March 1943 the WCCA was dissolved, its task in the relocation of the Japanese Americans complete.