15. The Tule Lake Segregation Center housed “undesirables” from other camps
Tule Lake became both the largest and the most controversial of the internment camps after it was designated as the facility to which Japanese Americans considered to be problematic or disloyal were to be sent. It was considered a maximum security facility and eventually held just under 20,000 internees. Japanese Americans could be sent to Tule Lake based on their answers in loyalty questionnaires, which the WRA began giving to its internees in 1943. The questionnaire was presented to men of draft age, and asked among other things whether the internee, a prisoner of the United States government behind barbed wire, was willing to serve in the combat forces of the United States. If an internee gave an answer other than an unqualified yes (for example, stating that they would be willing to serve after their family was freed from custody) they were considered problematic.
In November 1943 the United States Army placed the Tule Lake facility under martial law, a condition which remained in effect through January 1944. In July of that year the Congress passed the Renunciation Act of 1944, which allowed those Japanese who held American citizenship to renounce it, absolving them of the requirement to be loyal to the American government, but if they chose to renounce citizenship placing them in the legal status of enemy aliens. Just over 5,500 Japanese Americans chose to renounce American citizenship. When the war ended most of the internment camps closed quickly. Tule Lake remained in operation, detaining the Japanese Americans who had chosen to cede their American citizenship, until mid-1946. Most were designated for deportation before legal activists stepped in. Many former citizens (Nisei) were able to remain in the United States, though for decades the status of citizenship was denied.