Qualla: Camp Kohler

Camp Kohler: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dorothea Lange, Public domain. For fifty-two days in the spring of 1942, more than 4,700 Japanese Americans lived behind the fences of the Sacramento Assembly Center, waiting to learn which distant internment camp would become their next unwanted home. The site had been a camp for migrant farmworkers before the government requisitioned it, and it would become a military training ground after the detainees were shipped out. Few places in California changed purpose so rapidly or so completely. Today, the 3,014 acres where families were confined and soldiers later trained lie beneath the suburban streets of Foothill Farms, a residential community on Sacramento's northeastern edge where a small roadside sign is one of the few reminders of what happened here.

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Image: Dorothea Lange | Public domain

Camp Kohler: Fifty-Two Days Behind the Wire

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dorothea Lange, Public domain. The Wartime Civilian Control Administration operated fifteen temporary detention sites across the West Coast, and the Sacramento Assembly Center -- also called the Walerga Assembly Center -- was among the smaller ones. It opened on May 6, 1942, receiving Japanese Americans forcib...

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Image: Dorothea Lange | Public domain

Camp Kohler: The Signal Corps Moves In

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dorothea Lange, Public domain. When the assembly center emptied, the Army Signal Corps took possession and rechristened the site Camp Kohler Training Camp. The same grounds that had confined civilians now trained soldiers. The camp expanded to accommodate 5,000 personnel, with five obstacle courses, a hospital...

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Image: Dorothea Lange | Public domain

Camp Kohler: Coming Home to Nowhere

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah Stierch, CC BY 4.0. The cruelest chapter may have come after the war ended. Japanese Americans returning to Sacramento found that discriminatory alien land laws had prevented many of them from retaining ownership of their prewar homes. A severe housing shortage compounded the problem. In late 1945, ...

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Image: Sarah Stierch | CC BY 4.0

Camp Kohler: Landmark Without a Landscape

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was J.smith at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 2.5. Camp Kohler is one of twelve California assembly centers that share the designation of California Historical Landmark No. 934, a recognition that acknowledges the network of sites where the state's Japanese American population was first concentrated before being scattered to remo...

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Image: The original uploader was J.smith at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 2.5