Interesting/unusual facts
Early in the relocation center occupation, evacuee volunteers clearing brush were reportedly taken to a local jail at gunpoint by local residents who thought they were Japanese paratroopers.

Rohwer Relocation Center grew 85% of the vegetables consumed at the center. In 1943, 610 acres were in cultivation.

2,734 people were transferred to Rohwer from Jerome when Jerome Relocation Center closed in June 1944.

When Rohwer Relocation Center was closed, 120,000 acres were deeded to the local school district and the rest was sold to farmers or veterans. Desha Central High School used two hospital buildings and the camp high school auditorium until the 1950s. None of the buildings remain today.

Land ownership
The original relocation center site is now privately owned farmland. Part of the land is within Desha Central High School.

Special Designations
Rohwer Relocation Center cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992.

Preservation and Interpretive Efforts
Rosalie Gould, the former mayor of McGehee, Arkansas, has an extensive personal collection of artifacts from Jerome and Rohwer Relocation Centers and is attempting to establish a museum in McGehee to display the collection. The University of Arkansas is currently cataloging Ms. Gould's collection.

Dr. Joanna Lewis, of the University of Arkansas History Department, is the Project Director of Life Interrupted: The Internment of Japanese Americans in WWII Arkansas. This is a $2.8 million Winthrop-Rockefeller Foundation project, working in partnership with the Japanese American National Museum. They will produce a traveling exhibit designed to tell stories specific to the Arkansas camps in the following areas: relocation and internment experience, artwork produced at the camps, internees' role in the military, and a one-hour documentary. They will also sponsor a symposium on civil liberties and host a camp reunion after the symposium. This is all to be completed by fall 2004.

Additionally, there are two recent monuments - one honors the 31 soldiers from Rohwer who were killed during World War II and the other commemorates the relocation center and indicates that the cemetery is a National Historic Landmark.

Public access to the site today
Rohwer Relocation Center is 11 miles north of McGehee and 110 miles southeast of Little Rock, Arkansas. Signs on State Highway 1 direct passersby to the Rohwer Memorial Cemetery.

The cemetery includes 24 cast concrete headstones, two concrete monuments, a concrete bench, sidewalks and a flagpole built by people interned at Rohwer.

Local Resources
Rosalie Gould: 1610 North 3rd Street, McGehee, AR 72654. Tel: 870-222-5355.

Dr. Joanna Lewis: Department of History, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801, 2801 South University Avenue, Little Rock, AR 72204-1099. Tel: 501-569-3216.

Selected Books
Bearden, Russell. "Life inside Arkansas' Japanese American Relocation Centers." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 48. 1989: 169-96.

Kim, Kristine. Henry Sugimoto: Painting an American Experience. Berkeley: Heyday Boos, 2000.

Rohwer Outpost. Lil Dan'l: One Year in a Relocation Center. Reprinted August 1989.

Websites
www.lifeinterrupted.org