JACL Calls for Action Following Tule Lake’s Endangered Historic Places Status
May 27, 2026
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Matthew Weisbly, Education Programs/Communications Manager, mweisbly@jacl.org
Seia Watanabe, VP of Public Affairs, swatanabe@jacl.org
JACL Policy Team, Matthew Marumoto & Katie Masano Hill
Email: policy@jacl.org
The JACL applauds the inclusion of the Tule Lake Segregation Center on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places List. Other historic sites listed include Angel Island Immigration Station, Ben Moore Hotel, and Stonewall National Monument. This recognition in May, celebrating both Historic Preservation and Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage, serves as an important reminder that sites that preserve our community’s history of trauma, resilience, and resistance are under immediate threat.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s announcement detailed the following about the current threat to Tule Lake: “Today, a token 37-acre portion of the Tule Lake Segregation Center has been designated as a National Monument, but the primary 1,100-acre site is unprotected. For the survivors and descendants of those incarcerated there, the entire Tule Lake site is sacred ground, a place of suffering, where 331 prisoners died. It is a place of community pilgrimage and private contemplation, yet staffing and public access is limited, and there is no adequate facility for larger groups to gather. After World War II, the majority of the Segregation Center’s structures were demolished or removed, and a rural airfield now occupies 359 acres at the heart of the former incarceration camp site. The Federal Aviation Authority and Modoc County are seeking to construct a 3-mile long, 8- to 10-foot-high security fence around the airfield, which could permanently alter the setting, viewshed, and archaeological integrity of Tule Lake. Survivors and descendants believe the airfield desecrates this sacred site.”
The story of Tule Lake demonstrates the contradiction and irony between the ideals of American democracy and the reality of forced wartime incarceration. Unique in its history as the most populated Japanese American incarceration site and the only site turned into a segregation center, where those imprisoned within suffered extreme neglect, violence, and cruelty. From the administration of the so-called “loyalty” questionnaire to the imposition of martial law and the detention of camp leaders in a military stockade, the horrors and atrocities that occurred at Tule Lake are embedded in the landscape.
Tule Lake remains a lasting and powerful symbol of the abuses of civil rights and civil liberties inflicted by the United States government during World War II. Preserving the site means preserving the evidence of what happened there. Survivors and their descendants deserve to be able to grieve, mourn, and return to the soil, skyline, and environment without obstruction, erasure, or desecration. This recognition by the National Trust for Historic Preservation is essential to the ongoing fight to preserve Tule Lake as both a memorial and a warning about unchecked government power.
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The Japanese American Citizens League is a national organization whose ongoing mission is to secure and maintain the civil rights of Japanese Americans and all others who are victimized by injustice and bigotry. The leaders and members of the JACL also work to promote cultural, educational, and social values and preserve the heritage and legacy of the Japanese American community.
