# @sachistorymuseum on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DJdEKtCp8pc
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/76082375-sachistorymuseum-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/a512971c9e.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-05-10T01:11:38.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Sacramento History Museum (@sachistorymuseum) — https://gondola.cc/sachistorymuseum

## Caption

On this week in 1942, the Sacramento Assembly Center, also known as Walerga, opened as a detention center for Japanese Americans following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. This order was signed on February 19, 1942, which authorized the internment and mass incarceration of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident immigrants from Japan. 

By the end of May 1942, Sacramento’s entire Japanese population (around 3,500 people) were reported to have been sent to Walerga. Walerga held a total of 4,770 individuals over its 52-day occupancy until it was closed June 26th when those detained were relocated to the large internment camp at Tule Lake.

The assembly center was 15 miles north of Downtown Sacramento and was the size of 11 square blocks with 225 buildings. Once the assembly center closed, it was turned over to the Army Signal Corps and was renamed Camp Kohler. Today, the Foothill Farms subdivision in North Highlands covers much of the area that was once the assembly center. A plaque, California Historical Landmark #934, at Walerga Park at the northwest corner of College Oak Drive and Palm Avenue, remembers the temporary detention center. Roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during the Second World War. 

Photograph of a Japanese family arriving at the Sacramento Assembly Center on May 20, 1942. Photo taken by Dorothea Lange, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration. 

#ThisWeekInHistory #Sacramento #sacramentohistory #SacHistoryMuseum

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## Credits

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## Tags

thisweekinhistory, sacramentohistory, sacramento, 934, sachistorymuseum

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