Camp Kohler

Coordinates: 38°40′27″N 121°21′59″W / 38.674042°N 121.366481°W / 38.674042; -121.366481

Camp Kohler was located in the Northeast corner of unincorporated Sacramento County until it was destroyed by a fire in 1947. (site ref sac metro fire dept)^[1]

Camp Kohler had many uses throughout its existence. It began as a migrant farm worker camp and was later used to house over 4,700 Japanese Americans who had been removed from the West Coast during World War II. One of fifteen temporary detention sites known as "assembly centers" and run by the Wartime Civilian Control Administration, the Sacramento site, called the Sacramento Assembly Center, confined Japanese Americans from Sacramento and San Joaquin Counties while they waited to be transferred to a more permanent and isolated War Relocation Authority camp. Also known as the Walerga Assembly Center, it was one of the smaller WCCA camps and only operated for 52 days, from May 6 to June 26, 1942. Upon closure of the assembly center, the site was turned over to the Army Signal Corps and dedicated as Camp Kohler. After the war, returning Japanese Americans, prevented from owning their pre-war homes by discriminatory legislation and faced with a severe housing shortage, were often unable to find housing, and 234 families temporarily lived at Camp Kohler in late 1945.^[2]

Today, the former Signal Corps camp site is part of a residential subdivision just outside the city of Sacramento, in a community called Foothill Farms. There is a sign on Roseville Road that says Camp Kohler, 5922 Roseville Rd, Gate 201. It is next to a fenced area that has a building and a tower with a rotating antenna. There also appear to be remnants of the camp in Walerga Park at the northwest corner of Palm Avenue and College Oak Drive,^[1] where there is a plaque commemorating California Historical Landmark #934, Temporary Detention Camps for Japanese Americans-Sacramento Assembly Center.^[3]

(Sacramento Assembly Center, Walerga Engineer Depot)

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