© 2025 WBAA
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The history of internment camps in Arizona

WBUR
Published December 10, 2025 at 12:01 PM EST
Asign at the entrance to Camp Amache, the site of a former World War II-era Japanese-American internment camp in Granada, Colo. From 1942 to 1945, more than 7,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants were forcibly relocated to what was then called the Granada Relocation Center. They were part of the more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans ordered to relocation camps in California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah and Arkansas. (Russell Contreras/AP)
Russell Contreras/AP
Asign at the entrance to Camp Amache, the site of a former World War II-era Japanese-American internment camp in Granada, Colo. From 1942 to 1945, more than 7,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants were forcibly relocated to what was then called the Granada Relocation Center. They were part of the more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans ordered to relocation camps in California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah and Arkansas. (Russell Contreras/AP)

Long before World War II, the U.S. rounded up Native Americans and forced them onto reservations.

After the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1941, the U.S. rounded up another minority population, Japanese Americans. In Arizona, the federal government once again looked to Indian reservations, building two internment camps in the state on tribal lands.

KJZZ’s Gabriel Pietrorazio looked into the history and legacy of the sites.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2025 WBUR