Between 1942 and 1945, the War Relocation Authority forced over ten thousand Japanese Americans into internment camps hastily constructed across the country. The rural towns of Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas, located in the historically racially-charged Delta region, housed two of these internment camps. There is a distinct lack of academic research on these two particular internment camps and especially the resultant violence perpetrated by the white population against the Japanese-American internees. This research project intends to further investigate the racial tensions between planter and yeoman class whites, African-Americans, and Japanese-American internees by exploring the racially-charged modern history of the region, analyzing specific instances of violence and prejudice against the Japanese-Americans as case studies, and prove that the cause of this tension is the prevalent white supremacist mentality combined with the impoverished status of the region. Primary source documents obtained during a research trip to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, including numerous newspaper editorials from local newspapers and the Rohwer camp newspaper, WRA commission documents, and internee interviews are utilized to illustrate the history of the region and the resultant tension.
