The Gathering at Tule Lake

On 1 November 1943, War Relocation Authority Director Dillon S. Myer visited the Tule Lake Segregation Center in California. At lunchtime, leaders of the Daihyo Sha Kai, a group of inmates who spoke for their fellow prisoners, spread word that Myer had arrived at 11:00 a.m. They called on families to assemble for a peaceful protest.

By 1:30 p.m., between 5,000 and 10,000 men, women and children stood outside the camp headquarters. The gathering was not confined to a delegation or a small group of spokesmen. Families had assembled in numbers large enough to surround the administration building, where Myer and the Center Director were inside.

Young men took positions at the building’s exits “to see that no Caucasian left.” The arrangement turned the visit into a confrontation over access and movement, not simply a meeting on the administration’s terms. An official account later described Myer as virtually imprisoned in the building, though the people gathered outside saw the assembly as peaceful. He consented to see the negotiating committee.

The committee gave the protest a channel for discussion. Myer and the Center Director conferred with spokesman George Kuratomi about the internees’ grievances. They pledged to make improvements. The protesters then returned to their barracks.

The sequence was plain: the Daihyo Sha Kai circulated the news, families gathered, the headquarters was surrounded, and the officials met with a committee. The protest’s scale mattered. It brought thousands of people to the administration building and secured a conference with Myer and the Center Director. The grievances included farm safety after an October truck accident that killed one worker and set off a strike, and claims that staff were taking food from the camp warehouse. The immediate result was plain: the committee was heard, and the crowd dispersed to the barracks.

For Myer, the visit became an encounter with the people the camp held, rather than a routine inspection. For the internees, the gathering ended with a pledge from the officials and a return to barracks. The building had been surrounded; the negotiating committee had met with its visitors; and the crowd had gone back.