Tule Lake Relocation Center was one of ten camps built by the government of the United States for Japanese Americans during World War II. Initially, Tule Lake was not distinguishable from the other nine camps in regard to its origins and major policies. Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, had authorized the U.S. Army to exclude civilian populations from designated zones when deemed necessary because of military necessity. Applied to people of Japanese descent living in the Far West, where most Japanese Americans lived, the initial order led subsequently to other policies in the spring of 1942, calling for the evacuation and detention of this minority group by the federal government. By the following autumn, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were concentrated in the ten "relocation centers," mile-square camps in which they lived behind barbed wire in tarpaper barracks, guarded by military police, and managed by a federal civilian agency, the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Within the camps, including Tule Lake, WRA arranged