Video: 'George Takei Visits Tule Lake Concentration Camp'

(Wednesday, May 27, 1942; during World War II) — The Tule Lake War Relocation Center, the second of ten concentration camps constructed in 1942 by the United States government to incarcerate Japanese Americans forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast, opened today in Modoc and Siskiyou counties in Northern California.

Video: 'Vivid Memories Of Tule Lake Internment Camp | The Daily 360 | The New York Times'

The camp initially held approximately 11,800 Japanese Americans, who were primarily from the following counties: Sacramento, California (4,984), King, Washington (2,703), and Hood River, Oregon (425).

Video: 'Tule Lake: Bad Camp'

The facility was renamed the Tule Lake Segregation Center in 1943 and was used as a maximum security, segregation camp to separate and hold those prisoners considered disloyal or disruptive to the operations of other camps. Inmates from other camps were sent here to segregate them from the general population. Draft resisters and others who protested the injustices of the camps, including by their answers on the loyalty questionnaire, were sent here.

At its peak, Tule Lake Segregation Center (with 18,700 inmates) was the largest of the ten camps and the most controversial. 29,840 people were held there over the four years it was open.