The Catalina Federal Honor Camp, o
Tucson Federal Prison Camp
located in the

Santa Catalina Mountains The Santa Catalina Mountains, commonly referred to as the Catalina Mountains or the Catalinas, are north and northeast of Tucson in Arizona, United States, on Tucson's north perimeter. The mountain range is the most prominent in the Tucson area, w ...

, held men subject to the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

incarceration of Japanese Americans. It had no security fence, boundaries were marked with stones painted white. 45 of the 46 prisoners were draft resisters and objectors of conscience transferred from camps in Colorado, Arizona and Utah, although

Gordon Hirabayashi was an American sociologist, best known for his principled resistance to the Japanese American internment during World War II, and the court case which bears his name, '' Hirabayashi v. United States''. Early life Hirabayashi was born in Seatt ...

, who had challenged the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, was also held here."Tucson (detention facility)"
''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed 11 June 2014).J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord, R. Lord. ''Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites''

National Park Service: 2000 (accessed 23 January 2016). The camp was established in the Coronado National Forest in 1939, under the authority of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, with plans to use inmate labor to build a highway connecting

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

to the mountains. Expanded in the 1940s, the Honor Camp consisted of four prisoner barracks, a mess hall, laundry facilities, power and storage facilities, a garage, a vocational shop, one classroom, an administration building, fifteen cottages for prison staff, and water and sewage systems; a baseball field and farmland were also part of the Honor Camp facilities. Most of the draft resisters brought to the camp were transferred from the Amache, Colorado (a concentration camp), although others came from Poston, Arizona and Topaz, Utah; all were transported in leg irons and under armed guard. Gordon Hirabayashi, on the other hand, convicted in 1943 of violating one of the civilian exclusion orders against Japanese Americans when he refused to go along with the government "relocation", hitchhiked from

Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south of the Cana ...

to the Catalina labor camp.Cherstin M. Lyon
"Gordon Hirabayashi"
''Densho Encyclopedia'' (accessed 11 June 2014). The inmates performed road work for what would become the Catalina Highway, drilling holes for dynamite, breaking rocks with sledgehammers and clearing trees, as well as growing food and cooking for the prison population. Hirabayashi served out his two 90-day sentences, and the draft resisters were pardoned in 1947, but the prison remained open until the highway was completed in 1951, when it became a labor camp for juvenile offenders. In 1967, the State of Arizona took over the camp and converted it to a youth rehabilitation center. The rehabilitation center closed in 1973 and the buildings were destroyed soon after, but many foundations and walls of the old structures remain. Today, the site serves as a campground and trail head, and is known as the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site to honor the camp's most well-known inmateJim Erickson
"Site of prison camp renamed for inmate interned during WWII"
''Arizona Daily Star'', 8 Nov 1999 (accessed 10 June 2014). (whose conviction was overturned in 1987, after it was discovered that government officials withheld evidence that would have supported his case).

References

External links

David Leighton, "Street Smarts: Road named for old prison camp," ''Arizona Daily Star'', Aug. 18, 2014
{{coord, 32.3371, -110.7199, type:landmark_region:US-AZ, display=title Internment camps for Japanese Americans History of Arizona