Temporary Detention Camp for Japanese Americans, Santa Anita

The plaque calls what happened at this racetrack special usage. The Army held 18,719 people here between March and October 1942, most of them American citizens, and more than 8,500 of them lived in converted horse stalls. For the first four months there were 150 showers. This was the only one of these camps to run a camouflage net factory, and inmates wove the nets under military contract. On August 4, 1942, after guards searched the barracks for anything written in Japanese, people rebelled and military police moved in.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mission San Gabriel Arcangel — 4.5 mi
  The fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.
• Colorado Street Bridge — 6.7 mi
  Beaux-Arts concrete arches curving 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco, opened in 1913 and later a link in Route 66.
• Santa Monica Pier — 27 mi
  Where the Mother Road runs out of continent, and where the End of the Trail sign gives the drive somewhere to finish.

More markers nearby

• Reid-Baldwin Adobe — 0.4 mi
• E. J. Baldwin's Queen Anne Cottage — 0.5 mi
• Savannah Memorial Park — 4.1 mi
• El Monte — First Southern California Settlement by Immigrants from United States — 4.4 mi