Rohwer Relocation Center Memorial Cemetery

Rohwer Relocation Center Memorial Cemetery is the best preserved part of a World War II camp in Desha County where Japanese Americans were held. The camp opened on September 18, 1942, and closed on November 30, 1945. More than 10,000 people passed through, and over two thirds were American citizens. At its peak the camp held 8,475 people in about 500 acres of tar-papered barracks. The National Park Service says the cemetery is one of only three surviving Japanese American confinement site cemeteries in the United States.

The incarcerated people designed and built it in 1943 and 1944. A concrete obelisk dedicated on June 24, 1945, honors everyone who died at Rohwer, and carvings on it, including an egret and a peacock, bear Japanese and English inscriptions. A second monument, dedicated on November 4, 1945, carries the names of men from Rohwer killed in action with the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, while their families were still incarcerated. Twenty-four low concrete headstones are marked with a flower for Buddhists or a cross for Christians. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1992.

The site is on a gravel road off Arkansas Highway 1, north of the community of Rohwer. A replica guard tower serves as a kiosk, and audio panels narrated by George Takei, who was held at Rohwer, mark a self-guided walk along the camp's southern edge. The Arkansas State University site suggests starting at the museum in McGehee.