Watching Buses Arrive
Watching the buses arrive with new incarcerees, photographer Dorothea Lange, May 19, 1943, Stockton Assembly Center, California. (Photo - NARA)
The Stockton Assembly Center was built at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds site, just a few blocks southeast of the Stockton city center. The detention facility was populated from May 10 to October 17, a total of 160 days. The site included 125 barracks in the racetrack infield, along with forty more east of the fairgrounds.
The population of the Stockton Assembly Center came almost mostly from the surrounding San Joaquin County area. The capacity was 4,390, with a maximum of 4,271.
Upon the closing of the camp, nearly all of the inmates were transferred to the Rohwer, Arkansas camp for long-term confinement, with a handful being sent to Gila River, Arizona.