Poston was one of ten War Relocation Authority centers built in 1942 on the Colorado River Indian Reservation in Arizona, where 17,867 persons of Japanese ancestry, most of them United States citizens, were interned after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, authorizing the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans from strategic western states during World War II. Internees began arriving on May 8, 1942, and by August the camp had become Arizona’s second largest city, organized into three units with barracks blocks, mess halls, laundries, latrines, showers, schools, medical facilities, farms, churches, sports, art, and a weekly newsletter, all under confinement in harsh desert conditions. Residents worked for low monthly wages, built schools and agricultural projects, and created community life despite hardship, while more than 1,200 internees from Poston volunteered for military service, many in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and others later left for farm labor, college, employment, and resettlement as exclusion orders were revoked and the centers closed by the end of 1945. The site stands as a reminder of the wartime hysteria, racial prejudice, and fear that led Americans of Japanese ancestry to be removed from their homes, denied constitutional rights and due process, and held captive by their own country.