Where cotton fields now stand, 432 barracks once housed about 8,000 Japanese Americans in a camp surrounded by a barbed wire fence linking eight guard towers where armed guards watched the camp and internees. The camp was divided by purpose into internee barracks, schools, military police outside the fence, open areas, a hospital, and administration. The brick smoke stack in the distance marked the northern border of the camp and the hospital grounds. Each internee barracks block included twelve housing barracks for three to six families, a lavatory and laundry building, a kitchen and dining building, and a recreational building. There were thirty-six internee barracks blocks in the camp, housing up to 8,000 people at a time.