Catalina Federal Honor Camp
HISTORY · CONCENTRATION CAMP
Catalina Federal Honor Camp
History
1
Catalina Federal Honor Camp, established in 1939 in the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona, supplied prison labor for the road that became the Catalina Highway. During World War II, it also held 46 Japanese American prisoners, most of them draft resisters and conscientious objectors transferred from other camps, along with Gordon Hirabayashi after his 1943 conviction for violating an exclusion order. Inmates built the highway and supported the camp through farming and cooking. The camp later became a juvenile facility before closing in 1973. Now known as the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site, it endures as a reminder of wartime imprisonment, resistance, and later redress.
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