Relocation center sites were chosen for their distance from the West Coast and for their suitability and isolation as secured, closed camps. For the Japanese Americans who lived at Rohwer, the loss of their former lives was profound. The internees left their mark on the local community by teaching new methods of irrigation for row crops, creating distinctive arts and crafts, and impressing teachers with how hard their students worked. Outside the relocation center, local Arkansans were themselves often confined by poverty and Jim Crow segregation. Some locals who lived in poverty coveted the food, health care, and education available to camp internees, which led to resentment and misunderstanding. The Rohwer camp was sited among flat cotton fields on land previously purchased by the Farm Security Administration for future subsistence homesteads for low-income Southern families, an irony because the land instead became an incarceration site for people being deprived of their inherent rights.