Final Accountability Roster

Alphabetical roster of inmates at each War Relocation Authority administered concentration camp prepared at closing that includes information on how each inmate left that camp, including the date and type of departure and the departure destination. The roster also includes birthdates, prewar locations, citizenship and marriage status, assembly center information, and dates of entry, among other information. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) published the Final Accountability Rosters for each camp as a microfilm publication in 2001. Densho incorporated data from the rosters into its Names Registry in 2020.

Statistical Sections

Statistical sections at each WRA camp prepared the Final Accountability Rosters (FAR) after each closed at the end of 1945, based on the earlier Dec. 31, 1944 Name-by-Name Roster. With one exception, camp statistical sections formed in mid-1943 or later, consolidating statistical work that had been done by various sections before then, in particular employment and housing sections. In most camps, the incoming census that resulted in the completion of Forms WRA–26 for all inmates was overseen by its employment section. The new statistical sections held the Forms 26 and Social Data Registration (SDR) forms that had been completed when inmates registered at Civil Control Stations prior to their forced removal, along with a variety of material that documented each inmate's activities while incarcerated and produced various regular reports tracking inmate comings and goings. [1]

In the fall of 1944, the WRA Washington, D.C. office asked camp statistical sections to prepare a name-by-name roster accounting for all inmates as of December 31, 1944, to be completed by January 31, 1945. White and inmate statistical section staff pored through their records to put together these rosters, facing a variety of problems in doing so. In several of the camps, labor was an issue, as fewer inmate workers were available as more left the concentration camps. At Manzanar , one inmate worker was assigned to the project full-time, another part-time, with some transferred from other sections. Workers also found existing records to have missing or conflicting information as well as issues with duplicate and married names. At Poston , records had been kept separately at the three sub-camps, leading to the discovery of many conflicts and errors when combined. [2]

A hint of the process can be gleaned from the Amache Statistical Section Final Report. There, "ten high school girls" were hired in October 1944 to create alphabetized pencil entries on eighteen column pads using train lists, various prior camp rosters, card files, and family folder files, while working on the project after school and on Saturday. After the pencil copy was completed by December 15, an inmate typist, Bessie Onoshi, typed out about 80% of the roster, "catching innumerable mistakes in alphabetizing, spelling of names, dates of birth, etc.," while working a full eight hours every day, all Saturday afternoons, several nights and Sunday to complete the task." The completed name-by-name roster looks just like the FARs, except that exit dates and destinations for inmates still in one of the camps as of December 31, 1944 are left blank. [3]

Statistical section workers added inmate departure information to the Dec. 31, 1944 roster to complete what was called a "Center Closing Roster" or "Name By Name Accounting Roster" after the closing of the camp. The term "Final Accountability Roster" does not appear in documents at the individual camp level; the term might have been assigned by the Washington, D.C. Statistical Section Office as a uniform name applied to the various final rosters prepared by each camp.

Contents and Limitations

The FARs include three types of information for each inmate. Basic demographic information includes the family number, sex, date of birth, marital status, citizenship status, alien registration number, and camp address. Information pertaining to arrival at that camp includes the "pre-evacuation address" (this is typically a city, not a street address), the type of entry (specifying which assembly center that inmate came from if applicable), and the date of entry. Departure information includes the type and date of departure, as well as the departure destination. The FARs for three of the camps—Poston, Jerome , and Minidoka —do not include camp addresses. The names are listed alphabetically, with families grouped together for all camps except for Tule Lake . The Tule Lake FAR lists names purely in alphabetical order, meaning that members of the same family might be separated by others with the same surname.

Contemporaneous assessments of the FAR data cite various potential problems. Poston's Eleanor Gorham wrote in her Statistics Section final report that the "lack of adequate records, and the accumulation of errors among records, as well as the difficulty of obtaining adequate personnel, made the accountability the most discouraging and unrewarding job of the section." She added that that the "incidence of error was very high, and the roster required many corrections after it was sent to Washington." Heart Mountain's R. E. Ulmer cited similar problems, but claimed that five months was "devoted to essential research, checking and double-checking, to render it 100% accurate." He also credits George Tsuchiya, who came to Minidoka in November 1945 from the Washington office and who was assigned "the long-delayed task of adjusting the lists of discrepancies previously mentioned, reviewing the name-by-name roster where necessary...." [4]

In 2020, Densho volunteers entered data from the FARs so as to make them searchable as part of its Names Registry, in combination with data from Form WRA-26. Scans of the original NARA microfilm of the FARs can also be downloaded from Densho's website.

Authored by Brian Niiya , Densho

For More Information

Final Accountability Rosters of Evacuees at Relocation Centers, 1944–46 . Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration Microfilm Publications M1865, 2001.

Names Registry , Densho Digital Repository.

Footnotes

  1. Statistics Section Final Reports for various WRA camps, Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Records (JAERR), Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf5j49n8kh/entire_text/ .
  2. Velma E. Woods, "The Statistics Section," [Manzanar Final Report], Jan. 1946, pp. 43–46, JAERR BANC MSS 67/14 c, folder O1.05:8, https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/k6zk5psf/?brand=oac4 ; [Eleanor Gorham], Final Report, Statistics Section [Poston], p. 77, JAERR BANC MSS 67/14 c, folder J5.50:24, https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/k6zw1szh/?brand=oac4 .
  3. Joseph L. Buckley, Final Report of Statistics Section, Amache, pp. 12–13, JAERR BANC MSS 67/14 c, folder L7.00:26, https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/k6p55vmn/?brand=oac4 .
  4. Gorham], Final Report, Statistics Section [Poston], 68; R. E. Ulmer, Heart Mountain Relocation Center Administrative Management Division Statistics Section Final Report, p. 4, JAERR BANC MSS 67/14 c, folder M1.05:3, https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/k6n58tj5/?brand=oac4 .

Last updated Jan. 27, 2022, 11:55 p.m..