War Agency Liquidation Unit

Agency set up in July of 1946 to conclude the work of the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which closed at the end of June 1946. Activated on July 1 at the behest of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes , the War Agency Liquidation Unit (WALU) finished up a number of tasks left by the WRA. These included various loose ends tied to fiscal matters, including $1.4 in unpaid bills, some of that owed to former inmates in the form of unclaimed checks for clothing allowances or salary. Legal issues included the settling of outstanding land agreements and contracts as well as claims for lost or damaged property that had been stored with the WRA. WALU also organized the massive amount of records the WRA had generated, arraigning for its transfer to the National Archives. Perhaps most significantly, WALU ran a study on resettlement that resulted in the publication of the report People in Motion: The Postwar Adjustment of the Evacuated Japanese Americans , released in 1947 under the directorship of Robert M. Cullum. The original director of WALU was Boyd N. Larson, who had been a finance officer at Heart Mountain and also for the WRA's Washington DC office. He was succeeded by Robert K. Candlin. WALU began with a staff of 81, including many Japanese Americans. [1]

Authored by Brian Niiya , Densho

Footnotes

  1. For a summary of WALU's activities, see John Kitasako, "Washington News-Letter: Liquidation Unit Is All That's Left of War Relocation Agency," Pacific Citizen , Dec. 7, 1946, 2, accessed on Jan. 12, 2018 at http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-pc-18-49/ . For other reports on WALU activities, see Pacific Citizen , Aug. 31, 1946, 3; Dec. 28, 1946, 1; and Feb. 8, 1947, 7, all accessed on Feb. 22, 2015 at http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-pc-18-35/ , http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-pc-18-52/ , and http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-pc-19-6/ .

Last updated Jan. 12, 2018, 7:53 p.m..