Portland (detention facility)

The Portland Assembly Center was located on the site of the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Pavilion in North Portland, essentially a series of interconnected buildings under one roof that had been used to house and showcase livestock prior to the war. Inmates there faced extreme heat, fly infestations, foul odors, and extreme crowding even by " assembly center " standards. The nearly 3,700 inmates mostly came from the Portland area and from much of the rest of Oregon with the exception of Hood River and from the Yakima Valley in Washington, a mixture of urban and rural populations. Open for a little over four months, it had one of the more active inmate organizations, ranging from an advisory council that met regularly with camp managers and relatively extensive recreation and education programs. A good number of Portland inmates left the camp for a time to work the eastern Oregon sugar beet fields, presaging the many who would do so from WRA camps in the fall. At the end, Washingtonians were mostly sent to Heart Mountain , while Oregonians went to Minidoka ; many inmates who had grown close to other inmates in the camp protested this arrangement, asking in vain to be sent to the same camp.