By the end of 1942 the first evacuees began arriving at the internment camps. On March 18, 1942 by Executive Order 9102 the War Relocation Agency (WRA) was formed to oversee the newly created internment camps. The army would no longer be responsible for the evacuation of the Japanese-Americans. In order to make the relocation of the evacuees to the internment camps more cooperative and comfortable the WRA published Questions and Answers for Evacuees. This pamphlet tried to answer many of the evacuee's uncertainties concerning the evacuation process.
It was widely believed that the new WRA internment camps would be better than the temporary assembly centers. Unfortunately, the evacuees encountered many of the previous problems of the assembly centers. The train trips to the internment camps were often uncomfortable. In a majority of the cases the toilets flooded and ventilation was poor due to the shades being drawn on the windows. Furthermore some of the guards harassed evacuees. One evacuee told the following story:
At Parker, Arizona, we were transferred to buses. With baggage and carryalls hanging from my arm, I was contemplating what I could leave behind since my husband was not allowed to come to my aid. A soldier said, "Let me help, put your arm out." He proceeded to pile everything on my arm. And to my horror, he placed my two-month-old baby on top of the stack. He then pushed with the butt of the gun and told me to get off the train, knowing when I stepped off the train my baby would fall to the ground. I refused. But he kept prodding and ordering me to move. I will always be thankful [that] a lieutenant checking the cars came upon us. He took the baby down, gave her to me, and then ordered the soldier to carry all our belongings to the bus and see that I was seated and then report back to him (quoted in Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians 1997: 151).
Once the evacuees stepped onto the grounds of the internment camps they officially came under the jurisdiction of the WRA. The internment camps were located in interior desolate area and were built from scrap. Like the assembly centers they were surrounded by barbed wire, watchtowers, and armed guards. The evacuees once again found themselves in a prison.
