This project was conducted by Kai Zook, an undergraduate student at Rutgers University who was supervised by professor Andrew Urban in the American Studies and History departments. Research on Seabrook Farms by Professor Urban and Rutgers students has been ongoing since 2015.
By compiling and organizing existing records that were produced by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), the goal of this project is to use data on the individuals and families relocated to Seabrook Farms to reveal patterns and demographic information contained within the “Final Accountability Reports.” The WRA used Final Accountability Reports to keep track of incarcerated Japanese Americans when they were released from camps to work, enlist in the army, or as the camps were closed.
Information in these reports includes the sex of incarcerated Japanese Americans; their marital statuses; the date of final departure from the camp where they were detained (also the date when they relocated to Seabrook Farms); as well as information on where individuals and families lived prior to their incarceration, their age, and the terms under which they left camp. Unlike the .pdf files that these reports were originally reproduced in, the “Relocation to Seabrook” project includes extracted and edited data from all 10 camps and how many people from each camp went to Seabrook – based on whether they indicated Bridgeton, New Jersey as their destination after departure. The outcome of this work is a searchable public database that previously was not possible with the .pdf files. The Final Accountability Reports can be found on Densho Digital Repository, which can be accessed here: http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-305/
