Most of us know something about Japanese internment camps. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor hysteria ran high, pressuring President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. It forced the removal and incarceration of more than 120,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry (Nikkei) in ten prison camps across the West, based mostly on their ethnicity. Some 13,000 ended up at what is sometimes called the Hunt Camp at Minidoka, Idaho.
Less well known is a program that brought many of those incarcerated Americans to work in the beet fields of Bingham County.
Sugar is a staple product at any time. During World War II it was a staple that was in short supply. We think of sugar as a basic baking ingredient and something to put on our cereal. But in wartime it takes on new importance. It can be converted to industrial alcohol to be used in the making of synthetic rubber and munitions. It was so important to the latter, that the United States Beet Sugar Association stated that a fifth of an acre of sugar beets went up in smoke every time a sixteen-inch gun was fired.
The federal government encouraged farmers to plant more sugar beets, since the supply of cane sugar imported from the Philippines was cut off during the war. But planting beets isn’t enough. Farmers needed workers to cultivate and harvest their crops. Many men who might have once hoed the rows were now working in defense industries or fighting in the war.
Volunteers stepped up to thin beets. Business owners closed shops early, members of various clubs stepped up, and Idaho Fish and Game employees spent some time in the fields. A newspaper editor, a college president, and countless clerks volunteered. But more help was needed.
The Japanese internment camps became a source of labor for the wartime sugar harvests. Laborers and their families moved into the beet fields in nine western states. The Farm Labor Camp in Shelley was the center of the activity in Bingham County.
The program lasted about three years, employing several hundred workers in Bingham County from the internment camp at Minidoka.
Less well known is a program that brought many of those incarcerated Americans to work in the beet fields of Bingham County.
Sugar is a staple product at any time. During World War II it was a staple that was in short supply. We think of sugar as a basic baking ingredient and something to put on our cereal. But in wartime it takes on new importance. It can be converted to industrial alcohol to be used in the making of synthetic rubber and munitions. It was so important to the latter, that the United States Beet Sugar Association stated that a fifth of an acre of sugar beets went up in smoke every time a sixteen-inch gun was fired.
The federal government encouraged farmers to plant more sugar beets, since the supply of cane sugar imported from the Philippines was cut off during the war. But planting beets isn’t enough. Farmers needed workers to cultivate and harvest their crops. Many men who might have once hoed the rows were now working in defense industries or fighting in the war.
Volunteers stepped up to thin beets. Business owners closed shops early, members of various clubs stepped up, and Idaho Fish and Game employees spent some time in the fields. A newspaper editor, a college president, and countless clerks volunteered. But more help was needed.
The Japanese internment camps became a source of labor for the wartime sugar harvests. Laborers and their families moved into the beet fields in nine western states. The Farm Labor Camp in Shelley was the center of the activity in Bingham County.
The program lasted about three years, employing several hundred workers in Bingham County from the internment camp at Minidoka.
A young boy made a pet of a mourning dove at the Shelley Farm Camp. Photo taken by Lee Russell of the Farm Services Administration, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Internees from the Minidoka Camp were housed temporarily in tents at the Shelley Farm Camp so that they could help with the sugar beet crop in the county. Photo taken by Lee Russell of the Farm Services Administration, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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