This garden memorializes a time when this site, then the Tanforan Park Racetrack, was transformed into a temporary assembly center for persons of Japanese ancestry.

On February 19, 1942, in the absence of charges or due process of law, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This act set into motion the forced evacuation of 7800 San Francisco Bay Area Japanese Americans, who lived under armed guard for eight months in horse stalls and makeshift housing at the Tanforan Assembly Center.

They, along with 120,000 other Japanese American residing in the western states, were later forcibly removed to, and confined in, government detention camps in the nation's interior.

May we honor this period of history by our remembrance and just action.

Dedicated on September 29, 2007

Funding made possible by many former internees of Tanforan, descendents of the internees and other generous individuals and organizations.