The dark history of a short-lived World War II Japanese-American internment camp in Sacramento s Walerga Park Author: John Bartell Updated: 6:24 PM PDT May 23, 2021
SACRAMENTO, Calif. In 1942 interstate 80 didn’t exist in Sacramento. Back then, the land below the concrete and asphalt would looked much different. In 1942 a dark time in American history was underway a dark time that Janice Yamaoka Luszczak says Sacramento would play a part in it. “There was a lot of prejudice building up over the years. Lots of discrimination,” says Luszczak.
Luszczak is historian and Sacramento Chapter president of the Japanese American Citizens League. She says, there’s little trace of it now but at the start of World War Two Walerga Park off Palm Avenue and I-80 was once a temporary detention center that housed nearly 5,000 Japanese-Americans. “Some people were thinking this was going to be like what the Germans were doing, and they were exterminatin