The Lost Children of Denshō

To learn more about each camp, click on the camp name in the sidebar or click on any pin on the map itself.

During World War II, the United States War Relocation Authority (WRA) set up and oversaw ten incarceration camps west of the Mississippi for Japanese Americans. These camps were removed from the West Coast and removed from the detainees' home communities.

During the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, approximately 35-40% and as many as 50% of the detainees were infants and children between birth and 18 years old due to so many families being detained. Over the time of Japanese American incarceration in 1942 - 1946, at least 285 infants and children between birth and 19 years old (the Denshō dataset follows Centers for Disease Control [CDC] age groups) died in four of the ten camps. Their causes of death are coded in the data using CDC causes of death codes and for this investigation do not include stillbirths. These four camps have total infant and death counts per year from 1942 - 1946, along with causes of death for those children. The original data for these four camps (Tule Lake, Gila River, Poston/"Colorado River," and Topaz/"Central Utah") was color coded by camp, but the ink degraded over the decades before the papers were scanned and while red for Gila River and black for Colorado River (Poston) are mostly clear in the tables, it is almost impossible to determine which data are specific to the other two camps (see Figure 1). It is important to note here that the original, handwritten tables covering 1942 - 1946 by year appear to include color-coded data for these four camps for all age groups from birth to over 65, not just for infants and children under 19 years old, which means that other tables in the dataset might only cover these four camps, even as several of the tables list all ten camps as headers. The total deaths are consistent across all the tables at 1,862, so this is difficult to determine conclusively.

The graph below shows the incorrect total deaths for infants and children from birth to 19 years old totaled across these four incarceration camps. When the original, handwritten data was being summarized and transcribed by age group and gender for the four camps represented in the dataset, an error was made: The female deaths for 1942 were written a line lower than the male deaths in all age groups and so the totals for each age group were incorrect, at least for birth to 19 years old. One female teenager between 15 and 19 years old was inadvertently added to the female 20 - 24 years old age group, a transcription error from the by-year tables that presumably cascaded down the entire 1942 column in the Total Deaths By Age Group Table (see Figure 2). This incorrect total, which was carried over to the scanned text, is shown in the graph below. The error can clearly be seen in 1942, which shows here that the highest death rate for that year was children between one and four years old.

By examining the tables covering each year from 1942 - 1946 in the original dataset, cleaning the data, and calculating the data totals, the error mentioned above was confirmed as occurring in the female deaths for the 15-19 year old age group and the corrected totals for each year by age group and gender as well as total overall by age group and gender for the four camps covered in the dataset (Tule Lake, Gila River, Poston/"Colorado River," and Topaz/"Central Utah") are shown in the graph below. Both of the following corrected graphs clearly show that the age group with the highest number of deaths under 19 years old was infants from birth to a year old for the entire time the camps remained open, 1942 - 1946.

In the same corrected data, divided out by gender as well as age group and year, it becomes clear not only that infants under a year old were dying at the highest rate of all infants and children under 19 years old in the four documented camps, but also that, with the exception of 1942 and 1946, infant boys were dying at a higher rate than infant girls. In 1942, four more infant girls than boys died, and in 1946, the only death of an infant or child under 19 years old in any of these four camps was an infant girl at Tule Lake, which was noted by camp name in the 1945 Total Deaths by Age Group and Causes of Death hand-written table and added in there. She was also included in the 1946 Total Deaths by Age Group and Causes of Death table, and it was noted there that all deaths in 1946, regardless of age group, were at Tule Lake.

The causes of death for infants under a year old were specifically noted in the Denshō dataset, presumably because they were dying at a higher rate than any other group under 19 years old. The leading cause of death for infants under a year old was coded as 157: Congenital Malformations and a second notable cause of death was coded as 161a/b/c: Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life. There was also one infant whose death was coded as 30: Syphilis. In the original scanned, handwritten tally sheets from the 1940s, 157-161: Congenital Malformations and Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life are not clearly broken out into their component causes. After reviewing the CDC Vital Statistics of the United States documents for the years of incarceration (1942 - 1946), these causes were broken out to:

• 157: Congenital Malformations
• 159: Premature Birth (No Cause Given)
• 160: Injury at Birth
• 161a/b/c: Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life

There was no further clarification for specific diseases peculiar to the first year of life as causes of death aggregated in the codes 161a/b/c by the CDC. The data was cleaned, re-coded, and analyzed to create the following graph, which clearly shows that not only were infants under a year old dying at the highest rate in the four camps, but that infants from one day to six days old were dying at the highest rate across all infant age groups (Under one day old, 1-6 days old, 7-13 days old, 14-29 days old, 1-11 months old) in the incarceration camps between 1942 - 1946. Once the data was re-coded, the most prevalent listed causes of death for infants under seven days old are, in order:

• 159: Premature Birth (No Cause Given)
• 160: Injury at Birth
• 161a/b/c: Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life, and
• 157: Congenital Malformations.

The four incarceration camps with tracked infant and child mortality data are shown in the following series of maps. The total deaths for each year are shown across all four camps because the original data did not include information on how many of these deaths occurred in each of the four camps in any year.

Notable causes of death for infants and children from birth to 19 years old from 1942 - 1946 in the four camps tracked in the original data, excluding stillbirths and 157-161a/b/c: Congenital Malformations and Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life, are:

• 13-22: Tuberculosis, All Types in 1942 and 1943: A total of 14 infants and children,
• 30: Syphilis in 1942 and 1943: One female infant under a year old and one adolescent boy between 10-14 years old, respectively,
• 163-164: Suicide in 1943 and 1944: One teenage girl in 1943 and two teenage boys in 1944, all between 15-19 years old,
• 63b: Exophthalmic Goiter: One male toddler in 1944,
• 170: Automobile Accidents in 1943 and 1944: Six children, three of whom were boys between 1-4 years old, two of whom were boys between 5-9 years old, and one of whom was a girl between 5-9 years old,
• 165-168: Homicide: One female toddler in 1945,
• 171-195: Other Accidents, 1942-1945: A total of 13 infants and children,
• 199-200: Ill-Defined and Unknown Causes, 1942-1945: A total of five infants and children, and
• All Other Causes, 1942-1945: A total of 37 infants and children.

The most disturbing thing about the last three of these causes of death (171-195, 199-200, and All Other Causes) is that no full definition of what actually caused these deaths is given in the data. In the case of the infants and children under 19 years old who died of All Other Causes, no further information whatsoever is given, either in the dataset or in the CDC Causes of Death tables, which points to a lack of care on the part of the recording officials to determine causes of death for these children.

The table specific to infants under a year old does give some more granularity for two categories of accidents, with the following data:

• 169-181: Accidents, Including transportation accidents of all kinds, poisoning, food poisoning, fires, and burns: One infant between one and 11 months old, and
• 183-195: Accidents, Including injury by firearms, drowning, or cutting or piercing; death by falls or crushing; cataclysms; injury by animals; excessive cold or heat; injury by venomous animals; electrocution; hunger or thirst; and medical accidents resulting from surgery, sequelae of preventive immunizations, and airway obstruction or suffocation: Two infants, one between 14 - 29 days old and one between one and 11 months old.

An important note here is that these broad accident categories include causes of death that clearly point to the living conditions in the camps, including excessive heat or cold, hunger, thirst, food poisoning, burns, fires, and airway obstruction/suffocation (poor ventilation).

The aggregated category of 157-161: Congenital Malformations and Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life is consistently the most prevalent cause of death for all infants and children between birth and 19 years old totaled in every year tracked. This cause of death, while primarily listed for infants, shows up in the data as follows:

• 1942 - 1946: A total 128 infants under a year old have this listed as their cause of death,
• 1942: One girl between 1-4 years old has this listed as her cause of death,
• 1943: One boy between 1-4 years old has this listed as his cause of death, and
• 1944: Two teenage girls between 15-19 years old have this listed as their cause of death.

Several infants and children have the code 199-200: Ill-Defined/Unknown listed as a cause of death. This code includes Sudden Death with no further explanation in the CDC documentation, leading to the hypothesis that the infants with this cause of death code assigned may have been dying of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). This again points in some cases to the living conditions in the camps such as poorly ventilated smoke from stoves used for heat in all of the camps; regular dust storms in all camps in California, Arizona, and Colorado; extreme winter weather conditions in the Wyoming, Idaho, and potentially Utah camps; and swamp conditions in the Arkansas camps.

Finally, as discussed previously in the Infant Deaths section, several infants and children were listed as having 171-195: All Other Accidents as a cause of death. This cause of death code notably includes burns, hunger, and thirst as causes of death, which points not only to accidents (burns), but also malnutrition and water scarcity (hunger and thirst).

In 1942, as shown in the corrected data, there were 48 total infant and child deaths in the four camps color-coded in the data. Also notable in the data as mentioned previously is the high number of deaths listed as 157-161: Congenital Malformations and Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life. When broken out, this includes Premature Births, Injury at Birth, and Congenital Malformations. This indicates that many infants were dying of premature birth and birth impacts and injuries, things that may have been prevented if the medical staff in the camps had access to the resources available at their home clinics and hospitals, where they worked before detainment, and if overall living conditions were better. Likewise, these are causes of death that may have been prevented if the pregnant mothers in the camps were in their home neighborhoods with better living conditions and community and family support as well as better nutrition, including more regular protein sources for B-complex vitamins.

In 1943, there were 107 total infant and child deaths in the four camps. The most children died in 1943, and like all other years tracked, most of the children who died in 1943 were under a year old. There was one suicide of a teenage girl between 15 - 19 years old during this period at one of these four camps, but the camp location is not specified and the original ink is too faded/deteriorated to determine with confidence at which camp this suicide occurred. This was the first suicide noted for detainees under 19 years old in the dataset used. There are also two child victims of automobile accidents in the 1943 data, the first time this cause of death appears for detainees under 19 years old in the Denshō dataset used for this project.

In 1944, there were 78 total infant and child deaths. There was less tuberculosis, but we see 63b: Exophthalmic Goiter, commonly known as Graves' Disease, which is generally caused by a treatable thyroid condition (hyperthyroidism), as the cause of death for one toddler boy. The two suicides are two teenage boys between 15 - 19 years old, but the camp locations are not specified and the original ink is too faded/deteriorated to determine with confidence at which camp or camps these suicides occurred. Automobile accidents as a cause of death appear again in 1944, for three boys and one girl.

In 1945, there were 51 total infant and child deaths in the four camps color-coded in the data. This year also included the first homicide recorded as a cause of death for children under 19 years old in the four camps covered in the dataset: A girl between and one and four years old was killed. It is, again, impossible to determine at which camp this homicide occurred by just looking at the original, handwritten tables because the ink has degraded too far to make a confident identification based on ink color.

Because access to the Incident Cards for Tule Lake Camp was available, research in the cards produced the following, redacted information about the violent homicide of a female child (no age given) at Tule Lake in December, 1945. Her cause of death, based on these cards, would be specifically 168: Homicide (All Other Means) because she was not killed by firearms or by a bladed or piercing instrument. This is very likely the child homicide in the dataset used here because it is also the only child homicide in the dataset and in the Incident Cards for Tule Lake Camp:

In 1946, one infant girl under the age of one year died in Tule Lake camp, with a cause of death listed as 157-161: Congenital Malformations and Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life. This category includes premature birth, birth injury, congenital health conditions that could cause death in infants and children, and diseases peculiar/specific to the first year of life that could cause deaths of infants under a year old. There is no further indication in the data of exactly how old she was, exactly when her death occurred, or which of these conditions she had, but given overall camp living conditions and medical care conditions, any of these four conditions could have caused her death.

Japanese Americans were initially removed to Wartime Civil Control Administration (WCCA) centers around the western United States before being sent to the hastily constructed War Relocation Authority (WRA) incarceration camps starting in March, 1942. The WCCA centers were hastily requisitioned assembly sites: Tanforan WCCA center was a disused racetrack outside of San Francisco where entire families were housed in individual horse stalls while they awaited removal to the WRA camps. Whole communities were splintered; for example, the 34,141 Japanese Americans removed from the Los Angeles area were split up and sent to all ten camps. Detainees from the Seattle/King County, Washington area were sent from their temperate, oceanic climate to the desert and high heat of Arizona and the bitter, dry cold of South Central Idaho. Detainees from San Francisco were sent as far as rural Arkansas.

Once detainees arrived in the camps, they were faced with living conditions far removed from what they had known in their own homes. The barracks did not have running water or consistent electricity, and heat was generally provided by a wood-burning stove in the corner. At Topaz camp in Utah, detainees arrived to an active construction site; several of them slept on the floor in the mess hall near the stove, and others slept in roofless barracks or were taken in by other families, placing far more people in one living space than it was ever intended to house. Also at Topaz, the first baby born there made her debut on a hastily requisitioned dining table due to the hospital not yet being finished. At Gila River and Poston in Arizona, coccidioidomycosis, with its flu-like and pneumonia-like symptoms, was endemic due to close quarters. At Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas, malaria was endemic due to the swamp locations of the camps. Because many of the camps were in the desert or on the high plains, extreme temperatures were the norm, and at Granada/Amache in far eastern Colorado, dust storms were so frequent that asthma was a common illness and reason to see the doctor. Close living quarters in all the camps ultimately led to 11% of the total deaths for all ages (birth - 65+) between 1942 - 1946 being caused by 13-22: Tuberculosis (all forms).

Other camps were in a similar, unfinished state when detainees arrived at the start of incarceration in 1942. Heart Mountain Camp, in northern Wyoming, was full of tar-paper barracks that local construction workers bragged about taking "only 58 minutes to build" individually. Construction workers for this camp were recruited with the phrase "if you can drive a nail, you can qualify as a carpenter." It comes as little surprise that the family barracks in the camps were shoddily built, uninsulated, cramped, and subject to damage from the weather. The cramped quarters in the camps, in fact, led to frequent outbreaks of diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia. Individual barracks in the camps contained several family "apartments," assigned based on family size, but none of the barracks had cooking facilities, bathrooms, or running water. Bathrooms and laundry facilities were in a central building and separated by gender.

Detainees ate in mess halls, largely separated by age, meaning that children frequently ate with their peers and not with their parents and siblings. Food quality and quantity was a serious problem in the camps, with insufficient food, poor nutrition, and food-borne illness regular occurrences, and an overall lack of protein sources available in the food served. Poor nutrition could have been the cause of one little boy's death from 63b: Exophthalmic Goiter, commonly known as Graves' Disease, which is caused by hyperthyroidism. While Graves' Disease is also hereditary, it can be caused by a lack of iodine in the diet, and iodine is crucial for the regulated production of thyroid hormones. The harsh living conditions and malnutrition, and especially the lack of protein with its B-complex vitamins, including the folic acid crucial to a healthy pregnancy, could also be a direct cause of so many infant deaths, especially in the case of premature and traumatic births and serious congenital problems (159: Premature Birth [no cause given], 160: Injury at Birth, and 157: Congenital Malformations), as well as a direct cause of the stillbirths that were not included in this project. To this day, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) remains a very dangerous early childhood infection, so it is entirely possible that one of the 161a/b/c: Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life could have been RSV, made significantly worse by cramped, shared living spaces, generally harsh climates at the camps' locations, a lack of consistent medical supplies in the camps, and premature birth. Due in part to these terrible living conditions, high-ranking members of the United States government and even President Harry S. Truman referred to the WRA camps as "concentration camps" throughout their careers and lives.

Medical facility conditions in the camps were not much better than living conditions. Issei (born in Japan) and Nikkei/Nisei (born in the United States) doctors, nurses, and dentists arrived at the camps routinely to find first aid stations and unfinished clinics rather than actual hospital facilities or infirmaries. Once the hospital teams were finally established, the chief medical officers and chief nurses were exclusively Caucasian, dictating policy and care to a team of professionals who were used to close community ties with their Japanese American patients. Once the hospitals themselves were completed, the facilities were frequently the only ones in the camps that had rudimentary insulation (sometimes in the form of rags stuffed into gaps in the siding by the staff), running water, and electricity, although the latter two were far from reliable. To add to the problems, Japanese American doctors were used to a 1:777 physician to population ratio (1:480 in San Francisco), which was changed to 1:1,000 or even 1:1,500 in the camps, with a nurse to population ratio in the camps of 1:200. Both of these ratios (doctors to population and nurses to population) were documented by the WRA and the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) as being "ideal" in the establishment of the camps.

On top of the significant issues with medical facilities and staffing in the camps, hospitals outside of the camps across the United States were facing a medical staffing shortage due to the ongoing war, so doctors in the camps were frequently offered the opportunity to leave the camps and practice in civilian hospitals in other locations. One Nikkei doctor from Seattle took the opportunity to leave Minidoka camp in Idaho to go to Spokane, Washington with his pregnant wife in order to give his young family a better living situation in every respect than they had in the camps and to place them closer to Seattle, with the goal of returning there. His distress at having to choose between the welfare of his own family and the welfare of his patients in the camp was documented in the Denshō Encyclopedia. Issei (born in Japan) doctors often elected to stay in the camps, feeling strong cultural ties to their patients and seeing little opportunity for themselves in the civilian hospital relocation program. Cultural differences frequently led to conflicts between Issei and Nikkei/Nisei staff and the Caucasian administrators; in 1943 alone there were two medical staff walkouts at Heart Mountain camp, leading to a gap in care for detainees. Many medical professionals were given very little time to shut down their practices before detainment and could only take what they could carry. As a result, medical professionals often had to build or improvise their own equipment in the camps such as exam tables and, in the case of dentists, dental examination chairs.

Despite the harsh climates around and poor medical facilities in the camps, Issei and Nikkei/Nisei medical professionals managed to provide universal health care to the detainees, including a comprehensive inoculation program starting in the WCCA centers to help prevent the spread of disease in the barracks, obstetrical care, general medical care, emergency medical care, surgery, and even dental care. In fact, due to medical staff shortages, dentists were frequently the most-represented group of medical professionals in the camps. The WRA and the USPHS themselves had a stated goal of universal health care for all detainees. Due to a lack of planning and careful implementation, as well as disorganization and a pervasive lack of care in constructing the camps, the universal health care mandate was placed in the hands of the detained medical professionals, who worked tirelessly in extremely adverse conditions to care for their fellow detainees.

In the late 1940s, when camp death statistics were being recorded by the United States government, a mistake was made with the 1942 deaths by age and cause of death statistics. The original 1942 Total Deaths by Age and Cause of Death handwritten table has a total count of 48 deaths of infants and children by all causes of death for that year. Unfortunately, the original Total Deaths By Age Group and Year (and gender) for 1942 - 1946 handwritten table is missing one death for infants and children from birth to 19 years old for 1942, listing 47 total deaths for this age group. Also in 1942, the data was shifted down a line when totaling deaths by age group and gender for that year, visible in the handwritten table (see the Infant and Child Mortality section, fig. 2). For 1942, the original, handwritten Total Deaths by Age Group and Year table has the deaths for female infants under a year old shifted down a line to the 1-4 years old age group, making it appear that more children in this group died than did infants under a year old, which is incorrect. This could also account for the missing death in 1942, as there was one death of a female aged 15-19 years that was "off the bottom" of the table and not added into the overall statistics for this age group. She was instead included in the 20-24 years old age group, a problem that presumably cascaded down the 1942 column in the handwritten Total Deaths by Age Group and Year (and gender) for 1942 - 1946 table.

The CDC Cause of Death code 122b was read as 1226 by the optical character recognition (OCR) software in the original data cleaning activities, which occurred before this project, and 1226 is not an accurate CDC code. After looking at the CDC tables for 1943 and 1944, the code was determined to be 122b: Intestinal Obstruction, the cause of death for two infants between one and 11 months old, shown in the Infant Deaths section, above.

Significant work with both the cleaned data for this project and with the scans of the original, handwritten tables did not yield any reliable way to determine the number of deaths by a combined view of age group, year, and cause of death for each camp, either for the four camps listed in the original cause of death by year handwritten tables or for all ten camps. The only death of an infant or child under 19 for which year of death, cause of death, and camp location could be determined from the original, handwritten tables and the cleaned data was one infant girl who died at Tule Lake camp of 157-161: Congenital Malformations and Diseases Peculiar to the First Year of Life sometime in the first three months of 1946 before the camp closed on March 20 of that year. The only other infant and child death that could be determined by age, date, camp, and cause of death with any level of certainty was the homicide of a toddler girl in December, 1945 at Tule Lake camp, found in the Tule Lake Camp Incident Cards. Without absolute confirmation, however, this is just a very strong correlation between the two data sources (original, handwritten tables and Incident Cards).

Because the total infant and child deaths for each year between 1942 - 1946 are seemingly tracked for four of the camps and the total number of deaths for infants and children for each of these four years as totaled in the original, handwritten Total Deaths By Age Group and Year table match exactly with one missing death, it is possible to theorize that most if not all of the data contained in the Denshō data made available for this project is data from the four camps visualized in this project (Tule Lake, Gila River, Poston/"Colorado River"/, and Topaz/"Central Utah") and that data was kept on the other six camps but not made available for analysis in this set.

The initial goal for this project was to look at the difference between per capita death rates for infants and children in the camps and death rates for infants and children outside the camps. Unfortunately, the comparison cannot be made fairly because the per capita statistics for the camps were calculated for one ethnic group: Japanese Americans, while the per capita statistics for the rest of the United States were determined for three delineated groups: White, Black (Negro in the original CDC tables), and Other, with the death statistics for Black Americans in every age group being significantly higher overall than for "White" for the years 1942 - 1946 and therefore impacting the per capita death rates for infants and children outside the camps. The statistics for "Other" as a race in the CDC data would need to be broken out into specific ethnic groups, including Japanese American, in order to determine the correct comparison. The CDC per capita rates for 1943 and 1944, the two years with the highest number of infant and child deaths in the camps, are included here in Figure 1 for informational purposes only.

Per capita calculations in the Denshō dataset used for this project would be based on one group: Japanese Americans. Per capita calculations from the CDC data for the same years (1942 - 1946, Figure 2, above) was based on only three groups, none of which were specifically Japanese or even Asian: White, Black (Negro in the CDC tables), and Other. The decision was made not to compare the two per capita calculations (in the camps and outside the camps) except in very broad terms. There are also some discrepancies in the original dataset based on incomplete and inaccurate recordkeeping, including some aggregated rather than specific coding in the Cause of Death tables, that would affect per capita calculations. Some of these inconsistencies were resolved by examining the CDC Birth and Death Statistics Documents for the same time period to determine accurate codes (Figure 3, below).

This project was initially intended to examine the differences between per capita death rates for infants and children in the incarceration camps and the per capita death rates for the same years (1942 - 1946) in the wider United States, outside the camps. While looking at this comparison, it became clear that there was no realistic way to compare the two sets of per capita percentages because of the categorical differences of tracked populations. While looking at the CDC per capita death rates, another significant issue was uncovered: The per capita death rate statistics for this period not only did not include a separate, broad Asian category, but also the rates outside the camps were skewed significantly by the infant and child deaths in one ethnic group: Black Americans. This alone (significantly higher deaths for Black infants and children) is important and should be studied in another, different project that is outside the scope of this one. The other goal of this project was to attempt to identify which infants and children died in which camps and of what causes, but there was no reliable way to determine this information in the dataset, either in the cleaned data or in the original images, even after discovering that the infant and child data came from only four of the 10 camps, which were color-coded in the data. The ink had degraded significantly and while two colors (red and black ink) were reasonably clear, it was not possible to accurately determine where each death occurred and by which cause.

The result is that this project took a decidedly different turn: Identifying the infants and children who could be identified, determining that they were from only four of the camps, and correcting some discrepancies in the original data that resulted in a dramatic representation of the number of infants dying in the camps. A secondary result of this project was the discovery that the data for infants and children in this dataset is most likely from only four of the 10 camps, which is why it cannot be stated with full confidence here that there were exactly 285 infant and child deaths during the incarceration period of 1942 - 1946. There may have been only 285 infant and child deaths, but there were very likely more infant and child deaths in other camps if the data here can be used as a basis for projection. Without access to causes of death tables that can be conclusively tied to the other six camps (Manzanar, Jerome, Rohwer, Granada/Amache, Heart Mountain, and Minidoka), there is no way to determine an accurate total number of infant and child deaths across all camps.

No matter how the Denshō dataset is examined, at least 285 infants and children up to 19 years old lost their lives in the camps, and that excludes stillbirths. Tragically, infants up to a year old were consistently dying at the highest rate of this group and in fact dying at the highest rate of detainees in all age groups under 50 years old in the camps, based on a consideration of the total cause of death counts for each year before narrowing the project to infants and children who died after they were born. Camp living and medical conditions may very well have contributed to these deaths, noting that many of the medical staff in the camps were Japanese American medical professionals who were removed from their practicing clinics and hospitals and placed in situations with limited supplies, limited medication, and significant issues with cleanliness and even simple things like consistent heat and running water. This project is not a condemnation of these primarily Nisei/Nikkei (born in the United States) medical professionals or of their Issei (born in Japan) colleagues, who were facing extreme privation in the camp medical facilities, and should not be taken as such. These medical professionals were doing everything they could to ensure the health and survival of detainees of every age, frequently including their own families, a task made incredibly difficult by the conditions in the camps. This report is simply designed to shine a light on the deaths of these infants and children and make sure they are accounted for and not forgotten.