Japanese Internment Camp
~ Triangle T, more than just a dude ranch and movie set!
In response to the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, the Japanese diplomats were rounded up and hidden in Dragoon, Arizona for their own protection according to CIA reports as anti Japanese sentiment reached a fevered pitch during WWII.
From Wikipedia
Document 40. FBI Report on Japanese Internees in the United States, July 9, 1942, Re: Stanley Claude Samuel Johnston
One of the main concerns of U.S. officials throughout the Chicago Tribune case was the possibility that drawing attention to American knowledge of Japanese actions would lead the Japanese to realize their codes had been penetrated. Among the major possibilities for this would have been through Japanese officials or diplomats, assigned in the United States, acquiring that knowledge, either from the original Midway article or from any of the press coverage of the ensuing inquiries. The FBI assembled a meticulous record, presented here, of the treatment of the Japanese prior to their departure for a diplomatic exchange, via the cruise ship S.S. Gripsholm on June 18, 1942. The largest group of Japanese, including Washington embassy staff, had been located at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, since April 1942, and had had access only to the New York Times, which had not printed any of the Tribune reports. The Japanese consulate staff from Hawaii had been held at Dragoon, Arizona, where they were denied access to any media whatever. Another group, mainly Japanese officials from South America, had been at Asheville, North Carolina, and also had had only the New York Times. But there was a miscellaneous collection of 500 or so Japanese who had been at liberty, held in Army camps, internment camps (the FBI report freely used the term “concentration camps”), on Ellis Island or elsewhere, until starting to gather in New York on June 7, 1942. The FBI admitted that Japanese who had been at large could have had access to any media they wanted.
Excerpt of Memorandum for the Attorney General from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, dated JUL-9 1942 Declassified Authority NND76716
"There were twenty-three Japanese diplomats at Dragoon, Arizona, and all of this group had formerly been stationed in the Hawaiian Islands. Special Agent Wells Bailey of the State Department accompanied them when they left Arizona and was with them until their arrival in New York City on June 10, 1942. They were immediately taken to the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York City and were held incommunicado until they were taken aboard the SS Gripsholm on June 13, 1942. Agent Bailey can testify to the fact that this group was not allowed to see any newspapers whatsoever during the time they were in Arizona and while they were en route to New York City. He can also testify to the fact that this group was placed aboard the SS Gripsholm on June 13, 1942."
The Tucson Citizen
Newspaper article from 1994:
The secret of Triangle-T
by Paul L. Allen on May 09, 1994, under Local
During World War II, Japanese diplomats were detained at the guest ranch on the outskirts of Dragoon.
In the early months of 1942, still stunned by the recent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Arizonans would have been shocked to learn that some three dozen Japanese citizens were living secretly right in their own back yard.
They were diplomatic staff members from San Francisco, held in a super secret prisoner-of-war camp in as remote a spot as the federal government could conceive of: a guest ranch on the outskirts of Dragoon.
The ranch and its buildings still exist, and it still operates under its original name, Triangle-T Guest Ranch, though ownership has changed since World War II.
Tucsonan Rhea Robinson is one of the few who learned of the camp’s existence, and only because her husband, the late Reed P. Robinson, then a U.S. Border Patrol agent, was in charge of the camp.
She didn’t learn about it until the prisoners of war were gone and the guest ranch had been returned to its traditional function.
“We were stationed in Benson,’ she recalled in a recent interview. Her husband was assigned to check train cars and buses coming through there, looking for German agents. His notes indicate he periodically was sent out of state, as well, probably guarding groups of aliens.
“One day in February 1942, the chief from Tucson came by and told Reed to be ready to go in 30 minutes, and to have his uniform, his dress suit and some rough clothes packed.’
It would be many weeks before his wife, who two months earlier had given birth to their child, would hear from him again. And then it was only a letter from El Paso, Texas, with a post office box address.
Later she would learn he had been on “special detail’ guarding a consul general and his vice consul, and more than 30 staff members and assistants – “20 minutes down the road.’
“It was high security,’ said Robinson, who revisited the guest ranch herself for the first time a few years ago.
“It wasn’t that they were afraid the Japanese would leave, but that the Americans would get to them,’ Robinson said. Anti-Japanese sentiment ran high in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Her husband would go on to pursue a career in foreign service with the State Department – one that took the couple to all major areas of the world except Russia and China.
They retired in Tucson in 1974. Reed Robinson died in 1976.
His widow still has the duty notebooks from his Border Patrol days, in which he refers to “special detail’ work. Early entries do not specify the location, but are simply followed by two cryptic symbols: a triangle and a “T.’
She also has six small Kodak Brownie-style photographs taken at Dragoon.
They show members of the diplomatic staff, the ranch buildings they lived in and the tents that Robinson and his fellow Border Patrol agents occupied.
Governments traditionally treat an enemy’s diplomatic personnel well, even in times of war, expecting that their own diplomats will be equally well treated.
The Dragoon POWs were no exception, apparently. One of the small photos shows a Japanese man, believed to be the consul general, with a tennis racquet, posing with Reed Robinson. Both are smiling, and the photo is autographed in Japanese and English on the back.