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(Courtesy of WWII Japanese American Internment Museum) -
(Photograph by Ruth Hawkins)
The south building of the former railroad station has been renovated and opened as a museum interpreting the history of the two former Japanese American internment camps in Arkansas, Jerome and Rohwer (DE1). Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Relocation Authority, and ten sites were established in the United States. Between them, Jerome and Rohwer housed more than 17,000 Japanese Americans. This one-story red brick building on the south side of the train station features exhibits and memorabilia interpreting the lives of the internees who were brought here on the railroad; the rail tracks are behind the museum. A traditional Japanese garden has been created in the narrow space between the museum and the railroad tracks.
The former passenger station is a one-story red brick building in the Missouri Pacific Railroad’s signature Mediterranean style with Craftsman details in white cast stone and a red tile hipped roof that extends well beyond the building’s walls, with eaves supported on large wooden brackets. A gabled dormer window on the track side indicates the room where the telegrapher worked. There is an open porch at the depot’s southern end to which the later southern building was added. The Missouri Pacific located its regional railroad shops here in 1905, making McGehee an important stop.