In 1942, the United States forcibly removed Japanese Americans from the West Coast and sent many to the Puyallup Assembly Center in Washington, euphemistically called Camp Harmony. Registration processed families through forms while an Army officer assigned living quarters. A National Archives photograph also records incarcerees waiting in line outside a camp mess hall.
This was not voluntary waiting for a chosen service. The government that removed homes and freedom of movement redistributed them as numbers, barracks assignments and meal order. An orderly line did not make incarceration fair; it made coercion administratively manageable.