Yamato Ichihashi was one of the first academics from East Asia in the United States. Ichihashi wrote a comprehensive account of his experiences as an internee at the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, where he was detained during World War II along with other relocated Japanese Americans.

The Tule Lake National Monument in Modoc and Siskiyou counties in California, consists primarily of the site of the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, one of ten concentration camps constructed in 1942 by the United States government to incarcerate Japanese Americans forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast. They totaled nearly 120,000 people, more than two-thirds of whom were United States citizens. Among the inmates, the notation "鶴嶺湖 " was sometimes applied.