Living quarters for the camps were military style barracks. These bare wood and tar paper structures were hastily constructed using simple building techniques. It was common for these barracks to have extreme dust and draft problems due to large cracks and holes in the walls and floors. Barracks were generally 100' long by 20' wide with the length varying from camp to camp. They were divided into 20' x 20' or 10' x 20' sections. Families and single people were crammed into these units with little concern for comfort or privacy.

"when we went down to Gila River we went to a barrack which was about 100 feet long and only had four or five rooms. Of course being new construction, the lumber that was being used was sort of green and I noticed one morning when I woke up to pick up my shoes under the bed there was a scorpion. It was right near my shoes. It came up through the cracks in the lumber and of course it didn’t live long but we had to be very careful. That’s why my mother stuffed paper into the cracks in the floor to prevent that from happening again." (Hitoshi S.)