PINEDALE, Calif. — Organizers broke ground Monday on a site for a memorial to more than 4,800 Japanese-American internees held in Fresno County during World War II.

Residents of California, Oregon and Washington were taken to Pinedale, just north of Fresno, in 1942 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an order to relocate 120,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Families were put on trains and taken to the interim camp for a couple of months before being transferred to camps in other states.

"What I remember most is that the concentration camp destroyed our family," James Hirabayashi, 80, of Mill Valley said at the groundbreaking of Remembrance Plaza.

Armed soldiers guarded the wooden barracks, which were surrounded by barbed wire, said Hirabayashi, whose family was uprooted from Tacoma, Wash.

The $150,000 memorial will include a "story wall" with information about the camp and the people who lived there.