During its heyday during World War II, Seabrook Farms packaged 150 labels of frozen food and became the major supplier of vegetables to the military. Superior management teams, efficiency experts, and engineers were keys to Seabrook's success as it produced one-fifth of the nation's vegetables. However, the business suffered from the lack of a steady source of labor. Seabrook tried various measures to alleviate the labor shortage, hiring immigrants, women, students, disabled veterans, and persons deferred from the draft. The Farms even hired Jamaican workers and drew upon migrant workers: blacks from Florida and whites from West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas.

By 1944, Japanese Americans from West Coast concentration camps began to arrive for farm work as Seabrook's labor needs coincided with the WRA's mandate to "relocate" Japanese Americans. Throughout 1944, Seabrook officials brought in trial groups from the camps, sent recruiters to the camps, advertised for workers in camp newspapers, and placed favorable articles about Japanese Americans in local papers to calm the fears of residents about the arrival of a formerly incarcerated population. By August 1944, there were almost 300 Japanese Americans at Seabrook; 831 in December 1944 and by 1946 there was an average of 2,500 residents. The January 1947 estimate was between 2,300 and 2,700 persons and included 178 Japanese Latin Americans who had arrived from Crystal City internment camp. [5] The large number of arrivals created housing shortages for the laborers and many former internees were dismayed at the poor quality of housing that was reminiscent of the concentration camps. Seiichi Higashide, a former Japanese-Peruvian internee, described Seabrook as a "town of chain-linked fences" explaining that "the transfer to this place from our former life behind barbed-wire fences was no more than a shift from complete confinement to partial confinement." [6] Hours were long, work was difficult, and wages only started at fifty cents an hour although it depended on gender, type of work, and union status. There were also some complaints that white workers were being promoted over established Nisei workers.