Confinement and Ethnicity:An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites

Western Archaeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1999.

This is an extremely interesting book which is basically an archaeological examination of the various internment camps and other camps relating to the Japanese-Americans in World War II.

The book starts out with some of the history of what happened, and then discusses the types of work involved in the production of the book. The book has an incredible number of pictures of the remains that are still standing of the camps. It also shows the types of things that were made and/or used at the camps relating to the Japanese culture and even includes photographs of Japanese writing found in the remains of the camps.

The second chapter is a "Contemporary report of one relocation center by an outside observer: Eleanor Roosevelt." Chapter 3 is a summary of the relocation movement; chapters 4 through 13 look at the individual camps; chapter 14 discusses Moab and Leupp Isolation centers; chapter 15 covers other temporary facilities that were used; chapter 16 covers the assembly centers, chapter 17 the Dept. of Justice and Army Internment Camps, and chapter 18 covers three Federal prisons involved in the program.

Chapter 3 has a great deal of information in it, even covering the problems at Tule Lake and other internment camps. The chapters on the camps follow a pattern where the physical nature of the area is discussed, the construction and layout of the camp is covered, maps are included, and numerous photos from the time and from today fill out each chapter.

This is not the type of book you sit down and read cover to cover. Actually, for most people the book probably wouldn't be that interesting, but if you want to know about the physical structures of the camps and the areas they were in and see photos from that time and photos showing the remains of the camp then this is basically the book for you. The majority of the material in this book is not covered in any of the other books on the subject ( of course, that's because the exact nature of the information is not covered in other books, though.)



Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page