Who ran the Japanese camps and camps for Italians and Germans?

1. Japanese Americans living in California, Western Oregon, and Washington, and a small portion of Arizona, were incarcerated, after issuance of Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, in temporary camps run by the U.S. Army, ad later transferred to camps run by the civilian War Relocation Authority. More than 2/3 of the 120,000 thus incr\acerated were United States citizens. It was not internment, which can only be done to an enemy alien, and is selective.

2. But before that program began and continuing throughout the war there was a program of internment in which enemy aliens -- Japanese, Germans, and Italians - were incarcerated by the Dept. of Justice, which is the parent of both the INS and the Border Patrol. These persons were selectively interned from all over the U.S. and Hawaii, and later, some were brought to the US for internment from a number of Latin American countries. The government, but some dependents of persons this interned who were citizens interned. No U.S. citizens, and who had no means of support, voluntarily chose to join interned family member or members. It is some of these camps with which the border patrol was associated.

The best published studies of these internment camps are:

Culley, John J. "The Santa Fe Internment Camp and the Justice

Department Program for Enemy Aliens," pp. 57-71 in Daniels, et al.,

Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986. 2nd. ed, U. of Washington Press, 1991.

---, "Trouble at the Lordsburg Internment Camp." New Mexico Historical

Review 60:225-48 (1985).

By Roger Daniels

Charles Phelps Taft Professor of History

University of Cincinnati