This Google Earth image of the desert northwest of the town of Delta, Utah, shows us the ghostly image of the street grid of the Topaz Relocation Center, one of the ten so-called "internment camps" where Japanese resident aliens and American citizens of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated from 1942 to 1945.
Spooky.
What is meant by "so-called 'internment camps'"? I had not thought that was a controversial term.
Posted by: Jennifer Hendricks | February 13, 2010 at 01:00 AM
Theres lots of controversy in the field about many of the terms from
this period -- lots of euphemism, and lots of inaccuracy. In the case
of internment, the problem is inaccuracy. Internment refers to the
lawful process of detaining enemy aliens. Some 12,000 to 14,000
German, Italian, and Japanese aliens were interned during WWII in
camps administered by the Justice Department. The resident aliens and
US citizens in camps like Topaz (administered by the War Relocation
Authority) were not interned. They were incarcerated or
imprisoned.
Posted by: Eric Muller | February 13, 2010 at 08:23 AM