Camp Columbia or Columbia Camp was a prison labor camp established on the north shore of the Yakima River opening on February 1, 1944, near Horn Rapids. The camp was operated between February 1944 and October 1947 by Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide labor supporting the Hanford Site. The camp was used to house "minimum-custody-type improvable male offenders," who had no more than one year to serve. These were violators of national defense, wartime and military laws. Included were conscientious objectors, violators of rationing and price support laws, those convicted of espionage, sabotage and sedition and those convicted by military courts martial. Aliens who failed to register were also in this category but none of them were sent here because the camp was located on the southern edge of the 670 square miles (1,740 km2) Hanford Site. [1] [2]
The 25-acre labor camp had a number of Quonset prefab buildings, and barracks to house both prisoners and staff. The camp was built by contractors under contract to the Manhattan District of the Corps of Engineers. Former Civilian Conservation Corps buildings moved from Winifred, Montana, were used. Facilities at the camp included five barracks buildings, an office building, a mess hall, a hospital, a recreation hall, storage facilities and a utilities building. Heating was provided by a central steam system. There were no fences around the camp, as the geography itself was a deterrent to escape. [2] [3] [4]
Over the period Camp Columbia was open, it housed a total of 1,300 prisoners. The prisoners were brought in from the prison at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary, and worked in fruit orchards on land which had been condemned by the Federal government in order to provide buffer space for the nuclear production facility known as the Hanford Site. Over 5,600 tons of fruit were processed and canned for military use. Because of its close proximity to the top secret Hanford project, only prisoners who were American citizens were sent there. As many as 290 prisoners were housed there at any given time. [2] [3]
The staff included up to 40 guards under the direction of a warden, Harold E. Taylor, who relocated from McNeil Island. The prisoners were known to occasionally stray down to the river to fish, but only 12 were known to have escaped from the area. [2] [3]
Work was not limited to agricultural activities. One of the 1945 actions undertaken by prisoners was demolition of the wartime construction camp near the old Hanford townsite, where nearly 50,000 workers had lived while constructing the reactors and reprocessing facilities at the Hanford site. [2] [5]
After the camp was officially shut down on October 10, 1947, the facility was used to house workers for the Hanford project railroad and other site workers until 1949. The camp was then used by the US Army Corps of Engineers to house those working on various levee projects completed in conjunction with construction of the McNary Dam. [3]
Camp Columbia was finally abandoned in 1950, and the facilities were dismantled and removed. Some of the original Quonset huts were moved to Richland, and could be seen there until the early 1990s. [6]
In 1966 the federal government turned the area over to Benton County for use as a park. Today the site of Camp Columbia is occupied by Horn Rapids County Park, a day-use park with a camp ground, a boat launch, a nature trail and equestrian facilities above the Horn Rapids dam. The park includes a kiosk commemorating Camp Columbia. [7]
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. It has also been known as Site W and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the site was home to the Hanford Engineer Works and B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb, which was tested in the Trinity nuclear test, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki.
Richland is a city in Benton County, Washington, United States. It is located in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Yakima and the Columbia Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 60,560. Along with the nearby cities of Pasco and Kennewick, Richland is one of the Tri-Cities, and is home to the Hanford nuclear site.
Benton County is a county in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 206,873. The county seat is Prosser, and its most populous city is Kennewick. The Columbia River demarcates the county's north, south, and east boundaries.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is one of the United States Department of Energy national laboratories, managed by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science. The main campus of the laboratory is in Richland, Washington, with additional research facilities around the country.
A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel with a semi-circular cross-section. The design was developed in the United States based on the Nissen hut introduced by the British during World War I. Hundreds of thousands were produced during World War II, and military surplus was sold to the public. The name comes from the site of their first deployment at Quonset Point at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center in Davisville, Rhode Island.
The Rock Island Arsenal comprises 946 acres and is located on Arsenal Island, originally known as Rock Island, on the Mississippi River between the cities of Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois. It is home to the United States Army First Army Headquarters, and the United States Army Center of Excellence for Additive Manufacturing.
Richland High School is a public secondary school in the northwest United States, located in Richland, Washington. The school was founded as Columbia High School in 1910 to serve the educational needs of the small town of Richland. The building was replaced with a much larger structure by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1946 as the development of the neighboring Hanford Engineering Works brought an influx of employees to the region to support the war effort.
Monowitz was a Nazi concentration camp and labor camp (Arbeitslager) run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1942–1945, during World War II and the Holocaust. For most of its existence, Monowitz was a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp; from November 1943 it and other Nazi subcamps in the area were jointly known as "Auschwitz III-subcamps". In November 1944 the Germans renamed it Monowitz concentration camp, after the village of Monowice where it was built, in the annexed portion of Poland. SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Heinrich Schwarz was commandant from November 1943 to January 1945.
Edinburgh Correctional Facility is a minimum-security work camp located in the middle of Camp Atterbury, a military training camp near Edinburgh, Indiana. The inmates work on the grounds of Camp Atterbury and on road crews with the Indiana Department of Transportation and park maintenance with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The maximum population, which has doubled in the past year, is 344 adult males.
Franklin Thompson Matthias was an American civil engineer who directed the construction of the Hanford nuclear site, a key facility of the Manhattan Project during World War II.
Horn Rapids Dam is a concrete barrage dam on the Yakima River in Benton County, Washington near the intersection of SR 240 and SR 225. The dam is not used for hydroelectric production, rather to fill irrigation canals on either bank of the river.
Camp Gruber is an Oklahoma Army National Guard (OKARNG) training facility. It covers a total of 87 square miles (230 km2).
Camp Tulelake was a federal work facility and War Relocation Authority isolation center located in Siskiyou County, five miles west of Tulelake, California. It was established by the United States government in 1935 during the Great Depression for vocational training and work relief for young men, in a program known as the Civilian Conservation Corps. The camp was established initially for CCC enrollees to work on the Klamath Reclamation Project.
The 300 Area is part of the Hanford Site in the state of Washington, USA. The area was originally used for the production of fuel for nuclear reactors and for performing research on improving the production process, however most modern work being done focuses on environmental research. After a decade of demolition activities, the surplus 300 Area facilities, with the exception of the 324 Blg, have been torn down. Today, the few buildings that remain active are laboratories, workshops, and offices. It is operated by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The Gold Coast Historic District is a residential area in Richland, Washington, United States. The town that was built during the World War II Manhattan Project to house workers at the Hanford atomic plant. The homes within the district date from 1948–49 and are associated with the Cold War expansion of plutonium manufacturing at the plant.
Camp Douglas was an internment camp for Prisoners of War (POW) during World War II, located in the city of Douglas, Wyoming, United States. Between January 1943 and February 1946 in the camp housing first Italian and then German prisoners of war in the United States. While there are few remaining structures, the walls of the Officer's Club were painted with murals by three Italian prisoners. These paintings depicting western life and folklore are now registered with the United States Department of the Interior National Park Service on the National Register of Historic Places. The story of this POW camp is an important part of the history of the town of Douglas.
Fort Alcatraz was a United States Army coastal fortification on Alcatraz Island near the mouth of San Francisco Bay in California, part of the Third System of fixed fortifications, although very different from most other Third System works. Initially completed in 1859, it was also used for mustering and training recruits and new units for the Civil War from 1861 and began secondary use as a long-term military prison in 1868.
The Catalina Federal Honor Camp, or Tucson Federal Prison Camp, located in the Santa Catalina Mountains, held men subject to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. It had no security fence, boundaries were marked with stones painted white. 45 of the 46 prisoners were draft resisters and objectors of conscience transferred from camps in Colorado, Arizona and Utah, although Gordon Hirabayashi, who had challenged the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, was also held here.
The Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) was a nuclear production complex in Benton County, Washington, established by the United States federal government in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. It built and operated the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor. Plutonium manufactured at the HEW was used in the atomic bomb detonated in the Trinity test in July 1945, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. The plant continued producing plutonium for nuclear weapons until 1971. The HEW was commanded by Colonel Franklin T. Matthias until January 1946, and then by Colonel Frederick J. Clarke.