Fort Missoula Internment Camp was an internment camp operated by the United States Department of Justice during World War II. Japanese Americans and Italian Americans were imprisoned here during this war.
Fort Missoula was established near Missoula, Montana as a permanent military post in 1877 in response to citizen concerns of conflict with local Native American tribes.
In 1941 Fort Missoula was turned over to the "Department of Immigration and Naturalization" for use as an Alien Detention Center for non-military Italian men. The fort held barracks for 1,000 men, officers' quarters, commissary, mess hall, laundry, guardhouse, and a recreation hall designed by Robert Reamer that held a basketball court, bowling alleys, dance hall, cocktail lounge, and restaurant. [1]
Nearly 1100 Italian citizens were interned at Fort Missoula, including merchant seamen and World's Fair workers who were in the U.S. and could not be returned to Italy, as well as the crew of an Italian luxury liner seized in the Panama Canal. In addition, more than 1,000 Japanese men and 23 German resident aliens were interned before being transferred to other facilities. [2]
The Italians, who referred to Fort Missoula as Camp "Bella Vista" (beautiful view), worked in area farms, fought forest fires and worked in other Missoula industries before being released in 1944. [3]
Famed Italian actor Guido Trento (1892–1957), also known as Guy Trent and best known for his 1928 film Street Angel , was held at Fort Missoula and released in 1943 when Italy surrendered to the Allies. He later immigrated to the United States.
The Fort Missoula internment camp closed in 1944. By that time, most of the internees had been sent to other camps. Many were repatriated at the end of the war. Some Italians gained U.S. citizenship and stayed in the region. [1]
During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated at least 125,284 people of Japanese descent in 75 identified incarceration sites. Most lived on the Pacific Coast, in concentration camps in the western interior of the country. Approximately two-thirds of the inmates were United States citizens. These actions were initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt via Executive Order 9066 following Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Of the 127,000 Japanese Americans who were living in the continental United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, 112,000 resided on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei and Sansei. The rest were Issei immigrants born in Japan who were ineligible for U.S. citizenship under U.S. law.
The Ukrainian Canadian internment was part of the confinement of "enemy aliens" in Canada during and for two years after the end of the First World War. It lasted from 1914 to 1920, under the terms of the War Measures Act.
In customary international law, an enemy alien is any native, citizen, denizen or subject of any foreign nation or government with which a domestic nation or government is in conflict and who is liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed. Usually, the countries are in a state of declared war.
The Federal Correctional Institution, Seagoville is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Seagoville, Texas in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility includes a detention center for male offenders and an adjacent satellite prison camp that houses minimum security-male offenders.
German Australians are Australians with German ancestry. German Australians constitute one of the largest ancestry groups in Australia, and German is the fifth most identified European ancestry in Australia behind English, Irish, Scottish and Italian. German Australians are one of the largest groups within the global German diaspora.
Fort Lincoln Internment Camp was a military post and internment camp located south of Bismarck, North Dakota, USA, on the east side of the Missouri River.
The internment of Italian Americans refers to the US government's internment of Italian nationals during World War II. As was customary after Italy and the US were at war, they were classified as "enemy aliens" and some were detained by the Department of Justice under the Alien and Sedition Act. But in practice, the US applied detention only to Italian nationals, not to US citizens, or long-term US residents. Italian immigrants had been allowed to gain citizenship through the naturalization process during the years before the war, and by 1940 there were millions of US citizens who had been born in Italy.
Internment of German resident aliens and German-American citizens occurred in the United States during the periods of World War I and World War II. During World War II, the legal basis for this detention was under Presidential Proclamation 2526, made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act.
Fort Missoula was established by the United States Army in 1877 on land that is now part of the city of Missoula, Montana, to protect settlers in Western Montana from possible threats from the Native American Indians, such as the Nez Perce.
Crystal City Internment Camp, located near Crystal City, Texas, was a place of confinement for people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent during World War II, and has been variously described as a detention facility or a concentration camp. The camp, which was originally designed to hold 3,500 people, opened in December 1943 and was officially closed on February 11, 1948.
Honouliuli National Historic Site is near Waipahu on the island of Oahu, in the U.S. state of Hawaii. This is the site of the Honouliuli Internment Camp which was Hawaiʻi's largest and longest-operating internment camp, opened in 1943 and closed in 1946. It was designated a National monument on February 24, 2015, by President Barack Obama. The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed March 12, 2019, redesignated it as Honouliui National Historic Site. The internment camp held 320 internees and also became the largest prisoner of war camp in Hawaiʻi with nearly 4,000 individuals being held. Of the seventeen sites that were associated with the history of internment in Hawaiʻi during World War II, the camp was the only one built specifically for prolonged detention. As of 2015, the new national monument is without formal services and programs.
William Minoru Hohri was an American political activist and the lead plaintiff in the National Council for Japanese American Redress lawsuit seeking monetary reparations for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. He was sent to the Manzanar concentration camp with his family after the attack on Pearl Harbor triggered the United States' entry into the war. After leading the NCJAR's class action suit against the federal government, which was dismissed, Hohri's advocacy helped convince Congress to pass legislation that provided compensation to each surviving internee. The legislation, signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, included an apology to those sent to the camps.
The Escape from Fort Stanton occurred on November 1, 1942, when four German sailors escaped from an internment camp at Fort Stanton, New Mexico. There were other minor escape attempts from the fort, however, the incident in November 1942 was the most successful and the only one to end with a shootout. One German was wounded as result and the three remaining prisoners were sent back to Fort Stanton.
The Santa Fe riot was a confrontation at a Japanese internment camp near Santa Fe, New Mexico, during World War II. On March 12, 1945, approximately 275 internees assembled in Camp Santa Fe to watch and protest the removal of three men to another camp. During which, a scuffle broke out between the internees and the Border Patrol agents who were guarding the facility, resulting in the use of tear gas grenades, batons, and the serious injury of four internees.
The Kooskia Internment Camp is a former internment camp in the northwest United States, located in north central Idaho, about thirty miles (50 km) northeast of Kooskia in northern Idaho County. It operated during the final two years of World War II.
The United States government has detained or interned immigrants on military bases on several occasions, including as part of internment of Japanese Americans, of Italian Americans and of German Americans during World War II. In the 2010s, military bases have been used to house unaccompanied asylum seekers from Central America.
Japanese internment at Ellis Island was the internment of Japanese-Americans living on the East Coast of the United States during World War II. They were held at an internment camp on Ellis island. The main factor that led to Japanese internment at Ellis Island was New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordering Japanese-Americans to be arrested. This was followed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 which initiated the mass internment of Japanese-Americans all over the United States. Other factors that led to the Japanese internment at Ellis Island include the Niihau Incident which increased the public's fear that Japanese residents were not loyal to the United States. This fear that Japanese-Americans might be spies for Japan was particularly threatening to the U.S. code-breaking efforts. Many people challenged the constitutionality of the Japanese internment in the Supreme Court.
The Sharp Park Detention Station was a Japanese American internment camp located in northern California on land owned by San Francisco in Pacifica. Open from March 30, 1942, until 1946, the camp was built to hold as many as 600 detainees, but later held approximately 2,500 detainees.