Internment

For many American studies scholars, “internment” identifies the specific process of the relocation and resettlement of Japanese Americans during the early years of World War II. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “intern,” the verb form on which “internment” is based, as “to confine as a prisoner” is an obvious and essential starting point for the discussion of “internment.” Yet a further investigation of the significance of “internment” as a keyword in American studies also requires an understanding of internment not simply as an unusual act of confining or imprisoning citizens in a racial democracy but as typical of US racial-disciplinary projects in the twentieth century. In the wake of the Cold War, political and legal comparisons tended to liken the internment to an earlier phase of Native American removal and dispersal or, perhaps more ominously, to the system of concentration camps in wartime Europe. As the case of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base makes clear, these ongoing debates about the distinctive significance of internment as a system of racialization will continue to shape discussions of Americanism and racial nationalism well into the twenty-first century.