internment camp
Americannoun
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a prison camp for the confinement of prisoners of war, enemy aliens, political prisoners, etc.
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a concentration camp for civilian citizens, especially those with ties to an enemy during wartime, as the camps established by the United States government to detain Japanese Americans after the Pearl Harbor attacks.
Etymology
Origin of internment camp
First recorded in 1915–20
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Ms. Gage deals with it by visiting the remnants of a Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, Calif., and the research facility in Los Alamos, N.M., where U.S. government scientists built the atomic bomb.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 1, 2026
“His belief was that they were put in the internment camp because the United States was a scared country,” said his daughter Laura Rutizer.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2023
In 1941, the Kaminskys were arrested and sent to Drancy, an internment camp near Paris that was a way station to the death camps.
From New York Times ● Jan. 9, 2023
Mr Maskey, 70, had been interned at Long Kesh internment camp - later known as the Maze Prison - in December 1972.
From BBC ● Dec. 8, 2022
Gertie Hornbostel and the other prisoners at the Santo Tomas internment camp are desperate for news.
From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
