internment camp

American  

noun

1. a prison camp for the confinement of prisoners of war, enemy aliens, political prisoners, etc.

2. 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.

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Etymology

Origin of internment camp

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

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

Taken to a Japanese internment camp at Sumatra, she and fellow internee Norah Chambers set up a vocal orchestra.

From BBC • Feb. 3, 2024

“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

After the war, Miyamura met Terry Tsuchimori, a woman from a family who had been forced to live at the Poston internment camp in southwestern Arizona following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 30, 2022

Mas Okui, who was forced to leave his school and go live in a Japanese internment camp, ended up becoming a teacher.

From "The Freedom Writers Diary" by The Freedom Writers

Related Words

• gas chamber
• gulag
• prison camp