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

In the aftermath of Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, they were imprisoned in an incarceration camp — not an internment camp.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 16, 2023

In wartime, the Raymonds settled in New Hope, Penn., and rescued the Nakashima family from the Minidoka internment camp in rural Idaho.

From New York Times • Mar. 9, 2023

Yeah, doesn’t exist so much inside an internment camp.

From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed

Related Words

• gas chamber
• gulag
• prison camp