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
Taken to a Japanese internment camp at Sumatra, she and fellow internee Norah Chambers set up a vocal orchestra.
From BBC • Feb. 3, 2024
Beyond those killed, thousands more were left homeless and living in a hastily constructed internment camp.
From Seattle Times • Jul. 9, 2023
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
After ten short minutes the buses pass Manzanar, the old Japanese American internment camp.
From "Internment" by Samira Ahmed
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.
