engineering internment: anthropologists and the War Relocation Authority

Abstract

This paper reexamines a neglected chapter in the history of anthropology, the involvement of ethnographers in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Anthropologists worked in the ten internment centers with the good intentions of improving camp conditions and defusing anti‐Japanese public opinion. But the present study argues that their writings had a series of largely unintended effects, including restriction of discourse about removal, legitimation of relocation, and promotion of racial stereotypes about the Japanese.