ABSTRACT

This chapter examines two contrasting responses to the accommodation of mass human displacements that occurred before and during the Second World War in the United States. It examines them in a comparative and visually discursive spatial genealogy that highlights the instrumental role of spatial planning. The chapter argues that the meanings and associations of the 'camp' as a phenomenon underwent a transformation from a model environment for rehabilitation to a punitive alternative across a range of functions for different groups of subjects. These include American citizens, Japanese citizens, 'enemy aliens' and enemy prisoners of war. The College of Environmental Design archive holds the collections of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) architects Vernon DeMars and Garrett Eckbo. The Ethnic Studies Library at UC Berkeley has much of the secondary literature on the Japanese American incarceration. The FSA team designed rural labor camps for Arizona, Texas and in particular California's Central Valley.