Overview

Racism and xenophobia have long challenged democracy, a battle played out dramatically in the concentration camps built, staffed, and filled with adults and children under the orders of the U.S. Government. The camps first appeared in the nineteenth century with the imprisonment of Native Americans, then returned during World War II with the roundup of Japanese Americans (most of them citizens of the United States), German Americans, Italian Americans, and Jews fleeing the cruelty and death camps associated with Nazi Germany. The issue resurfaced during the George Bush administration with the construction of twenty-two new concentration camps and secret plans to build up to 800 additional facilities. And the policy continued during the Donald Trump administration which has imprisoned tens of thousands of Hispanic refugees fleeing persecution in their homelands. Especially heinous has been the Trump Administration's willingness to imprison thousands of children in horrendous conditions in which the children are often deprived of humane living conditions, receiving inadequate food and water, crowded living conditions, and substandard medical treatment. American families treating their children in this manner would quickly find themselves in prison. Inside America's Concentration Camps explores the history and tragedy of the camps in a vivid narrative that brings the victims' stories to life and the flaws of our government in focus. Based on interviews and extensive research, the book is an investigative history that exposes the erosion of democracy in America and calls upon ordinary Americans to take their country back to its glory days as a fearless defender of individual freedom.

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9781733969178

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Reviews

From Publishers Weekly While most Americans are familiar with the history of Japanese internment camps during WWII, few know the extent of America's racially-motivated internment. Dickerson seeks to offer readers a comprehensive history of American concentration camps and internment facilities but, while the book purports to cover two centuries of internment and abuse, it really only investigates WWII and the Trail of Tears. Dickerson highlights American abuse against native populations, and touches upon wartime internment not just of Japanese, but also of Jews, Italians, and Germans. His research includes a great number of heartbreaking stories; from Jewish immigrants who escaped the Nazis only to end up in American camps thanks to the low wartime immigration quotas, to Japanese orphans living on subsistence rations, these personal tales throw a vague chapter of the historical record into sharp relief. With economy and insight, Dickerson presents yesterday as a lesson for today and takes a close look at Guantanamo Bay and modern race relations between America and the Arab world. Readers unfamiliar with this history will likely be moved. From Chapter 16, Humanities Tennessee Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans of Japanese descent were rounded up by the thousands and placed in primitive relocation camps in the interest of national security. With Inside America's Concentration Camps, investigative journalist James L. Dickerson places that shameful episode inside a larger narrative. Adhering to the psychological theory that abuse begets abusers, Inside America's Concentration Camps traces America's ambivalent history of detention and torture, from its beginnings in old-world Europe through the Trail of Tears and World War II to the current internment camp at Guant namo Bay... Dickerson's frequent use of the term concentration camp is deliberate and provocative. While governmental agencies prefer relocation center or internment camp, such politically correct terms mute the suffering of those who continue to fall victim to American dependence on detention and torture..-- PAUL V. GRIFFITH

From Publishers Weekly While most Americans are familiar with the history of Japanese internment camps during WWII, few know the extent of America's racially-motivated internment. Dickerson seeks to offer readers a comprehensive history of American concentration camps and internment facilities but, while the book purports to cover two centuries of internment and abuse, it really only investigates WWII and the Trail of Tears. Dickerson highlights American abuse against native populations, and touches upon wartime internment not just of Japanese, but also of Jews, Italians, and Germans. His research includes a great number of heartbreaking stories; from Jewish immigrants who escaped the Nazis only to end up in American camps thanks to the low wartime immigration quotas, to Japanese orphans living on subsistence rations, these personal tales throw a vague chapter of the historical record into sharp relief. With economy and insight, Dickerson presents yesterday as a lesson for today and takes a close look at Guantanamo Bay and modern race relations between America and the Arab world. Readers unfamiliar with this history will likely be moved. From Chapter 16, Humanities Tennessee ""Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans of Japanese descent were rounded up by the thousands and placed in primitive ""relocation camps"" in the interest of national security. With Inside America's Concentration Camps, investigative journalist James L. Dickerson places that shameful episode inside a larger narrative. Adhering to the psychological theory that abuse begets abusers, Inside America's Concentration Camps traces America's ambivalent history of detention and torture, from its beginnings in old-world Europe through the Trail of Tears and World War II to the current internment camp at Guantánamo Bay... Dickerson's frequent use of the term ""concentration camp"" is deliberate and provocative. While governmental agencies prefer ""relocation center"" or ""internment camp,"" such politically correct terms mute the suffering of those who continue to fall victim to American dependence on detention and torture..-- PAUL V. GRIFFITH

From Publishers Weekly While most Americans are familiar with the history of Japanese internment camps during WWII, few know the extent of America's racially-motivated internment. Dickerson seeks to offer readers a comprehensive history of American concentration camps and internment facilities but, while the book purports to cover two centuries of internment and abuse, it really only investigates WWII and the Trail of Tears. Dickerson highlights American abuse against native populations, and touches upon wartime internment not just of Japanese, but also of Jews, Italians, and Germans. His research includes a great number of heartbreaking stories; from Jewish immigrants who escaped the Nazis only to end up in American camps thanks to the low wartime immigration quotas, to Japanese orphans living on subsistence rations, these personal tales throw a vague chapter of the historical record into sharp relief. With economy and insight, Dickerson presents yesterday as a lesson for today and takes a close look at Guantanamo Bay and modern race relations between America and the Arab world. Readers unfamiliar with this history will likely be moved. From Chapter 16, Humanities Tennessee Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans of Japanese descent were rounded up by the thousands and placed in primitive relocation camps in the interest of national security. With Inside America's Concentration Camps, investigative journalist James L. Dickerson places that shameful episode inside a larger narrative. Adhering to the psychological theory that abuse begets abusers, Inside America's Concentration Camps traces America's ambivalent history of detention and torture, from its beginnings in old-world Europe through the Trail of Tears and World War II to the current internment camp at Guantanamo Bay... Dickerson's frequent use of the term concentration camp is deliberate and provocative. While governmental agencies prefer relocation center or internment camp, such politically correct terms mute the suffering of those who continue to fall victim to American dependence on detention and torture..-- PAUL V. GRIFFITH

Author Information

Journalist and independent scholar JAMES L. DICKERSON has published numerous biographies and histories, including Devil's Sanctuary: An Eyewitness History of Mississippi Hate Crimes, Yellow Fever: A Deadly Disease Poised to Kill Again, The Hero Among Us: Memoirs of an FBI Witness Hunter, and Colonel Tom Parker, the movie rights of which were recently sold to a major Hollywood motion picture company. An award-winning journalist, he has worked as a staff writer for three Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis), the Clarion-Ledger/Jackson Daily News (Jackson, MS) and the Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, MS). He is a leading writer of civil rights history and organized crime in the South. His writing is listed in the FBI's Bibliography Related to Crime Scene Interpretation with Emphases in Forensic Geotaphonomic and Forensic Archaeological Field Techniques, compiled by Special Agent Michael J. Hochrein. He is a former book critic for the Toronto Star, the Baltimore Sun, the Nashville Tennessean, BookPage, and the Jackson Free Press.

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