The Fort Missoula Montana Detention Camp, 1941-1944
Carol Van Valkenburg
In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the impoundment of Axis ships stranded in U.S. ports, and the government assumed custody of the crews. Some of the men from these ships would soon find themselves confined to Fort Missoula, Montana, an army base that had been built in 1877 to house soldiers fighting Indians.
The first arrivals were Italians. Six months later they were joined by a thousand Japanese. Among this second wave of detainees were Japanese men arrested immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Because the U.S. government kept secret for 45 years information about allegations of mistreatment of some of them, little light has been shed on this shameful episode.
In An Alien Place, University of Montana journalism professor Carol Val Valkenburg tells the story about men imprisoned at Fort Missoula during the war: who they were, how their lives took this peculiar turn, and how the small tranquil college town of Missoula, Montana, became for some, a shelter, and for others, a painful interlude in lives turned upside down by the events of a world war.
192 pages, 6 x 9, paperback
ISBN 9780-087842-723-9
