How should wartime internment be understood beyond the Japanese American experience?
Short answerBritain and Australia provide further wartime examples. Whether fifth-column fears could produce similar measures again remains open.
NotesJapanese American and Canadian experiences are placed alongside internment elsewhere. Britain is associated with German internees on the Isle of Man, and Australia is also mentioned. Fifth-column fears and difficulties monitoring suspects provide the security rationale offered here. Confident predictions that contemporary states would never repeat such measures are questioned because comparable peer conflict has not tested them in the same way. Alex Clarke adds testimony from Argentine expatriates who believed they remained under surveillance in Britain throughout the 1982 Falklands conflict.