Crystal City Internment Camp
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Crystal City Internment Camp
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| Location | Roughly bounded by Airport Drive, Popeye Lane, North 7th & North 12th Avenues |
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| Coordinates | 28°41′27″N 99°49′22″W / 28.69083°N 99.82278°WCoordinates: 28°41′27″N 99°49′22″W / 28.69083°N 99.82278°W |
| Built | 1943 |
| NRHP Reference # | 14000474 |
| Added to NRHP | August 1, 2014 |
Crystal City Internment Camp, located near Crystal City, Texas, was a place of confinement for people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent during World War II and has been variously described as a detention facility or a concentration camp. The camp, which was originally designed to hold 3,500 people, opened in December 1943 and was officially closed on February 11, 1948. Officially known as the Crystal City Alien Enemy Detention Facility (more commonly referred to as U.S. Family Internment Camp, Crystal City, Texas), the camp was operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Department of Justice and was originally designed to hold Japanese families, but later held German families as well, including many who were deported from Latin American countries to the U.S. A significant number of those incarcerated were native-born American citizens. The Crystal City Internment Camp was one of the primary confinement facilities in the United States for families during World War II.
The detention camps were described at the time as an "internal security" measure, but are now considered to have been "unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity", as reported by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.
The camp held 3,374 detainees on December 29, 1944. This was the maximum it ever held.
Crystal City, named after the town it neighbors and located 110 miles (180 km) south of San Antonio, was one of the largest camps in Texas. Before the war, it had been a migrant labor camp, built by the Farm Security Administration to house an influx of migrant workers who came to farm the area's most profitable crop, spinach. At the start of World War II, thousands of Japanese and German residents of the U.S., including both U.S. citizens and resident aliens, were arrested and separated from their families during their initial detention. The FSA camp was turned over to the INS in order to allow these so-called "enemy aliens" to be reunited with their wives and children, and the first group of 35 German families arrived on December 12, 1942.
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