That Damned Fence: The Literature of the Japanese American Prison Camps

Until the late twentieth century, relatively few Americans knew that the United States government forcibly detained nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. At war's end, the nation, including many of those who were confined to the ten Relocation Centers—which President Roosevelt initially referred to as "concentration camps"—wished to wipe this national tragedy from memory.

That Damned Fence, titled after a poem written by a Japanese American held at the Minidoka camp in Idaho...