The Architecture of Confinement
Incarceration Camps of the Pacific War

An innovative account of prisoners of war and internment camps around the Pacific basin during the Second World War.

Anoma Pieris (Author), Lynne Horiuchi (Author)

9781316519189, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 February 2022

330 pages, 74 b/w illus.
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.8 cm, 0.73 kg

'This is an ambitious transnational study of the built environments of mass confinement in World War II that bring together studies of confinement sites in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Singapore. It is magnificently eye-opening and informative.' Greg Robinson, Université du Québec à Montréal

In this global and comparative study of Pacific War incarceration environments we explore the arc of the Pacific Basin as an archipelagic network of militarized penal sites. Grounded in spatial, physical and material analyses focused on experiences of civilian internees, minority citizens, and enemy prisoners of war, the book offers an architectural and urban understanding of the unfolding history and aftermath of World War II in the Pacific. Examples are drawn from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, and North America. The Architecture of Confinement highlights the contrasting physical facilities, urban formations and material character of various camps and the ways in which these uncover different interpretations of wartime sovereignty. The exclusion and material deprivation of selective populations within these camp environments extends the practices by which land, labor and capital are expropriated in settler-colonial societies; practices critical to identity formation and endemic to their legacies of liberal democracy.

Introduction
1. Carceral Archipelago
2. A Network of Internment Camps
3. Prisoner-of-War Resistance
4. Land and Labor
5. A Military Geography
6. The Colonial Prison
7. Empire of Camps
8. Prison City
9. Recovery, Redress, and Commemoration
10. Intersectional Sovereignty
11. Border Politics
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: War & defence operations [JWL], Military history [HBW], Australasian & Pacific history [HBJM], Architecture [AM]