Crystal City Family Internment Camp, World War II

The camp outlived the war by more than two years because some of its prisoners had nowhere to go. Peru refused to take back the Japanese Peruvians whom U.S. agents had brought north, and hundreds were sent to Japan. Those who refused to go sued with the attorney Wayne Collins and stayed behind the fence while the courts ruled. The camp closed in early 1948, after hundreds of them won parole to work at Seabrook Farms in New Jersey. A group of Tule Lake renunciants awaiting deportation was held here as well.

What the plaque says

Crystal City Family Internment Camp, World War II When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, an immediate fear was the possibility of enemy agents in the country and the Western Hemisphere. As one response, thousands of Japanese-Americans were moved away from the West Coast. Lesser-known was an internment camp system operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The government built these camps to hold Japanese, German and Italian nationals arrested in the U.S. and Hawaii, and in Peru and other Latin American countries until they could be exchanged for American detainees. Three of these camps were in Texas at Kenedy, Seagoville and Crystal City. The Crystal City camp, converted from an existing migratory labor camp, was the largest internment facility in the U.S. and the only one built exclusively for families. The original 200-acre camp later expanded to almost 500 acres, with agricultural areas and support facilities. The primary living area was a 100-acre compound enclosed by a 10-foot barbed wire fence, complete with guard towers and spotlights. Like a small town, the compound had 700 buildings and included family housing, schools, a hospital, shops, warehouses, markets and recreation areas. Although intended for Japanese, the Crystal City camp also held Germans and a few Italians. The population averaged 2800 throughout the war. It reached a peak of almost 3400 in December 1944, two-thirds of whom were Japanese. At the end of the war, the government paroled internees throughout the U.S. or sent them to their home countries. The Crystal City camp was the only one still in operation by June 1946. It officially closed February 27, 1948, and the property transferred to the city and school district. Texas in World War II, V+60 (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crystal City Family Internment Camp Site — steps away
  The only wartime camp built for whole families, where Japanese, German and Italian Americans and Latin American deportees were held from 1942 to 1948, now marked by cottage foundations and a pool.
• My Story Museum — 0.9 mi
  A free museum on Zavala Street holding three stories of one small Texas town: the 1969 student walkout and Raza Unida years, the internment camp and its veterans.
• Dimmit County Courthouse — 12 mi
  An 1884 Italianate courthouse wrapped in a 1920s Classical Revival remake, in the seat of a county whose white primary kept Mexican Americans out of politics for nearly fifty years.

More markers nearby

• Zavala County — 0.8 mi
• Zavala County — 5.8 mi
• Burleson Cemetery — 9.6 mi
• Dimmit County — 12 mi