Densho Encyclopedia
Fort Howard (detention facility)
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| US Gov Name | Fort Howard Internment Camp |
|---|---|
| Facility Type | U.S. Army Internment Camp |
| Administrative Agency | U.S. Army |
| Location | Fort Howard, Maryland (39.2000 lat, -76.4333 lng) |
| Date Opened | |
| Date Closed | |
| Population Description | Held Japanese immigrants from the U.S., German nationals, and German prisoners of war (POWs). |
| General Description | Located on old army barracks within Fort Howard Army Post, Baltimore County, Maryland. |
| Peak Population | 30 (1942-07-14) |
| National Park Service Info | |
An INS-run temporary detention station in Baltimore, Maryland, that held enemy aliens who had been residing in the region. Abner Schreiber, a Border Patrol inspector who was second in command at Fort Howard, recalled about five hundred being held there, a combination of internees—German, Italian, and Japanese with most being of German descent—and German seamen. A document cited by Tetsuden Kashima lists a population of 22 Japanese and 8 German internees as of July 14, 1942. [1]
One of the Issei held at Fort Howard was Tsuruju "Mike" Miyazaki, who operated two cafes in Virginia and lived with his African American wife and two children in Suffolk, Virginia. Arrested on the night of the Pearl Harbor attack, he was transferred to Fort Howard about a month later, where he and other internees lived in army-type barracks. Though paroled in March, he was not allowed to return to Suffolk due to its proximity to military installations, and he eventually was sent to the Rohwer , Arkansas, WRA concentration camp. [2]
Footnotes
- ↑ Interview with Abner Schreiber by Paul F. Clark, Mar. 19, 1979, California State University, Fullerton Oral History Program, Japanese American Project in Japanese American World War II Evacuation Oral History Project, Part II: Administrators , edited by Arthur A. Hansen, accessed on June 7, 2021 at http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft7199p03k;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=Abner%20Schreiber&toc; Tetsuden Kashima, Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 110.
- ↑ Denise Watson, "A Mystery and a Mission: A Woman's Quest to Discover What Happened to Her Japanese Grandfather After World War II," The Virginian-Pilot , Aug. 18, 2019, accessed on June 7, 2021 at https://www.pilotonline.com/history/article_fc1382d2-a41f-11e9-9157-b350bcd2ad9f.html .
Last updated July 6, 2021, 9:31 p.m..
