[Secondary LESSON PLAN: Loaded Words]
TERMINOLOGY
A lot has been made of the use of the terms "concentration camp" and "internment camp." I have recommended that the National Park Service not use the term "concentration camp" in its interpretation because the term has become inextricably associated with Nazi death camps of World War II.The term "concentration camp" probably comes from the "reconcentrado" camps that Spain's General Weyler established about 1896 in an effort to separate rural populace in Cuba from Cuban guerrillas, a program somewhat similar to the strategic hamlet program the U.S. established in Vietnam for the same purpose. Translated into English, "reconcentrado" became "concentration."
Actually, there is substantial historical evidence of use of the term for the War Relocation Camps during World War II. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called them "concentration camps" in 1944, the Attorney General of the United States referred to them as "concentration camps" in 1942, and a wide range of politicians calling for the establishment of such camps in 1942 called them "concentration camps." At that time, of course, the nature and extent of the Nazi program to exterminate Jewish people and other opponents of the Nazi regime were not well known in the West.
Gordon Chappel, Regional Historian
National Park Service
Pacific West Field Area
San Francisco, CAThe definition of "concentration camp" comes from the Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1980: "A prison camp in which political dissidents, members of minority ethnic groups, etc. are confined."