Cover Page

Table of Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Essay

Brief History

Gila River

Granada

Heart Mountain

Jerome

Manzanar

Minidoka

Poston

Rohwer

Topaz

Tule Lake

Isolation Centers

Add'l Facilities

Assembly Centers

DoJ and US Army Facilities

Prisons

References

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites by J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord, and R. Lord

Chapter 18 (continued)
Federal Bureau of Prisons

McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary, Washington

The McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary was on an island in the southern portion of Puget Sound 10 miles southwest of Tacoma. The island was originally settled in the late 1800s. When the Federal Penitentiary was built in the 1920s and 1930s, it incorporated some of the original buildings. For instance, the chaplain's house was originally a settler's house. If not for the fences and guard towers, the penitentiary might have resembled a small town: in addition to cell houses, it included a boat dock, a ferry landing, a boathouse, ship sheds, a dry dock, a hospital, officers' quarters, bachelor officers' quarters, a warden's house, automobile garages, a library, a reservoir, a utility building, a cannery, warehouses, a workshop, a school for employees' children, a machine shop, farms, a farm dormitory, a farm kitchen, a cattle ranch, and a poultry farm (Figures 18.18-18.21).

Figure 18.18. McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary in 1937. (National Archives photograph)

Figure 18.19. Cell House #1, McNeil Island Penitentiary. (National Archives photograph)

Younger draft resisters from the Heart Mountain Relocation Center were incarcerated at McNeil Island. Gordon Hirabayashi was also incarcerated here, along with numerous other conscientious objectors, including Jehovah's Witnesses. Like the Catalina Honor Camp, McNeil Island was a work prison, and inmates held a variety of jobs, including canning fish, clearing land, and farming. Today McNeil Island is a medium-security state correctional facility housing about 1,000 male inmates.

Figure 18.20. Cell House #2, McNeil Island Penitentiary. (National Archives photograph)

Figure 18.21. Prison buildings at the McNeil Island Penitentiary. (National Archives photograph)

Last Modified: Fri, Sep 1 2000 07:08:48 pm PDT
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