Reviewed by Dr. Karin Reenie Elliott, Architect ARB RIBA, Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts.
The Architecture of Confinement: Incarceration Camps of the Pacific War by Anoma Pieris and Lynne Horiuchi is an ambitious project researching the ‘carceral archipelago’ of prisoners of war and internment camps in the Pacific Basin during World War II. There are 13 case studies documented in the book, and their geographical spread extends from Australia and New Zealand to Singapore and the United States. This geographical diversity allows the authors to develop a meta-project, investigating similarities among, and differences between the socio-spatial manifestations of conflict architecture in a range of diverse former British colonies. The authors interrogate ideological links and disruptions between and within the wartime carceral geographies of the four former colonies. Drawing on postcolonial theory, they present a range of perspectives, finding surprising connections between very geographically remote social groups.
While some of the colonies may be categorised as ‘settler colonies’, for example those in the USA, Australia and New Zealand, and others as ‘direct colonies’, for example Singapore, the authors avoid over-emphasising such distinctions. The collective acquiescence of former colonies to the demands made by the Allied Forces that they set up ‘holding camps’, suggests a form of a post-colonial mimicry. Some of the camps were housed in new buildings while others were converted prisons, yet all were intended for the incarceration of ‘suspect’ populations. These processes of internment, the authors argue, have similar effects on those incarcerated, whether formerly privileged colonial citizens, refugees fleeing from the carnage of war, dispossessed communities or those interned as prisoners of war. Drawing on the figure of the ‘subaltern’ in postcolonial theory, ‘subalternisation’ is recurring theme in the book, describing how those incarcerated lost their visibility, voice, and power.1 The authors convincingly argue that their task as architectural historians is to investigate the modes of occupancy of such camps as well as the shared (and divergent) ideologies that are implied by such forms of confinement.
The key Pacific Basin locations studied include: Tatura Group, Victoria, Australia; Loveday, South Australia; Hay, New South Wales, Australia; Cowra, New South Wales, Australia; Gaythorne, Queensland, Australia; Harvey, Western Australia; Marrinup, Western Australia; Featherston, New Zealand; Singapore; Naoetsu, Joetsu City, Niigata, Japan; Rabaul, New Britain; Manzanar, California, USA; and New Denver, British Columbia, Canada. Inmates’ rudimentary forms of accommodation, work and family life at these sites are illustrated through maps, plans and photographs. We get a sense of the extreme difficulties inmates faced as a result of the conflict and the hostile and overly bureaucratic reception inmates encountered. For example, German Jewish refugees were often treated with the same degree of suspicion as their Nazi countrymen, presumably based on assumptions about language. The cultural differences between groups (another post-colonial trope with a racialized dimension), dictated the manner in which they became subjected to social sorting, surveillance and othering in the camps. This was articulated through labels, stereotyping national identities and locating inmates in demographically defined functional zones. For example, on camp plans, divisions between encampment spaces were crudely labelled ‘Japanese’, ‘Italians’ and ‘Germans’, alongside other labels such as ‘No Mans Land.
Pieris and Horiuchi draw on a rich source of archival materials to show how those incarcerated in these camps became increasingly segregated, categorised, racially denigrated or dehumanised as an effect of the architectural design of the camps. Such practices lead the authors to identify the wartime period as an era in which the polarisation of national identities became particularly pronounced and was enacted through the spatial design of the camps.
These camps had hitherto only been considered on a nation-state basis. By aligning carceral practices in several former colonies, Pieris and Horiuchi reveal postcolonial conditions of hybridity, cultural difference, liminality and resistance. Yet the identities of certain inmates also resisted the simple categorisations suggested by labels on the plan: families were divided according to their states of origin, or separated by gender. The authors thus trace how modernist functional zoning categories hardened state affiliations and forced the delineation of hybrid identities along the lines of distinct nation-state ideologies, pre-determined distinctions established by the Allies, as broadly representative of a ‘colonial nation’.
The first aim of the research was to situate the shared narratives of the World War II conflict within the ‘carceral archipelago’ of internment camps. The varied and hybrid identities of inmates and/or displaced persons are cast against the circumstances of their incarceration. Whether the circumstances surrounding their arrival at these camps was due to a) their participation in active combat, b) displacement as a result of conflict, c) economic migration or d) escaping prosecution or even death, they tended to be treated in the same way. Those incarcerated were subjected to the vicissitudes of wartime border restrictions, were heavily guarded, with limited means of escape, and compelled to modify their behaviour in ways that maximised their capacity for survival in the camp enclosures. Across all sites, the camp inmates tended to experience similar forms of identity filtration, categorisation and stereotyping to the point where they became ‘docile bodies’ for the host nation.4
Chapter 3, ‘Prisoner of War Resistance’ offers evidence of contradictions in the treatment of internees and prisoners of war housed in adjacent camps. Pieris draws upon narrative and qualitative research, together with clear data from state archives, to support a more nuanced understanding of prisoners of war. This reveals that many of those who were incarcerated actively and furtively ‘resisted’ their confinement by digging elaborate escape tunnels. Such acts went against the state-sanctioned histories of the era. As the authors explain, much of this history has remained under the radar, as histories of war tend to emphasise the perspective of the victor. In contrast, the ‘postcolonial perspective’, as expressed by Homi Bhabha, seeks to articulate the perspectives of those who have been subject to colonization, with all of its complications, not least in terms of how complex hybrid identities may be experienced.5 In a further anecdote, the authors recount a striking instance of poorly misjudged stereotyping which arises when a group of ‘German Jews’ are incarcerated alongside a group of ‘German combatants’. The latter had a tendency to goose step around the adjoining camp, singing Nazi anthems and traumatising their German Jewish neighbours.
Pieris and Horiuchi’s important research into wartime architectural history is all the more engaging because it is supported by extensive quantitative data and archival materials. It would have been enlightening to hear more about how the maps and drawings were accessed and developed, given that many of the camps were demolished long ago. How have the archival conditions of these intricate architectural studies informed the meta-project? However the authors carefully construct a typology out of a diverse collection of places, local conditions, and incarcerated populations. Sites such as California, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Japan themselves encompass a rich and diverse set of cultural groups, languages, rituals and customs. It is the very nature of placemaking, the social cohesion within each group and within each camp, that is shown to resist such over-arching attempts to distil or crystallise social group identities. For the authors, it is the application of postcolonial theory that offers the opportunity to critique why and how the decision was made to functionally zone each group according to their nation state alone, without regard for the more nuanced and complex considerations of hybrid religious affiliations. Further, their personal histories, differences in language and culture, and the liminal living conditions in the camps seem to exemplify the crisis in modernist functional zoning. By examining race and space, nation and narration, domination and resistance, subalterneity and othering in the design of World War II internment camps in the Pacific Basin, the authors mobilize a specific historical viewpoint from which we can understand the emergence of hybrid voices, identities and liminalities.6
This is a most valuable contribution, not only to architectural and social history, but also to the wider project of re-thinking political history from the perspective of the post-colonial. By foregrounding the material culture and spatial strategy of internment camps and POW camps over such a broad geographical network, the research extends the well-established critique of functionalism at an urban scale (in the tradition of Garnier and his Cite Industrielle) to the broader scale of the nation state.7 This transnational comparative study thus opens up questions about the dynamics and the statics of sovereign loyalties, and the social and material consequences of the tactical and the geographical alliances of nation states.
This volume will hopefully find its way onto the reading lists at a wide range of universities across the world and not just in the Pacific Basin. It will make an excellent contribution to the interdisciplinary studies of international relations, surveillance studies, war studies, peace studies, and political science, as well as the more established humanities disciplines such as archaeology and architectural history.