The Forgotten Japanese Internment of Latin America
During World War II, the U.S. secretly deported thousands of Latin Americans of Japanese descent to internment camps.
Ask about Japanese American internment, and most people recall the 120,000 civilians forcibly relocated from the U.S. West Coast during World War II. However, few realize that the United States also orchestrated the forced deportation and internment of more than 2,000 men, women, and children of Japanese descent from Latin American countries, in a secret wartime program shrouded in secrecy and injustice.
Beginning in 1942, the United States government pressured more than a dozen Central and South American countries to arrest thousands of ethnic Japanese, most of whom were born and raised in their home countries, and ship them to U.S. internment camps. The majority came from Peru, whose sizable Japanese community faced widespread suspicion after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S., seeking hostages for possible prisoner exchanges with Japan and aiming to neutralize perceived threats in the Western Hemisphere, demanded that its neighbors hand over anyone of Japanese ancestry.
These Latin American internees had no ties to Japan beyond distant ancestry; many did not even speak Japanese. Under U.S. direction, authorities seized properties, businesses, and bank accounts. Men were often arrested first, sometimes with little or no warning. In many cases, wives and children joined them only after months of separation and dire uncertainty. Families were placed on ships and sent thousands of miles to New Orleans, then loaded onto trains bound for remote U.S. detention centers, such as Crystal City, Texas.
The conditions of their detention mirrored those faced by Japanese Americans: barbed wire, armed guards, and communal living. But while Japanese Americans were at least U.S. citizens or legal residents, the Latin American internees found themselves effectively stateless. Many had their passports confiscated, and some became eligible for deportation to Japan—despite never having set foot there.
Perhaps the most startling element of this chapter is that the primary motivation for the program was not security but diplomacy. The United States used hundreds of Latin American Japanese civilians—including children—as pawns in prisoner-of-war exchanges with Japan. Roughly 800 were shipped to Japan under these circumstances, their destinies shaped by the cold calculations of wartime bargaining.
After the war, most Latin American governments refused to readmit their former citizens, who now had nowhere to go. Some languished in U.S. camps for years, while others struggled to settle in the United States, their legal status unresolved. It was not until decades later that survivors and their descendants began to speak publicly about their traumatic experiences.
The Japanese Latin American internment program remained largely secret until the 1980s, when activists and researchers exposed documentary evidence in U.S. government archives. In 1998, after years of lobbying, the U.S. government issued a formal apology and offered modest compensation to surviving internees through a special bill, separate from its earlier redress for Japanese Americans. Still, recognition of this unique episode remains scant in both American and Latin American history.
This forgotten saga reveals not only the reach of U.S. wartime policy beyond its borders but also the profound impact on generations caught up in international conflicts they neither started nor understood. The story of Latin America’s Japanese internees invites broader reflection on the ethical costs of national security—and on the persistence of overlooked historical injustices.
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