These 10 horrifying WWII internment stories show that while the Japanese American camps are widely known, they were just one chapter of a far broader tragedy. Governments worldwide rounded up civilians from enemy nations and locked them inside camps on virtually every front.
10 Canadian Internment Camps Were Worse Than The American Ones
Across the border in Canada, the same sweeping order that sent Japanese Americans to detention sites also swept up the 23,000 people of Japanese descent living in the north. Their experience, however, often eclipsed the American ordeal in cruelty.
Authorities stripped them of every personal item and promised that their belongings would be held “in trust” until peace returned. That promise proved hollow; within six months of confinement, the government auctioned off all seized property without consent.
Many of the Canadian sites were little more than repurposed barns and chicken coops, crudely insulated with tar paper. Prisoners received no beds, only straw‑filled sacks riddled with fleas to lie upon.
The winter of 1942‑43 set records for cold in British Columbia, with temperatures plunging below –40 °C (–40 °F). Internees were forced to pack dirt against the thin walls just to keep the bitter cold at bay.
While the United States began releasing Japanese civilians back to their homes in 1944, the Canadian government kept its detainees locked up until April 1949, a full five years after the war’s end.
Even then, many never returned home. Officials pushed the remaining internees to relocate to Japan, and roughly 4,000 were deported before a single person was truly freed.
9 The US Also Interned Italian, German, Taiwanese, And Korean Civilians
The Japanese were not the sole target of America’s wartime internment machinery. Under the same executive order, Taiwanese and Korean residents were classified as Japanese and swept up as well.
Roughly 11,500 German‑American and 2,700 Italian‑American civilians found themselves behind barbed wire solely because of their ancestry. Estimates vary, with some scholars suggesting the Italian figure could be as high as 10,000.
Although these numbers represent a small slice of each community, the selection process was often absurd. For instance, Joe DiMaggio’s father, a long‑time U.S. resident, nearly faced internment because he had not yet secured citizenship.
Hundreds of thousands more endured strict curfews. Over 600,000 Italian‑Americans who escaped the camps were still forced to stay indoors between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The climate could have been far worse. A 1944 poll revealed that a significant portion of Americans supported turning internment into an outright genocide, with 13 % endorsing the killing of every Japanese person in America, children included.
8 Jewish Refugees In Britain Were Interned And Deported
When Germany seized Norway in 1940, a wave of paranoia rippled through Great Britain. Anyone of German or Italian descent was branded an “enemy alien” and confined.
The majority of those detained were Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi persecution. Of the 80,000 enemy aliens held, 55,000 were such refugees—people who had narrowly escaped concentration camps only to be locked away by the nation that promised them safety.
Families were split apart; for the first year, men and women were housed in separate facilities, preventing spouses from seeing each other.
Additionally, 7,000 were expelled overseas to camps in Canada and Australia. The journey was perilous—one ship bound for Canada was sunk by a German vessel, resulting in 714 deaths.
7 Finland Starved 4,000 Prisoners To Death
In Finland, the victims were Russian civilians. When the Finnish army advanced into East Karelia, they rounded up 24,000 Russian civilians and dumped them into barbed‑wire camps.
The captives received barely enough food, and before the war concluded, 4,000 of them had perished from starvation.
The rationale for the roundup was not security; rather, the Finns intended to trade these civilians for prisoners of war. Jewish detainees were also leveraged to curry favor with the Nazis, with more than ten percent handed over to the Gestapo.
Malnutrition proved the deadliest foe. In the middle of 1942, the camps saw a surge in deaths, with roughly 3,500 Russian prisoners starving to death over a few months.
6 The Japanese Starved And Murdered Interned Civilians
The Imperial Japanese government incarcerated more civilians than the United States did, imprisoning over 130,000 enemy aliens across the colonies they occupied.
These were ordinary civilians living in Southeast Asian territories who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their treatment often mirrored that of military POWs.
In many camps, rations were so meager that prisoners hovered on the brink of starvation, and guards employed violent force against any perceived disobedience. One internee recalled that beatings were as regular as the ticking of a clock.
The most harrowing conditions occurred in the smallest camps, where guards acted with extreme brutality. Survivors from a Nauru camp that held only seven prisoners reported that, after an Allied bombing, the Japanese guards beheaded two of the detainees to vent their frustration.
5 Seven Prisoners In A Japanese Internment Camp Were Publicly Tortured And Executed
The largest Japanese‑run civilian camp was Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong, holding roughly 2,800 prisoners.
Most inmates were British civilians who refused to flee when the Japanese invaded. Their diet consisted of the remnants of leftover food; a family of five might receive a bowl of rice and a bowl of stew, both often contaminated with dust, mud, rat and cockroach excrement, cigarette ends, and even dead rats.
Out of the total population, 121 perished. The most chilling episode involved seven men who attempted an escape by using a radio to contact the outside world. When caught, they were subjected to public torture in front of the other detainees.
The torment was so severe that the men either succumbed to their injuries or were executed by shooting or beheading, serving as a stark warning to anyone considering resistance.
4 Jewish Refugees Were Robbed And Beaten On The Way To Camps In Australia
Australia interned its own Japanese, German, and Italian residents, and also accepted 8,000 foreigners, among them thousands of Jewish refugees.
The most notorious episode involved the Dunera, a British vessel originally meant for 1,600 passengers but crammed with 2,500, including 2,000 Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi death camps.
These refugees were forced to share cramped spaces with 451 genuine POWs from Italy and Germany, placing them side‑by‑side with former SS officers who had terrorized their families.
During the 57‑day voyage, prisoners slept in piles on the deck, receiving only 30 minutes of fresh air daily. The air was so foul that inmates would press their faces against an open hatch for a breath of relief.
Upon arrival, the guards had looted all valuable belongings, discarding medicine and prayer books into the sea, leaving the refugees destitute.
3 Peru Deported Japanese Residents To American Internment Camps
Among the 2,200 Japanese civilians held in American camps, many had never set foot in the United States; they were Peruvian nationals seized and shipped abroad solely because of their ancestry.
The United States requested these deportations to increase its pool of civilian detainees for potential prisoner‑exchange negotiations with Japan.
Peru, eager to appease the United States, complied, especially after a May 1940 riot that saw 600 Japanese‑owned homes, schools, and businesses torched.
Some of the deported individuals were later exchanged for American POWs, while others were forced to live in Japan, a country foreign to them despite their heritage.
After the war, Peru barred most of these Japanese citizens from returning, sending roughly 1,000 back to Japan and leaving the rest to rebuild lives in the United States.
2 Native Alaskans Were Interned And Died At Horrifying Rates
Not all detainees hailed from enemy nations. A total of 881 Native Alaskans were confined for three and a half years, despite being fully American citizens.
The government claimed the internments were for their own protection, fearing that Alaska would become a war zone, and relocated them into camps that were, paradoxically, still situated in active combat zones.
The facilities were dilapidated—some were converted gold mines, others old canneries. Disease ran rampant, infecting virtually every inmate.
By the end of their confinement, one in ten of these Native Alaskans had perished, succumbing to starvation, freezing temperatures, or disease.
1 Norway Labeled Its Own Citizens As ‘German Whores’ And Locked Them Up
When the war finally drew to a close, some nations turned their vengeance inward. In Norway, 5,000 women were branded tyskertøser—literally “German whores”—and imprisoned without trial.
While a minority had taken German lovers during the occupation, many were merely employed in roles that supported the occupiers, such as cleaning or sewing.
The government defended the arrests as protective measures, yet mob violence also erupted: women were publicly shorn, their heads shaved, and paraded through streets while crowds cheered.
Similar reprisals occurred in France, where women accused of collaborating faced public humiliation, head‑shaving, and swastikas painted on their faces.
Men were largely spared. In Norway, 28 men who married German women faced no repercussions, whereas every woman who married a German was expelled, stripped of citizenship, and stigmatized for life.
10 horrifying WWII: A Glimpse Into the Dark
These ten stories reveal a global pattern of fear‑driven oppression, showing how ordinary civilians became victims of wartime hysteria and state‑sanctioned cruelty.