A Refugee Camp in America

Fort Chaffee and Vietnamese and Cuban Refugees, 1975-1982

Bibliographic Data

ID11699687
AuthorsJana K Lipman (corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume33
Issue2
Pages57-87
Publication date2013-12-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American Ethnic History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0278-5927 • E-ISSN: 1936-4695
PublisherUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5406/jamerethnhist.33.2.0057
OpenAlexW2324580251
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited12

FROM THE 1950S through the 1990s, the U.S. government housed Hungarians, Vietnamese, Cubans, and Haitians in refugee camps within the United States on military bases. The U.S. military guarded refugees on domestic military bases in Arkansas, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, and California, as well as on bases established outside the continent in America’s former and current territorial possessions, namely in Guam, Guantanamo Bay, the Philippines, and Panama. Anticipating political and presumably personal freedom within the United States, numerous refugees found themselves unexpectedly waiting days, and at times weeks and months, in military compounds. These military bases became de facto refugee camps for men and women hoping to find resettlement in the United States. The following study provides a close analysis of a single military base, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, and its transformation into a refugee camp for Vietnamese refugees in 1975 and for Cuban refugees from 1980 until 1982. Fort Chaffee provides a window onto the militarization of refugee camps, and it enables a close analysis of refugees’ responses to this phenomenon within the United States. The influx of Southeast Asian and Caribbean populations brought a spotlight onto U.S. Cold War foreign policy failures and represented a marked shift in the militarization of U.S. refugee and migration policy. This article argues for the centrality of the military in mapping the routes and relocations for large-scale refugee operations in the United States. Numerous historians have investigated the presence of U.S.-run Displaced Persons camps in postwar Europe, and scholars have also investigated the politics of internment camps and detention facilities within the United States. However, the history of Fort Chaffee highlights the creation of refugee camps within the United States. The U.S. military housed a handful of Jewish refugees on an army base in Oswego, New York, during World War II, and in 1956, the U.S. military relocated approximately thirty thousand Hungarian refugees to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. These precedents were noted when the U.S

Development economics · Geography · Militarization · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Vietnamese · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Cuban History and Society · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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