Architectures of the Pacific Carceral Archipelago: Second World War Internment and Prisoner of War Camps

Abstract

Characterisations of the Pacific Basin as a tropical archipelago essentialise its geo-cultural diversity as an alternative way of envisioning the region and its politics. This paper offers a darker projection of this archipelagic imagination as one forged by imperial competition and wartime violence. It traces its genesis across the history of the Second World War internment and prisoner of war camps. Their spatial proliferation as a carceral geography produces a variety of temporary environments where civil and legal rights are suspended. The roles adopted by captors in their treatment of prisoners reflect the social prejudices of the period, the politics of imperialism and the specific responses of warring nations during various stages of the conflict. This paper asks how architectural scholarship might address this imperial history. It draws together diverse models of incarceration related to the Pacific War, acknowledging the different treatment of racially different colonial and national subjects and tracing their passage through multiple spatial configurations of camps. The camps in Australia are contextualised in their wider Pacific geography with special attention to Victoria’s Tatura Group.