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Dodd Field (Fort Sam Houston) Enemy Alien Detention Station, World War II

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Shocked by the December 7, 1941, Empire of Japan attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii that propelled the U.S. into World War II, one U.S. Government response was the incarceration of more than 120,000 Issei (first generation, Japanese immigrants) and Nisei (second generation, U.S. citizens) in War Relocation Authority camps across the country. Through separate confinement programs, thousands of Japanese, German, and Italian citizens in the U.S. (and in many cases, their U.S. citizen relatives), classified as enemy aliens, were detained by the Department of Justice (DOJ) through its Enemy Alien Control Unit, and, in Latin America, by the Department of States Special War Problems Division. Enemy aliens were held until paroled or exchanged for U.S. and Allied citizens seized overseas by Axis nations. Texas hosted three DOJ confinement sites, administered by The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) at Crystal City, Kenedy, and Seagoville, as well as two U.S. Army Temporary Detention Stations at Fort Bliss (El Paso) and here. The U.S. Army held enemy aliens across the U.S. wherever the number of apprehensions was too few for the INS to operate a detention facility. Beginning in February 1942, the first detainees were held at the Old Infantry Long Barracks. By April 1942 the site was relocated here, the posts former airfield Dodd Field. The site encompassed 20 acres surrounded by a double barbed-wire fence with eight elevated guard towers overlooking two compounds of Victory Huts. Through paroles and repatriations, the population fluctuated considerably; never more than 150 at a time. In late 1942, the DOJs Special Alien Enemy Hearing Board began transferring detainees to INS camps, as the U.S. War Department prepared to house prisoners of war. Dodd Field Enemy Alien Detention Station closed in late 1942. Texas in World War II - 2013

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

After Pearl Harbor drew the United States into World War II, the government detained not only more than 120,000 Japanese Americans in relocation camps but also thousands of Japanese, German, and Italian nationals—and their U.S.-citizen relatives—as 'enemy aliens.' Fort Sam Houston's old Dodd Field airfield became a U.S. Army temporary detention station, twenty acres ringed by double barbed wire and eight guard towers. From early 1942 it held detainees—never more than 150 at once—until they were paroled, exchanged, or moved to other camps, and it closed late that year.

Why it matters

It preserves a sobering chapter of the home front, when fear turned the machinery of the wartime state against immigrants and citizens alike on the basis of ancestry.

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  • · World War II enemy-alien and Japanese American incarceration

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