Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem making content in front of the imprisoned men of El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center mega-prison

It’s currently being used as a prison camp for people accused of illegal immigration into America. People who haven’t been formally charged with a single crime.

Source: video

Gorky’s special relationship to the Belomor project allows for an understanding of his career as a symbolic representation of the ideals promoted at the camp. Gorky was a staunch enthusiast of prisoner labor and even predicted the possibility of a waterway similar to Belomor in his early works; in the April 1917 issue of his journal New Life (Novaia zhizn’) he writes

Imagine, for example, that in the interest of the development of industry, we build the Riga-Kherson canal to connect the Baltic Sea with the Black Sea […] and so instead of sending a million people to their deaths, we send a part of them to work on what is necessary for the country and its people.

Gorky’s condoning of Gulag camps such as Solovki and Belomor seems paradoxical to many scholars in light of his humanitarian endeavors, and some speculate either that Gorky was ignorant of the full extent of Stalin’s butchery or that he was aware, but was in a position that necessitated acquiescence to safeguard his well-being. When viewed in the context of his philosophical outlook on literature and labor, however, his support of prison camps seems not like an aberration but rather a natural extension of his belief in violent re-birth, a belief related to Marxist-Leninist ideology and the concept of god-building. Gorky sees people and language alike in the framework of craftsmanship. Perhaps his mistake was not so much his general support of Gulag projects, but his belief that human flesh can be formed like words on a page or cement in a factory. Gorky, after all, cared more about the craft than people themselves; in his 1928 essay “On How I Learned to Write” (O tom, kak ia uchilsia pisat’), he claimed that “the history of human labor and creation is far more interesting and meaningful than the history of mankind.” Gorky was key to the canal project because his philosophical interests exemplify the very core of Belomor: the violent transformation of people through creative acts.

Technology’s magic demonstrated humans’ usurpation of God in a tangible way, with the ever-widening capacity to harness and transform the natural environment showcasing the potential of man-made machines. Soviet pilots were imagined as literal incarnations of the New Man, and the massive expansion of the Soviet aviation industry in the mid 1920s provided some of the most concrete evidence of human superiority over the divine. Short voyages known as “air baptisms” (vozdushnye kreshcheniia) supposedly eradicated peasants’ belief in God while highlighting the majesty of Red aviation. In such “agit-flights,” pilots would take Orthodox believers into the skies and show them that they held no celestial beings. Those who participated in the flights would narrate their experiences to neighboring villagers, describing “what lies beyond the darkened clouds.” This phrase served as the title of a 1925 essay by Viktor Shklovskii in which a village elder embarks upon a conversional agit-flight that he later recounts to his fellow peasants. Six years later, Shklovskii participated in the writers’ collective that coauthored the now infamous monograph History of the Construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, in which a different, often deadly, type of technological program offered the promise of conversion. In both instances, darkness will be overcome by the enlightening potential of socialist rationalism: aviation will liberate the peasants from their ignorant beliefs, just as labor will supposedly bring the Belomor prisoners to the light of Soviet ideology. Such endeavors occurred before the backdrop of a larger civilizing project, since both the rural reaches of peasant villages and the wild expanses of untouched Karelia necessitated modernization.

Yet could such projects ever be completed? Did the New Man really exist, and could his creation ever be achieved? The messianic vision of Soviet socialism necessitated that paradise lie always just out of reach.

Similarly, Nietzsche posits the development into the Übermensch as a perennially elusive goal; like the Faustian concept of striving, the individual is forever trying to perfect oneself without necessarily ever achieving perfection. This constant yearning renders the present as the future, as the purpose of today is necessarily the reward of tomorrow. In the Soviet Union, the regime assured people that the difficulties they endured were required in order to reach the svetloe budushchee (radiant future), a utopia found at the end of an interminable road. In the absence of an end result or final destination, the voyage itself becomes the site of cultural exploration."

When camping becomes "temporary housing" for construction workers at the Savannah River Plant.

South Carolina

“Kids with time on their hands...looking for trouble.”

The welding of a hitherto unchecked and shapeless populace into a firm form was not only instituted by an act of violence but also carried to its conclusion by nothing but acts of violence—that the oldest “state” thus appeared as a fearful tyranny, as an oppressive and remorseless machine, and went on working until this raw material of people and semi-animals was at last not only thoroughly kneaded and pliant but also formed.

Coupled with physical force (thousands of prisoners died in building a waterway that came to be known as the “road of bones”) was ideological force. As prisoners toiled at Belomor, the regime transmogrified their minds as well as their bodies. Imbedded in the ideals of the Russian Revolution was a sense of aggressive transformation, and the Bolsheviks sought to re-mold forcefully those not willing to submit to their worldview. According to Lenin, Marxism had “assimilated and refashioned everything of value in the more than two thousand years of the development of human thought and culture.” The Communist Party, in turn, served as the vanguard of the proletariat. Their task was to actively lead the workers and peasants to consciousness, to help them make the pilgrimage from darkness to light. Not only Belomor but the entire Soviet project is modeled off of the assumption that perekovka—the potential for human self-transformation—is possible. Marxism-Leninism particularly embraced this possibility, since peasants and workers had to become enlightened, class-conscious citizens in the absence of the full development of capitalism."

Photographs from the ‘relocation camp’ for Japanese-Canadian internees in Schreiber, Ontario, with photos digitized and put up by Schreiber Public Library. I’ve posted about the Schreiber camp before, using extracts from a great article on the subject, but here’s a recap:  “Official removal of Japanese Canadians began in March of 1942....Two days later, about 100 “British subjects” were to board a train to go from Vancouver to Schreiber, Ontario. Of the roughly 100 men ordered to board the train, eighty-five refused. BCSC officials were unable to coax the men onto the train, and ended up incarcerating them in an “Immigration Shed.” These same officials told the imprisoned men that if they did not “divulge the names of the instigators” of the action they would be hauled before the courts, but no one was willing to inform on their compatriots. RCMP Commissioner S.T. Wood then asked for a blanket Order of Internment that would allow him to formally arrest and incarcerate the men. When a push failed, a shove would apparently do. These men would go on to become some of the first of what would eventually amount to over 800 Japanese Canadians who were interned for defying the forced labour and evacuation regime.

...

By April, Dave Watanabe had already “established himself as spokesman” [at the Schreiber camp. He is visible in the second photo, second from left, middle row, identified as ‘Butch’ Watanabe] At a meeting with Graham Pipher, a British Columbia Security Commission [BCSC] apparatchik, Watanabe demanded the workers’ “rights as Canadian citizens,” mainly regarding access to the nearby town of Schreiber. The evacuees stated that their “volunteering” to work in Ontario should have earned them these promised minor freedoms. Although not described as a job action, Pipher noted that sixty people attended this “meeting” to discuss grievances when they should have been working. Building on an earlier slowdown campaign, when the workers got word that the state was to restrict their movement, they brought their working pace to a crawl and threatened to strike.

Pipher commented that any restriction “on free movement etc.” would cause unrest to become “accentuated” and that he would lose control of the camp. The central administration pondered the imposition of stricter discipline, but the notion was junked well before implementation. From the start, the camps were not jail-cum-work-camps, and the incarcerated workers had much more latitude than the authorities had intended. As the camp was “small” and lacking in guards the Japanese enjoyed relatively free mobility. The “Japs at this camp [quickly] found favour with the majority of the citizens of Schreiber,” and before long they were patronizing “local’s stores and places of amusement,” without “any adverse criticism” from the townsfolk. It was of concern to T.S. Mills, the chief engineer on the project, that the men had access to the town and the telegraph office, and had the audacity to send uncensored messages directly to their families in British Columbia.

[CW Warning: Racial slurs] Mills related the story of a local railroad man’s daughter, who inquired of her father whether it was acceptable to dance with the Japanese. The railroader told his daughter that “as long as the Jap was sober and conducted himself properly, he would sooner she dance with a Jap than a Dago.” The railroader’s comment sheds some light on the process of racialization that was unfolding, solidifying, and mutating during the Second World War, and how the hierarchies of “race” were subject to significant gradation and shift.

Although following the war there would be an “elevation” of some “peoples” to “white” status, the war period was still riven by the hierarchies of preference and stratification within the racial-taxonomic realm. Mills “saw problems arising” and predicted there “will be cases of too much intimacy between those young, well-mannered and conducted Japs and local girls.”

Despite the reservations of Pipher and the BCSC (let alone the state) about free movement, Mills noted that “too stringent regulations at this time will cause an unfavorable condition,” and that “policies and regulations” need to be determined by need and on a local basis. Although there certainly was martial rule in the camps, and many of the people in the camps were officially interned and under much stricter control, the reality was that spaces were consistently mediated and negotiated via direct action.

The BCSC thought it impossible to restrict free movement at Schreiber camp. They believed they had a responsible partner in Watanabe as a leader, and as Watanabe had the camp’s “full support” they assumed that they could maintain rule by proxy. Nearby Jackfish Camp had a beer parlour, and the BCSC wondered if adding a pub could be enough to keep the Japanese from wandering to the local dance halls. In the end, the BCSC decided against imposing their plan of a blanket movement ban. Interestingly, the state also gave up on censoring the mail of these specific workers, unless they were sending it abroad, as the mail “could not contain information of much value to the enemy”—a freedom not extended to interned anti-fascist Canadians. Although Pipher wanted to move Wanatabe to another camp to “break” the impromptu organization, the BCSC thought better of it, noting that “should he be moved, he would cause trouble elsewhere.” Preferring to contain the trouble rather than turning local agitators into travelling organizers, Dave Wanatabe was left alone.”

- quotes from Mikhail Bjorge, “Destroying the Myth of Quietism: Strikes, Riots, Protest, and Resistance in Japanese Internment.” in Mochoruk, Jim; Hinther, Rhonda L., ed. Civilian internment in Canada: histories and legacies : an edited collection. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2020. Photos from top to bottom, with original captions from the SPL:

1) Gold Range Mine. Senator Hayes home and bunk houses 2 miles east of Schreiber. This became the main buildings for the Schreiber internment camp.  SPL 1996.1.11.

2) Men of the Schreiber camp, 1942.

Rear L - R: 1) ? 2) Fred Vogami 3) ? 4) ? 5) ? 6) ? 7) Jack Sadoio Shikitani 8) ? 9) ? 10) ? 11) Willie Kimitoshi Utsunomiya 12) Swede Sawada 13) George Suzuki;

Middle L - R: 1) ? 2) Butch Watanabe 3) Sam Hagino 4) Fred Akira Shititani 5) Koichi Nishikaze;

Front L - R: 1) Mickey Hogara 2) George Mochizuki 3) ? 4) John Kikuo Shikatani 5) ? 6) Art Tateishi 7) Sandy Ono

SPL 1996.1.20

3) Men working at the Japanese internment camp two miles east of Schreiber 1942-1944. George Keeno on left. SPL 1996.1.12.

4) Internees at Japanese Internment Camp two miles east of Schreiber. Men were sent to the camps to assist in road building in the area between Schreiber and Jackfish. SPL: 1996.1.19.

5) Left - Right: Minoru Nagasawa , Matahuru 'Mutt' Otsu.  Taking a break from chopping wood, 1942.

6) Some of the residents of a Japanese internment camp, during World War II. The camps were outside of Schreiber, about 2 miles east on Highway 17. 

Standing L - R: 1) Doug Arai 2) Punchy Ito 3) Don Otsu 4) Mitsuo Otsu 5) Len Takeshima 6) Maise Nishimura 7) Syd Nishimura. Seated L - R: 1) Larry Makino 2) Ernie Dikawa 3) George Nishimura. Some of the residents of a Japanese internment camp, during World War II. The camps were outside of Schreiber, about 2 miles east on Highway 17. 

SPL: 1996.1.18

"The riot in Vancouver coincided with early camp organizing, particularly in Ontario, where some [Japanese-Canadian] “volunteers” and internees had already been sent. By April, Dave Watanabe had already “established himself as spokesman.” At a meeting with Graham Pipher, a British Columbia Security Commission [BCSC] apparatchik, Watanabe demanded the workers’ “rights as Canadian citizens,” mainly regarding access to the nearby town of Schreiber. The evacuees stated that their “volunteering” to work in Ontario should have earned them these promised minor freedoms. Although not described as a job action, Pipher noted that sixty people attended this “meeting” to discuss grievances when they should have been working. Building on an earlier slowdown campaign, when the workers got word that the state was to restrict their movement, they brought their working pace to a crawl and threatened to strike.

Pipher commented that any restriction “on free movement etc.” would cause unrest to become “accentuated” and that he would lose control of the camp. The central administration pondered the imposition of stricter discipline, but the notion was junked well before implementation. From the start, the camps were not jail-cum-work-camps, and the incarcerated workers had much more latitude than the authorities had intended. As the camp was “small” and lacking in guards the Japanese enjoyed relatively free mobility. The “Japs at this camp [quickly] found favour with the majority of the citizens of Schreiber,” and before long they were patronizing “local’s stores and places of amusement,” without “any adverse criticism” from the townsfolk. It was of concern to T.S. Mills, the chief engineer on the project, that the men had access to the town and the telegraph office, and had the audacity to send uncensored messages directly to their families in British Columbia.

[CW Warning: Racial slurs] Mills related the story of a local railroad man’s daughter, who inquired of her father whether it was acceptable to dance with the Japanese. The railroader told his daughter that “as long as the Jap was sober and conducted himself properly, he would sooner she dance with a Jap than a Dago.” The railroader’s comment sheds some light on the process of racialization that was unfolding, solidifying, and mutating during the Second World War, and how the hierarchies of “race” were subject to significant gradation and shift.

Although following the war there would be an “elevation” of some “peoples” to “white” status, the war period was still riven by the hierarchies of preference and stratification within the racial-taxonomic realm. Mills “saw problems arising” and predicted there “will be cases of too much intimacy between those young, well-mannered and conducted Japs and local girls.”

Despite the reservations of Pipher and the BCSC (let alone the state) about free movement, Mills noted that “too stringent regulations at this time will cause an unfavorable condition,” and that “policies and regulations” need to be determined by need and on a local basis. Although there certainly was martial rule in the camps, and many of the people in the camps were officially interned and under much stricter control, the reality was that spaces were consistently mediated and negotiated via direct action.

The BCSC thought it impossible to restrict free movement at Schreiber camp. They believed they had a responsible partner in Watanabe as a leader, and as Watanabe had the camp’s “full support” they assumed that they could maintain rule by proxy. Nearby Jackfish Camp had a beer parlour, and the BCSC wondered if adding a pub could be enough to keep the Japanese from wandering to the local dance halls. In the end, the BCSC decided against imposing their plan of a blanket movement ban. Interestingly, the state also gave up on censoring the mail of these specific workers, unless they were sending it abroad, as the mail “could not contain information of much value to the enemy”—a freedom not extended to interned anti-fascist Canadians. Although Pipher wanted to move Wanatabe to another camp to “break” the impromptu organization, the BCSC thought better of it, noting that “should he be moved, he would cause trouble elsewhere.” Preferring to contain the trouble rather than turning local agitators into travelling organizers, Dave Wanatabe was left alone.

Although those workers had won the right to send and receive uncensored mail, the letters did not go unwatched. The state was good enough to keep some of the mail from evacuees on file, and these provide some insight into evacuees’ mindsets in 1942. In one intercepted letter, T. Sekine (working at a camp near Malakwa, BC) shared a common concern with his wife Y. Sekine that “it is tough, many things promised by the Security Commission doesn’t seem to be here or in town.” Alluding to the difficult position his wife was in, he noted that “if they are not going to look after our women folk the men will start another strike,” insinuating that an upcoming job action was not the first of its kind. He continued on to say that all of the “married ones worry about the welfare of their wives. Guess it is just a racket, now they [the BCSC] bit off more than they can chew. I hope they choke.” Mr. Sekine was an astute observer: the BCSC was indeed overwhelmed. By 1942 the Canadian state was dealing with a strike wave unprecedented since the workers’ revolt of 1919, and the state lacked the manpower to crush major urban strikes, let alone those in rural areas or in far-flung work camps. Mrs. Sekine expressed apprehension that her husband would be interned if he was too militant, but he responded that he did not fear internment as he and his comrades lacked “privileges” in the work camps, and “on top of that work in this hot weather . . . refusing us compensation in case of accidents . . . the interned ones are treated better.” The state had few methods of discipline to deal with the men in work camps when the punishment was seen as potentially preferable to the current situation. Sekine argued that he and his compatriots were “Canadian born and naturalised men” and presciently believed that “the way things are running here now, there’s going to be trouble soon.”

Another letter in the censor’s file concerned growing unrest. As one man wrote, presumably to his wife, “This camp was considered the quietest along this route, but it seems that some of the straw bosses are getting a little swell headed so it won’t be quiet here for long. It’s getting stifling, as if something is going to burst.” His use of labour vernacular hints at experience with unions. The worker went on to relate to his wife how “the boys” stole the “camp truck” to go play baseball against another local team. He anticipated repercussions, but as the foreman was “drunk every weekend, and even some week days,” he was not terribly concerned.

Baseball was an important part of the Japanese Canadian experience, and particularly so in the isolated work camps. Apart from entertainment, it provided one of the few opportunities for the men to travel and fraternize. Workers in the road camps quickly set up “highly competitive, intercamp baseball games” soon after arrival. Alongside baths and gardens, camp workers generally constructed baseball diamonds. First, even while living in tents, prioritizing quality leisure, intercamp sport, and socializing. The man noted in his letter that he had heard that some of the camp “agitators” had won recourse to leave, and were allowed to roam free. As he had yet to be on strike, he thought that rewarding militancy with freedom was “no British way of fair play!” Work camps may have been under martial law, but it was not martially enforced. If even in this “quiet” camp the workers were regularly striking via baseball, unrest would have been extensive and routine even during the very early days.

In the same months that Sekine and the other evacuees were writing their letters, neighbouring BC and Alberta construction crews at the Decoigne and Geikie camps on the Yellowhead Road undertook direct action of their own. In June and July RCMP Constable A.P. Ridley was regularly in contact with the Decoigne camp, as workers there were constantly on strike. On 11 July 1942 Ridley was sent to investigate some rumours about an upcoming strike in the Decoigne camp. He found that in June, Inspector Radcliffe of the Edmonton detachment of the RCMP had been sent “to remove some agitators” from Camp Geikie. This was deemed necessary as a man named M. Inouye had allegedly assaulted a teamster during an earlier strike, and the RCMP had decided to prosecute him. This decision precipitated another strike.

While Ridley was investigating the situation, Mr. Burpee, the engineer of both camps, recommended removing five specific workers from nearby Decoigne camp. Although these workers were unconnected to the ongoing strike or even to any form of “agitation,” Burpee insisted on their removal, as he believed that they “were not good workers.” Wary of further provocations against an already agitated group, Ridley opposed the move. The removal was undertaken anyway, against the better judgement of all involved. Before this extraction, Ridley noted, “Decoigne was a very peaceful camp. There was never a strike nor a breath of trouble.”

This changed when the five men were removed. Suddenly the “Japanese were indignant and demanded to know why they were being taken away.” When “no explanation was offered,” the camp ignited—with Ridley eminently sympathetic. He opined that the Japanese “realized that they had a good camp and had behaved themselves, and could not understand why the police had invaded their tranquility.” Five men in the Decoigne camp struck that evening, and refused to work until either their comrades were returned or “the foreman discharged,” and preferably both. These workers correctly accused the foreman of precipitating the removal of the five men despite his denials. The original strike at Geikie was quashed, but now the Decoigne camp was in upheaval. The workers at Decoigne penned a letter full of demands to J.H. Mitchell.

They wrote that the five men who were removed had no “attitude,” that they were working “peacefully,” and “were very popular gentlemen.” The same could not be said for their foremen, who did not “understand our situation” or “Japanese psychology,” and was “unable to handle our men in a peaceable manner.” The letter was signed “Yours faithfully, All the Japanese in Work Camp 3A, Jasper Route.” Mitchell responded that “your going on strike does not meet with my approval, and as a friend who is always trying to better your condition . . . a strike is only an injury to yourselves.” Mitchell, however, was mistaken, as eventually the men went back to work on the basis of promises of a quick return to their wives; and in the end, the foreman was “transferred to another camp.”