Exhibition & Events

Monday, January 22, 2018

NJ: States of Incarceration New Brunswick Opening

Big Oaks Farm Security Administration camp
Venue: 

Douglass Library
8 Chapel Drive
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8527

Description: 

Our exploration of Seabrook Farms and its layered histories examines the wartime relationship between captive labor and capitalism, and how social control extended beyond the immediate confines of internment camps.

Renowned for its flash-frozen vegetables, by 1950 Seabrook Farms was the largest agribusiness in the United States, employing more than 6,000 laborers. World War II created new opportunities for Seabrook to procure laborers with limited options. This included approximately 2,500 American citizens and immigrants of Japanese descent incarcerated in camps. While federal officials defended internment as a matter of national security, no evidence backed this claim and no formal charges were ever made. Internment did reflect white Americans’ longstanding belief that Japanese immigrants and their children were racially unassimilable.

At Seabrook, paroled internees worked alongside displaced persons, POWs, and contracted migrant laborers, groups whose freedom of mobility and choice were similarly constrained. A company town, Seabrook’s power over its workforce blurred the line between captivity and freedom.

Venue: 

Douglass Library
8 Chapel Drive
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8527