Panama Canal Zone

Run by the United States military, Camp Empire temporarily housed civilian internees, including women and children, from all over Latin America. The male prisoners, most of whom ordinarily ran businesses, oversaw farms and ranches, were salesmen or teachers, were treated as brutally here as if they were convicted criminals. They were forced to engage in strenuous physical labor in intense heat and high humidity, clearing tangles of brush with machetes, while armed guards with vicious dogs stood watch. Even the worst of U.S. internment camps proved more comfortable. (Friedman, Nazis and Good Neighbors, 148.)