NOGUCHI AT CAMP POSTON Fleeing the prospect of immediate internment in California, from his home in New York Noguchi was invited to volunteer his talent to serve at the Japanese Internment Camp in Poston, AZ. His assignment was to design a more humane environment for the internees. In the words of Poston's first camp director, John Collier, "Though democracy perish outside, here would be kept its seeds." Predictably, Collier was replaced six months later by a less enlightened chief officer and Noguchi, though there of his own accord, and a volunteer on a now defunct program, could not get the authorities to release him from the camp for another seven months. Even then, he was only let out on a temporary pass. As he reported in 1968, as far as he knew he was "still at large." As far as we know, he remains on the fugitive rolls to this day.
Blueprint for Poston Internment Camp park and recreational facilities, 1942
	Blueprint for Poston Internment Camp cemetary, 1942

. . .
Poston was just the Nisei face
of something already familiar...

. . .

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