[Review of] Richard Drinnon. Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Meyer and American Racism

While American history is replete with outrageous and tragic examples of racism, two of the most prominent in recent memory are the government\u27s World War II removal and internment of Japanese Americans and its postwar attack on the tribal rights and consequently the services, reservations, and cultural integrity of Native Americans through a policy known as termination. Ironically, these two episodes intersect in the person of Dillon Meyer. Meyer ran the vast archipelago of Japanese American concentration camps as the Director of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) from 1942-46 and then administered a larger system of lndian reservations as the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) from 1950-53. In this latter post, Meyer launched an aggressive effort to withdraw the government from its commitments and responsibilities for Native Americans that culminated in termination legislation after he left office