The Second World War saw extraordinary movements of people, before, during and afterwards. Civilian internees are rarely considered part of this, and especially not those in South and Southeast Asia. Between December 1941 and May 1946, nearly 2700 Japanese civilians and colonial subjects from across Japan’s empire were interned in camps in British India. Mainly residents of Singapore and Malaya, these civilians were arrested and transferred by ship and train to India, where they were interned for all or part of the war. Their first ‘temporary’ camp was in Purana Qila, the Old Fort in New Delhi, from where some were repatriated to Japan in August 1942 as part of the Anglo-Japanese Civilian Exchange. The remaining civilians were moved to a more permanent camp at Deoli (Ajmer) in 1943. The internees experienced several hardships, including inadequate accommodation and disease. To date, little has been written about these internees and their journeys, especially in English. Weaving together archival sources, internee memoirs and non-English publications, this article seeks to reveal the experience of incarceration on internees in British India as forced migrants of war, and to consider reasons why the history of these internees remains largely invisible.

第二次世界大战之前，之中和之后，人们的行动异常活跃。平民被拘禁者很少被认为是其中的一部分，尤其是南亚和东南亚的平民。在1941年12月至1946年5月之间，来自整个日本帝国的近2700名日本平民和殖民者被拘留在英属印度的难民营中。这些平民主要是新加坡和马来亚的居民，被逮捕并乘船和火车转移到印度，在那里他们因全部或部分战争而被拘留。他们的第一个“临时”营地位于新德里的古堡普拉纳·奇拉（Purana Qila），1942年8月，其中一部分作为英日平民交流的一部分被遣返日本。其余的平民在1943年被转移到Deoli（Ajmer）的一个更永久的营地。被拘禁者经历了数种艰辛，包括住宿和疾病不足。迄今为止，关于这些被拘禁者及其旅行的文献很少，尤其是英文。本文结合了档案资料，被拘禁者的回忆录和非英语出版物，旨在揭示英属印度被迫战争移民对被拘禁者的监禁经历，并考虑为什么这些被拘禁者的历史仍在很大程度上是看不见的。