Intro

In the 1940s, Seabrook Farms, a company town and agribusiness in southern New Jersey, recruited, employed, and housed Japanese Americans released from internment camps. Issei and Nisei families flooded Bridgeton in large numbers – with an estimated 2,500 individuals coming to New Jersey – due to Seabrook Farms’ willingness to host workers as well as their families. “The Final Accountability Reports have been used here to provide demographic snapshots into the backgrounds of those who came to Seabrook Farms, while also offering insights into relocated individuals back stories prior to their arrival in the Bridgeton area. This project follows research into the history of Seabrook Farms that took the form of the online exhibition, “Invisible Restraints,” which explores “the relationship between captive labor and capitalism” and how Seabrook Farms viewed Japanese American labor, recruited from internment camps, as an economic opportunity. This online exhibit can be found here: https://njdigitalhighway.org/exhibits/seabrook_farms