Internment Camps - USA - 1
Internment Camps USA - 1 The Internment of German American Civilians World War II December 7, 1941 - July 1948 By Arthur D. Jacobs, Major, USAF Retired Researcher and Publisher E-mail: adjacobs@cox.net The information published herewith is taken from the web site of Arthur D. Jacobs, USAF Retired, which contains research materials on the wartime treatment of U.S. and Latin Americans of German ancestry for serious researchers, students and persons seeking general information. The World War II experience of thousands of German Americans, to most, is an unknown. During World War II, the U.S. government and many Americans viewed German Americans and others of "enemy ancestry" as potentially dangerous, particularly immigrants. The government used many interrelated, constitutionally questionable methods to control persons of German ancestry, including internment, individual and group exclusion from military zones, internee exchanges, deportation, repatriation, "alien enemy" registration, travel restrictions and property confiscation. The human cost of these civil liberties violations was high. Families were disrupted, if not destroyed, reputations ruined, homes and belongings lost. By the end of the war, 11,000 persons of German ancestry, including many American-born children, were interned. Pressured by the United States, Latin American governments collectively arrested at least 4,050 German Latin Americans. Most were shipped in dark boat holds to the United States and interned. At least 2,000 Germans, German Americans and Latin American internees were later exchanged for Americans and Latin Americans held by the Third Reich in Germany. The mission of this web site is to tell the story of thousands whose lives were forever changed because the United States suspected them of disloyalty. Government suspicion was based upon national origin and led to great hardship. Their story must not be forgotten. It deserves to be told. To date, it remains shrouded in history. "The Authorities stated that what was done was completely legal. If that was so, then why did the prisoners and the guards have to sign an affidavit of secrecy. Both of them were advised that failure to comply with the government's demand, the repercussions would be catastrophic!" The Story of Werner Ahrens As written by his oldest daugher, Shirley Weiss November 20, 2005 "Werner Ahrens, Enemy Alien!" As I opened the parcel from the Department of Homeland Security, I speculated at what these new 160 pages of documents would reveal. Before requesting the documents our family debated our apprehension, not every member of my family was on the same page about our need to know. Did we really want to discover the secrets buried in these documents? As a child you idolize your parents, as an adult you recognize your parents are human and have faults. But a deceased parent remains in your memory bigger than life. Did we want to risk destroying our image of a benevolent father and take the chance of discovering a public enemy? As I began tearing the package open, I was surprised at how conflicted I felt. After all hadn't I convinced my sister that we needed to know the truth no matter what the outcome. Momentarily, I was frozen reflecting on my last images of my father, he was lying so still, looking so unnatural, prominent on his right thumb was a blood blister. Of course, at the age of six I didn't really realize that it was his right thumb. But the image is so vivid it is indelibly etched in my memory, no question it was his right thumb. Yes, 48 years later I still have that picture emblazoned on by brain. Finally, I might find some answers "Was my father a "Nazi" or a "fifth column" agent of the Third Reich? Overview of Fort Lincoln, Bismarck, North Dakota, Internment Camp, 1941 (John Christgau Collection) As kids, we had always known my father was interned during World War II. Two photos were among my father's possessions one Ft. Lincoln the other Ft. Missoula? Both pictures had barbed wire circling a clump of buildings each had a watch tower. Which one was in North Dakota? We know dad met mom in North Dakota. Didn't mom say Italians went to Fort Lincoln and Germans to Fort Missoula? or was it the other way around? For years we had been hearing about the Japanese, being interned during WWII, the news always discussed what a tragedy it had been. Why was it not a tragedy for my father? Never once had I ever read or seen on TV a single shred of news coverage documenting that Germans had been interned. Perhaps, my dad’s internment was an isolated incident. I wondered, if dad were alive would he be asking this same question? Each time I heard the news coverage, I would declare to friends and acquaintances my Dad was interned during WWII. They would peer at me in disbelief. Always, they would respond Germans were not interned in America. Well, if Japanese were interned how do you know the Germans were not , I retorted. You could tell, no one really believed me. They all thought I did not have the story correct. Pouring over the documents, I was astonished at how mundane they were, a big disappointment. Important men had signed the documents, Attorney General of the United States, Frances Biddle, had signed more than one document. Important men, important issues, but unimportant looking documents. The details of my father's story still remained in front of me just a pile of paper, bureaucratic paperwork. It was like a box of jigsaw pieces had been dumped in a heap. No time line, no order just a pile of boring documents. As I poured over the paperwork, a few details began to emerge. The papers did not have any context. I needed to find outside materials to understand the sequence of events and the laws that were passed. The internet, provided some data but limited. Indisputably, without the reporting of the New York Times we would never have been successful in uncovering the facts of my father’s internment. After viewing the paperwork, I came to the conclusion that for 60 years, our government has suppressed the facts of German/American internment. Amazingly, as critical as I am of the today’s media I find myself extolling the virtues of the media during WWII. Our own personal family story confirms the absolute necessity of a free media in a democracy. As evidenced by thousands of internees, the government has immense power to suppress information to the public. German internment is the story of 11,000 persons of German Ancestry and 4,000 of Italian ancestry interned in a web of camps operated by the Department of Justice across the United States. The story has been concealed by our government for over 60 years. My father died in 1957 at age 45. Because of his early death, he took his internment story to his grave. Perhaps he signed an oath of secrecy like other internees, or like most others he wanted to forget his years of internment. Fear, embarrassment, and lack of control over their lives marked their years of internment. Since I was only a child of 6 when dad died, I had limited knowledge of his internment. The recent situation of detainees in Guantanamo is the event that prompted my investigation of my father’s internment. On August 29, 1939 dad was removed as a crew member of the SS Clio. The Clio was a Standard Oil tanker in port in New York City recently shipping from Montreal, Canada. Dad was a German national whose occupation was a seaman. For ten years, dad had shipped around the world working for three different shipping companies. In the last two years, prior to his removal from the crew of the Clio, he had been employed by the Panama Transit Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company, an AMERICAN COMPANY. To avoid US shipping restrictions the SS Clio had been re-registered to Panama, a neutral country, a few months prior. The Clio was originally a German registered ship that was built in Germany and staffed by a German crew. In 1939, the Atlantic was extremely dangerous with German U boats sinking merchant ships daily. Germany was determined to cut off Great Britain from supplies and was aggressively targeting all shipping lines. Did Standard Oil remove the men to protect their economic interests or had the government ordered the company to take this action? One theory is the company was fearful of German or Italian sabotage on the ships. Although I found no documented evidence of sabotage on the Clio, it is possible the company feared sabotage and removed the crew. The crews were removed three days prior to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Did Standard Oil have forewarning of the impending invasion? Did England pressure US government to lean on private US companies to remove axis crews? Because of contractual obligations SO paid the sailors a weekly stipend, and promised to return them, at Standard Oil’s expense, to originating ports as soon as safely possible. The men were not allowed to find other work in the area as they did not possess US work permits. The company treated them well. In fact, it appears the company paid for housing, medical expenses, and a weekly stipend from August 1939 until May 1941. Was their benevolence a little out of character for the times (pre labor law and the Wagner Act)? It does create suspicions in my mind. Would current company’s pay salaries for almost two years in similar circumstances? This unchallenged account of events regarding the removal of German and Italian crews remains a stumbling block for me. Supposedly, the government ordered the Standard Oil Company to keep track of each of the men while in New York City by requesting that SO retain all the men’s passports. Isn’t it ironic that Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Company shipped tankers of oil to Germany well into the war with no government sanctions and my father a lowly seaman found himself incarcerated for three years as an “enemy alien”? Who was helping the enemy more and had more impact on the direction of the war? In 1940 all aliens in the United States were ordered by the government to register under the Alien Registration Act. All aliens were photographed, fingerprinted and issued an ID. Any change in status, including address changes, required immediate notification with the INS. During October of 1940, the government conducted a deportation hearing resulting in my father's release on his own recognizance. On November 15, the DOJ on a document titled "Transmission of Records of Warrant Hearings" reported my father’s passport status as: "Alien's German passport is at the office of the Standard Oil Co. VALID UNTIL 5/21/41. The Department of Justice, on March 10, 1941 found dad subject to deportation on a warrant charge. At his pleading he was granted permission to depart voluntarily at his own expense. Although not desirable, this alternative is what my father favored. His plan was to leave voluntarily. He would ship to a neutral country and wait out the war. After the war he would return to the United States, and attempted to become an American citizen. But what neutral country would he depart to, he must pick a country that had a favorable immigration quotas. Upon dad’s initial arrival in New York, he never contemplated becoming a citizen. Only after his accidental stay in New York starting in 1939, did he become enamored with the American way of life. He definitely did not want to return to Germany. If the government deported him he would not be allowed to ever return to the United States. Additionally, he would not be able to continue his occupation as a seaman, as he would be restricted from shipping into American ports. Voluntary departure is exactly what he desired. As my dad’s employer, Standard Oil retained his passport in their New York office, a non customary practice but now required by the government. In preparation to leave the country, dad contacted SO to retrieve his passport. The company would not release it. Dad went up the chain of command attempting desperately to obtain his passport. All attempts failed. He was finally informed that the company had been instructed by the Department of Justice to refuse to return his passport. Two days after my father’s 29th birthday, May 7, 1941 he was arrested around 4 am by the FBI for immigration violations ( I do find it almost purposeful, rather than random, that his arrest and incarceration occurred after his passport was no longer valid 5/21/41). The charge against dad was "overstaying his leave" in the US. A roundup of hundreds of seaman occurred in the next two days. The seamen were arrested and brought to Ellis Island. Standard Oil, dad’s employer promptly canceled the bond issued as well as his weekly stipend. Ellis Island, housed the enemy aliens. Was this America's first concentration camp? Hundreds of men incarcerated in over crowded deplorable conditions ("and given the worst uneatable food - was this an arrogant attempt to starve the incarcerated men to death"!). President Roosevelt signed the “Proclamation of Unlimited National Emergency” on May 27, 1941. Unfortunately, this sealed my father’s fate. He was sent by train from Ellis Island to Fort Lincoln, North Dakota, an armed high security facility. The seamen were the first civilians incarcerated in internment camps, primarily Germans and Italians, no Japanese among them. The first bad news upon arrival was he would be interned here until deported. Unfortunately, the news grew worse on August 2, 1941 an order and warrant was issued directing his deportment back to Germany. To dad this was a total disaster. Dad started filing appeals striving diligently to reverse the deportation order. He absolutely did not want to return to Germany. In 1936, he had spoken out against the Nazi’s despotism. He left the country quickly as he was a marked man for speaking out. Quickly he shipped out of Germany to avoid authorities. On a short leave in 1937, he returned to Germany declining to register with the police, a government requirement. He was “tipped off” that authorities were still after him and he feared he would be thrown into a concentration camp. According to his papers, he feared that even his internment at Fort Lincoln had been communicated to the Nazi’s. He literally feared for his life if returned to Germany. Absolutely, dad couldn’t be deported. He must find a way around the deportation order. For the next few years he remained confined in internment at Ft. Lincoln. The records during internment consisted of: Multiple letters in 1941 (until December 3, 1941) requesting to be allowed to voluntarily depart the country. All denied. Multiple letters to anyone and everyone to get his personal effects returned to him, because he was not allowed to get his personal effects when arrested. (Ft. Lincoln officials were sympathetic to his cause and helped him a great deal) A Letter to the Swiss Legation asking for assistance in paying the express freight bill when his belongings were returned to him via express rail. Three parole requests granted in 1943-44 to work on the railroad, and it appears to work for two different farmers in the Bismarck area. A Letter to the Swiss Legation stating that all correspondence regarding his affairs need to be sent to him not Captain Stengler, a merchant marine captain, subsequently incarcerated at Ft. Lincoln. Dad stated quite empathetically that this man had no authority over him and that he did not agree with his politics.(Stengler was pro-Nazi) A Letter to the Canadian Red Cross requesting the health status of another internee incarcerated in Canada. Who it appeared had cancer. (Again speculation on my part I think my dad wrote this letter to confirm that this man existed. I believe that he was afraid the man would die and there would be no record for his family to follow) In the spring of 1943, after two years of internment dad was among 44 internees paroled to work on the Northern Pacific Railroad (NPRR), perhaps by taking a work assignment he could improve his situation. Working on the railroad gave the internees a little more freedom, although the working environment was harsh and the living conditions horrible (in a box car). News of the war was a constant interest of the internees. New government pressure was being asserted on the internees. The government wanted them to sign forms to volunteer for deportation. Unknown to the men, the US government was going to trade civilian internees for Americans caught behind enemy lines. If the internees volunteered it would not be in violation of wartime conventions. Obviously, dad refused to volunteer for deportation. In addition, Government officials were also looking for volunteers to enter the US military. Volunteers would need to sign an oath that they were willing to take up arms against their home country. This would pit internees into combat against friends and relatives in Germany. Understandably, they were unsuccessful in enticing many internees to join the service. Incredulous to me, my father volunteered. His parents and older brother still resided in Germany. It made me seriously question my father’s moral character. All the years my dad had been at sea, he routinely sent money home to his parents. How could he enter a war against his home country? But yet I was so relieved that dad was not a “Nazi”. Today, I sincerely believe his parents opposed the Nazi’s as well. Dad was fighting for his country in his own way. Entering the military on March 26, 1944 dad was sent to boot camp. It would be interesting to know where he was stationed but according to the military all of his files went up in smoke in a fire in the military archives. After boot camp in 1944, it appears dad was sent to Camp Gordon Johnston, a POW camp in Florida, where he interpreted work orders to the German POW’s. On September 6, 1944 dad became a naturalized citizen in Tallahassee, Florida, the witnesses on his citizenship papers were from Camp Gordon Johnston. It appears that while operating as an interpreter the military determined that my father was a good candidate for military intelligence training. Was it because of his linguistic skills or his shipping experience? What ever the reasons in order to train at Camp Ritchie he had to be an American citizen. Isn't it fascinating that 6 months after leaving internment as an "enemy alien" after spending 3 years incarcerated, the government was assisting dad in gaining citizenship to train him in military intelligence. What a turn of events! Dad was never an undercover agent for Germany he was an undercover agent for the United States! By the few military papers we possess, we were able to confirm that the rest of his military service was served in Manila harbor supervising a tugboat operation.. According, to retired military intelligence officers dad would have been attached to the 362nd Harbor craft Company but assigned to a military intelligence unit. Consequently, he would receive his orders from the military intelligence unit. In reading "Spycatchers" by Duval Edwards, I believe my father's intelligence role might have been port security. During this period tugboats would intercept all ships coming into Harbor and confirm documents of the crew and glean as much information as possible to improve the safety of the port. Many months after dad completed his military service and over two years after becoming a US citizen the US government on December 23, 1946, withdrew the order for deportation. He was safe at last. In conclusion, my father was nothing more than an ordinary man. No German spy, no “nazi” just a working man who had entered our country at the wrong time in the wrong place. Just like all the other German internees. Just ordinary people with ordinary lives. My mother always said as we pursued my dad’s story “your father was a good man with a good heart”. Of course my sister and I would glance at each other and mumble under our breath obviously he didn’t have a good heart or he wouldn’t have died at age 45. Mom was always resolute no matter what the papers revealed dad was a good man. He was just a very lonely man. Mom met dad when her roommate coaxed her into dating my father. He was 16 years senior to mom, much too old for her. Even today, we sometimes wonder if she married him because she felt sorry for him. After a very short courtship, dad proposed. He told my mother that he was so tired of being alone. He needed and wanted to start a family. When dad died there were four of us children. The youngest, my sister, Frieda, was just ten months old. At 29, mom was a widow with four children, a woman who didn’t even know how to drive the car sitting in the driveway. As an adult looking back, I realize how my parents' hardships were a testament to character. Ordinary people and good role models. No matter how tough their circumstances, they prevailed. For more on the internment of German Seaman please visit the story regarding the ASAMA MARU incident. (Please click on the underlined words ASAMA MARU). Posted to FOITIMES.COM on March 3, 2006 Updated on August 15, 2007 ========================================================= US Department of Justice Internment Facilities Crystal City, Texas Family Internment Camp Photo courtesy University of Texas, Institute of Texan Cultures, San Antonio A current marker, funded privately and placed at the Crystal City, Texas Family Internment Camp in 1985, inaccurately states that only Japanese American civilian prisoners were held at this site during World War II. German and Japanese Latin Americans and at least one Italian Latin American family were housed here, as were German and Japanese American families. The decision to intern Latin American families at Crystal City was based on the theory that the temperatures, which frequently reach 120º during the summer, but are considered mild by winter standards, would be similar to the countries from which they came. Much of the following information is from Joseph L. O’Rourke, camp commander, who wrote a report on the Crystal City Internment Camp in 1945. (O’Rourke, Joseph L. Historical Narrative of the Crystal City Internment Camp, a report to W.F. Kelly, Assistant Commissioner for Alien Control Office, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Crystal City Internment Camp, RG 85, 101/161, 32, NA.) Originally a migrant labor camp, the INS began expanding the site in the fall of 1942, anticipating the need to intern large numbers of enemy aliens and their families. 41 three room cottages and 118 one room shelters already existed there, as well as service buildings and sufficient utility services for the approximately 2000 people originally anticipated. There were 100 acres to be surrounded by 10 foot high fences, guard towers and brilliant spot lights, and another 190 acres to be devoted to farming, personnel residences, etc. The first internees, of German ethnicity, arrived on December 12, 1942, and were expected to work on construction. Joint Japanese and German American work crew Crystal City, Courtesy Schmitz Family Collection Six types of housing were eventually provided. One room shelters 12’ x 16’ were for couples and those with small children. Other buildings were divided into various sized apartments, for larger families. 20 used Victory huts were also moved onto the site. A few cottages had an inside bath and toilet, designed to house families with special needs, but most internees used centrally located facilities. An initial allowance of cooking utensils, furniture, bedding, etc. was provided, and could be replaced if the worn out items were turned in. At first food was brought to each family, but by September 1943 internees were issued a new form of camp money, “coupon checks,” a token system devised by camp officials to allow inmates to purchase needed foodstuffs or clothing items at a general store. Milk and ice continued to be delivered. Originally, a family of two adults with two small children were allotted $6.00 worth of coupons per month. In 1944 the amount was raised to $6.50. Security for the camp was provided by two sets of guards. A Surveillance Division patrolled the fence line and provided the armed guards for the towers, while an Internal Security Division operated a small police force inside the compound twenty-four hours a day, “ to preserve order, count internees, and generally determine the state of affairs in the camp. ... Very few internee fights or displays of violence have occurred. There have been no escapes or attempted escapes.” (O’Rourke, 14-15.) In the first winters, mud was everywhere. A 70 bed hospital, built in 1943, was surrounded with mud “practically up to the knees when it rained.” Medical staff had to store extra, clean shoes and stockings inside the building, to put on after they waded in and washed up, until a better walkway was constructed. (O’Rourke, 22.) The winter of 1942-43 was the coldest on record in the area, with snow on the cactus and icicles hanging from roof eves. The summers brought intense heat and frequent dust devils. Internees encountered scorpions, red ants, rattlesnakes, and other insect and animal life they’d never known before. Sunburns and heat rashes were common. Internees were employed in various camp enterprises, for ten cents an hour salary. A group of men cleared water hyacinths out of an old reservoir, which was then used as both reservoir and swimming pool. Over the years the camp became a small town, complete with grocery stores, butcher shop, furniture and mattress factory, beauty and barber shop, fire department, etc. When first opened, there were few diversions from the monotony. A perimeter road, dusty in summer, awash with mud in the winter, could be walked. A small library of donated books was available. A popular diversion was dreaming over Montgomery Ward (known as “monkey ward”) catalogues. Originally, women shared a few sewing machines, making curtains and children’s clothing. Owning cameras was banned until some time later. Movies were occasionally shown outdoors, against a building wall, in the early days. As the population swelled, internees were able to attend movies twice a week, swim once the pool was complete, and use their own funds to plant gardens around their dwellings. A Supervisor of Education had been hired in April 1942, to plan the development of a school system. Setting up these schools and getting adequate teaching staff was challenging. Teachers fluent in English, Spanish, German, or Japanese were needed to work with the children. Both a German and a Japanese school were established, and by the autumn of 1943, an official school, based on Texas educational regulations, was in place for those students wishing an American education. Nursery schools and kindergartens were begun as soon as the camp opened and were run by the internees. (Additional pictures of Crystal City people ) The Crystal City camp was considered the show place of the internment program, so much so that the INS made a propaganda movie about it in the mid-1940s. Show place or not, it was a prison. (Alien Enemy Detention Facility, Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1946. 16 mm videocassette, N3-85-86-1, N.A., College Park, Maryland.) “From its inception through June 30, 1945, the Crystal City camp inducted 4,751 internees (including 153 births). Of this number, 954 Germans were repatriated in two movements (February 1944 and January 1945), and 169 Japanese were repatriated in August 1943. One hundred thirty-eight internees have been released or paroled, 84 interned at large, 73 transferred to other facilities, and 17 have died. In practically all cases, the women and children were voluntary internees.” (O’Rourke, 8.) It is of interest that Joseph O’Rourke’s Historical Narrative concludes “... it is the general opinion of our staff that voluntary internment should not be permitted. ...our observation has formed the opinion that a woman, because of her usual emotional state, will generally develop an anti- American complex through internment, even if no such prior attitude existed.” (O’Rourke, 32-33.) The Crystal City, TX Family Internment Camp closed in February 1948, and the remaining internees, most or all of German ethnicity, were sent to Ellis Island, N.Y. Reunion: In November 2002 there was a reunion of former internees. Sponsored by the Zavala County Historical Commission and its able chairman, Richard Santos, the invitation coincided with Veterans’ Day and the Crystal City Spinach Festival, an annual event celebrating the mainstay crop of the area. (A statue of Popeye still stands in front of the town hall, as it did when busloads of enemy alien families were transported to the camp.) Of the thousands of prisoners who passed through the camp during the war years, there were around eighty internees of German descent, originally from the United States or Latin American countries, a busload of Japanese Americans with ties to Peru and a handful of others. Most had been the children of the camp. Additional pictures of Crystal City reunion ) As collective Grand Marshal they were feted at receptions and memorial services and included in the annual Spinach Festival parade. The parade featured the Spinach Queen and her court, local school bands, floats, pickup trucks full of high school and junior high athletes, flag twirlers and former internees. The streets were lined with onlookers, many of whom cheered as the visitors walked by. Some were curious enough to walk along with them, asking about their time as prisoners, or talking about their memories of the camp. While the activities of that weekend included ceremonies and speeches, the real story of the reunion happened over meals, in motel parking lots, in vans on the way to an event—everywhere the former internees and their families gathered. Sharing a common experience, they were able to share the pain and bewilderment many still feel. Uprooted from their lives and transplanted into a life behind 10 foot high fences, with armed guards watching every movement, many still wonder why. Originally an Army military post, the brick buildings which remain on the site were built in from 1900-1910. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps used Ft. Lincoln as its state headquarters and erected many prefabricated wooden buildings. During World War II, the facility was converted into a Department of Justice (“DOJ”) male enemy alien internment facility for use by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”) Ten foot double fences were erected around the facility and guard towers built. After the war, Ft. Lincoln served many governmental purposes, but in 1966 it was declared surplus. In 1969, it became the United Tribes Technical College. www.uttc.edu. Today, the UTTC continues to use many of the buildings used to house, feed and administer the WWII internees. Hundreds of German and Italian seamen were the first internees at Ft. Lincoln. They had served on German and Italian commercial ships which were impounded in US ports when the war started in Europe in 1939. Records indicate that the Italians were transferred to Fort Missoula, Montana, but the Germans remained. As German civilians were arrested and interned, many were interned at Ft. Lincoln. A large number arrived from Camp Forrest, an Army-run camp in Tullahoma, Tennessee, in May 1943, when that camp was converted into German POW camp. Later, in February 1945, approximately 650 Japanese men who had renounced their American citizenship were sent to the camp for eventual deportation to Japan. Other Japanese nationals followed. The last internee left Ft. Lincoln in March 1946. By that time, 4,030 German and Japanese men had passed through its gates, including 2,150 Germans and 1,800 Japanese. A stone gateway marks the college entrance along State Highway 1804, approximately ¼ mile south of the Bismarck Airport. Internees have visited the site over the years and struggle with long-suppressed emotions as they walk through the gates and stand in the buildings where they were incarcerated decades earlier. To date, no marker or memorial recognizes the fact that hundreds of men spent years interned at this site. Ft. Lincoln served as the largest male internee camp during the World War II. The internees came from all over the country and Latin America, and from all walks of life. Most were middle-aged and engaged various trades. Few were professionals. Since there was no attempt to intern the men near their homes and families, many were thousands of miles from their loved ones who could not come to visit. As with all the camps, their only means of communication was through censored mail. Besides the emotional and financial trauma of internment, perhaps the biggest problem the men faced was simple boredom. Many engaged in athletic activities, such as soccer. Some were even allowed to construct a mini-ski ramp, while others played hockey during the long North Dakota winders. Others ran the canteen, helped in the kitchen and office, worked in the carpenter shop and helped maintain the camp. Those inclined toward the arts participated in theatre productions, choir, drew and pursued other handicrafts. Max Ebel remembers a wrestling area built for the Japanese internees who enjoyed it tremendously. (He also remembers getting trounced by the one Japanese man with whom he wrestled.) Some spent long hours writing letters appealing their internment decisions and some tried, unsuccessfully, to escape by tunneling under the fences. As the war dragged on, many men from North Dakota enlisted in the military, leaving a dearth of males to perform rugged railroad work. The Northern Pacific Railroad working through the State Department and the German government obtained permission to hire internees to work outside the camp. Originally, over 500 men signed on to do the work, but eventually only approximately 100 were selected to do the work. Tension ran high among the internees who had very mixed feelings about the railroad work which was perceived to be aiding the US war effort. Some, resenting their internment, vehemently opposed it and made life difficult for the railroaders. Some original volunteers withdrew, but many others refused to be denied their chance to escape life behind barbed wire, even if it was to do hard labor and live in boxcars during the hard North Dakota winter. Max Ebel, was among them. The internees were carefully watched as they performed their duties. They lived 6-8 in a boxcar with a coal stove and bunks. Guards checked on them throughout the night and watched them during the day. The work trains stayed in several North Dakota towns adjoining the railroad: Casselton, Buffalo, Steele and Mandan, among them. The men also worked in and on rail lines in the Standing Rock Lakota Reservation near Cannonball where some befriended the poverty-stricken Native Americans. After writing many letters, one railroader, representing his fellow workers, finally persuaded the Alien Enemy Control Unit of the Department of Justice to grant rehearings to the railroaders. Apparently, the argument that the men had shown good faith in working for the railroad, thereby helping the government, worked. Many men were granted rehearings in 1944 and thereafter and were paroled. Some suspect though that the rehearings permitted the government to draft some of the men out of the camps which also occurred. The UTTC graciously hosted the first reunion to be held at Ft. Lincoln in conjunction with the opening of the North Dakota Museum of Art’s Snow Country Prison exhibit in October 2003. this exhibit was the first compendium of pictures of the camp, beautifully interspersed with haiku by a former Japanese internee, Itaru Ina. Former German and Japanese internees and their families returned to the camp to share an emotional weekend of memories—together. To date, no marker or memorial acknowledges that this site was a government internment facility for thousands of innocent men during World War II. An excellent book on Ft. Lincoln during World War II is John Christgau’s Enemies—World War II Alien Enemy Internment, the first book to chronicle the internment of Germans during World War II. For additional pictures and information on Enemies, please visit www.johnchristgau.com. Hoping to provide residents more employment opportunities, officials of the town of Kenedy, Texas, lobbied the government to establish an enemy alien internment camp on the site of a former Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp near the town. Work began to enlarge the original facilities in February 1942 and the first civilian “enemy aliens,” men of German and Japanese as well as a few of Italian ethnicity, moved in on April 23, 1942. Most of the men housed at this site were from Latin America, although there were also some California Japanese. Because the Immigration and Naturalization Service considered camp stays here temporary, conditions were originally bleak. Poorly insulated, leaking “Victory Huts” and old CCC barracks provided shelter. Housing was later augmented with over 200 new prefabricated dwellings for 5 or 6 internees. Camp Kenedy was reserved for men, many separated from family members who were sent to other camps. The population of the camp and the nationalities housed there fluctuated greatly, as groups left for other camps or were shipped out to be repatriated. At first, there were no Spanish speaking censors assigned to this camp, so inmates from Latin America were not allowed to write letters in Spanish to their wives and children. Troublemakers from other camps were often sent here. Fist fights, hunger strikes, production and drinking of alcohol and attempted escapes raised tensions and increased discipline problems. Frequent turnover of the population also made it difficult to create a stable, peaceful environment. Population ranged from around 600 to 1000 prisoners. In spite of these problems, most prisoners were law-abiding and sought to be productive. Protestant services, offered in German every other week by Pastor Fritz Sandner from Guatemala and Catholic masses, offered almost daily in the German language by Father Hubert Kueches of Puerto Rico, were usually well attended. Classes were offered, taught by fellow inmates, and a library was maintained. Internees worked outside of the camp, as well as staffing the hospital, a laundry, and small store inside the barbed wire fence. In a census taken in June, 1943, residents were 588 Germans from Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and El Salvador, 18 German internees from the US, 28 internees of assorted other nationalities and 19 Italians. Krammer, Arnold. Undue Process: the Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1997, 133. When the Camp closed in 9/44, the German internees were moved to Fort Lincoln, ND. The U.S. Army then took over the facility and Kenedy became a prisoner of war camp. Even though Fort Missoula, located on the Bitterroot River, was built in 1877 for protection from the Nez Perce Indians, over the years, soldiers based at the fort actually saw very little military action. Only one real skirmish with the Indians occurred. After that the fort was used mainly as a training post. Beginning during the 1930s, The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) used Ft. Missoula as a district office. Then in 1941, partly because of its remote location, the fort was selected to become a detention center. At least 1000 Italian sailors were sent there in the fall of 1941, and later more than 1000 Japanese were also interned at Ft. Missoula. The CCC program was terminated in 1942 at which time The Ft. Missoula Detention Center was turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol who then ran it for the Department of Justice during World War II. At various times during the tenure of the internment camp, a few German internees were also housed at Ft. Missoula---22 total. One of these men, Karl Vogt, was sent to the fort during the summer of 1943, after his June rehearing, to await the OK from Washington D.C. for his parole. From 1944 to 1947, the fort held court-martialed American soldiers. Later it served as an army and navy training facility and reserve center. It is now home to The Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History and the Northern Rockies Heritage Center which is dedicated to the preservation and heritage of Ft. Missoula. The Seagoville facility is located southeast of Dallas and was originally a minimum security female prison. In 1942, it was converted into an interment facility to hold German, Japanese and Italian US resident and Latin American internees. Although it was intended to serve primarily as a facility for families in which both adults had been interned, many families were held there en route to other main family camp in Crystal City, Texas, or repatriation. Ultimately, it became a women’s only camp, although children were also held there with their mothers. The first Seagoville internees were from Latin America, married couples without children and some Japanese who arrived later. The peak population was 647 internees. Fox, Stephen, Fear Itself, Inside the FBI Roundup of German Americans during World War II, iUniverse, 2005, 115. Many mothers were held at Seagoville, separated for long periods of time from the children which contributed greatly to their anguish. (See also: the Graber Family Story in Real People.) Others, pregnant upon arrival or interned there with their husbands gave birth. Still others suffered miscarriages from the stress of their internment. (Click here to view a Birth Certificate from Camp Seagoville.) According to the Handbook of Texas Online, the prison was provided comparatively good accommodations: twelve colonial style two-story brick buildings with wide areas of lawn and sidewalks. It continues: a “high wire fence surrounded the camp, which had a single guarded entrance. A white line painted down the middle of the paved road that encircled the camp marked a boundary that internees could not pass. The six dormitories had single or double rooms and were furnished with chests of drawers, desks, chairs, and beds. Communal laundry, bathing, and toilet facilities were located on all floors. Each dormitory had a kitchen with refrigerators, gas stove, and dishwasher, as well as a dining room with four-person maple tables, linen table coverings, cloth napkins, and china. Internees prepared their own food under supervision. Other facilities at the Seagoville camp included a hospital and a large recreation building.” Housing had to be increased to accommodate more internees and 50 wooden huts were shipped to the site from another camp in Sante Fe, NM. Some families report living in Quonset huts which had to be hosed down periodically because of the heat. A high fence was added to surround the additional accommodations. The campus-like atmosphere of Seagoville did little to erase or ease the trauma of dislocation and uncertainty for the mothers held far from their families. (See also: the Schneider Story in Real People.) In June 1945, the camp was closed and internees sent to other camps, paroled, released or repatriated. (See also: "World War II Internment Camps," by Emily Brosveen and Fox, Fear Itself, 115-116.) Today Seagoville is a prison for approximately 850 men. Visitors to Seagoville have been greeted courteously, although the prison administrators know little of its history as an internment camp. Fort Stanton is located in a remote part of New Mexico, 35 miles north of Ruidoso. It was established by the Army in 1855 to protect Hispanic settlements along the Rio Bonito from Apache raids. After a colorful history involving the Civil War, Kit Carson, Billy the Kid and other notables the fort was decommissioned by the Army in 1896. In 1899 it was transferred to the United States Public Health Service to be used for a tuberculosis sanatorium for men from the Merchant Marine, Coast Guard and Navy. Before and during World War II, the fort was used as an internment camp. The first residents of the Fort Stanton Internment Camp arrived in 1939. They were the German crew of the German luxury liner Columbus, which had been scuttled off the coast of Cuba. At first these internees were labeled as “distressed seamen paroled from the German Embassy”, but when the U.S. entered the war, the U.S. Department of Justice formalized the seamen's internee status and tightened security at the fort by surrounding the barracks with barbed-wire fencing and bringing in border patrol agents as guards. Later other internees were brought to Ft. Stanton, both German and Japanese. Some historians believe that many of the men sent to Ft. Stanton during this time, had, for some reason, been branded as troublemakers and were therefore sent here to be “segregated” from the rest of the internee population. Security at Ft. Stanton was said to be the most stringent of any of the internment camps. In 1953 the State of New Mexico took over Ft. Stanton and continued to operate it as a tuberculosis sanitarium until 1966 when it was converted to Ft. Stanton Hospital and Training Center for the Developmentally Disabled. In 1996 the fort became a minimum security state corrections facility. It was used in this capacity until 1999 when it was leased to Amity, Intl. who currently operates it as a rehabilitation center. ======================================================== America's World War II Prison Camps By Gary North On this, the 60th anniversary of Adolph Hitler's declaration of war against the United States, which he was not bound by Germany's strictly defensive military treaty with Japan to declare, I bring you "the story behind the story" of how the Roosevelt Administration was able to persuade the Nazis to send back some of those Americans who were caught behind German lines on this day, six decades ago. This story is not in the textbooks, nor is it likely to be anytime soon. Most Americans have never heard of the prisoner of war camps in the United States during World War II. Hans Sennholz, a Luftwaffe pilot and later a Misesian economist, worked on a prisoner-run farm in Arkansas after he had been shot down by British anti-aircraft fire in North Africa. They sent him from Britain through Canada to the West Coast and then to Arkansas. Most estimates that I have seen place the number of prisoners of war in the U.S. in the range of 50,000 to 70,000, but one reputable and detailed Website says it was 425,000. More than 150,000 men arrived after the surrender of Gen. Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in April 1943, followed by an average of 20,000 new POWs a month. From the Normandy invasion in June 1944 through December 30,000 prisoners a month arrived; for the last few months of the war 60,000 were arriving each month. When the war was over, there were 425,000 enemy prisoners in 511 main and branch camps throughout the United States. This is a good example of history that never gets to the general public. This is a little-known and long-forgotten story, but it is not shocking. What follows is shocking. I begin with low-level shock. The Japanese Camps Most Americans know about the concentration camp system that the United States created for Japanese residents of the West Coast. There were 120,000 of these internees in a dozen camps, mostly in the mountain states, but with two camps in eastern Arkansas. A few Americans know that the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover had opposed these mass arrests. Fewer still know of the forced sale of everything these people owned at substantial discounts. They were only allowed to bring into the camps what they could carry in their arms in one trip. But until this year, only a handful of Japanese-Americans knew that in 1944, the U.S. government drafted the young men housed in these camps, and about 300 refused to be inducted. They said they were prisoners who were not being treated as citizens, which they were. So, some of them were put in jail for draft resistance, and the others became pariahs in the camps. The other Japanese internees regarded them as traitors. This story became public knowledge only this year, in law professor Eric Muller's book, Free to Die for Their Country (University of Chicago Press, 2001). You can get chapter one on the Web. The Western Hemisphere Kidnap Camps The following story would be a great case study for Memory Hole 101 (second semester). I stumbled onto it about three years ago. It was on the Website of a local affiliate of NBC television. That Web page is long gone, but because of www.google.com, I was able to track down other pages in a few minutes. I used these search terms: Japanese, Germans, Peru, World War II, Texas, camps. Of course, had I not found that NBC affiliate site three years ago, I never would have known which search terms to use. I never would have known about this story. Prepare yourself for a shock. This is from the Handbook of Texas Website. Its title is "World War II Internment Camps." And what remarkable camps they were! You will find no reference to these camps in any textbook on U.S. history, I guarantee you. Although many Americans are aware of the World War II imprisonment of West Coast Japanese Americans in relocation centers, few know of the smaller internment camps operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Under the authority of the Department of Justice, the INS directed about twenty such facilities. Texas had three of them, located at Seagoville, Kenedy, and Crystal City. Prisoners included Japanese Americans arrested by the FBI, members of Axis nationalities residing in Latin-American countries, and Axis sailors arrested in American ports after the attack on Pearl Harbor. About 3,000 Japanese, Germans, and Italians from Latin America were deported to the United States, and most of them were placed in the Texas internment camps. Twelve Latin- American countries gave the United States Department of State custody of the Axis nationals. Eighty percent of the prisoners were from Peru, and about 70 percent were Japanese. The official reasons for the deportations were to secure the Western Hemisphere from internal sabotage and to provide bartering pawns for exchange of American citizens captured by Japan. However, the Axis nationals were often deported arbitrarily as a result of racial prejudice and because they provided economic competition for the other Latin Americans, not because they were a security threat. Eventually, very few Japanese ever saw Latin America again, although some Germans and Italians were returned to their Latin American homes. The majority of Texas internment-camp prisoners were Axis nationals from Latin America. . . . In addition, prisoners were taken to Crystal City from other INS internment camps in Hawaii and Alaska (not states at the time), the United States, Puerto Rico, the West Indies, and South and Central American countries. . . . As we shall see, there is some debate about the numbers of these victims of American-supervised international kidnapping. Was it 3,000, total? Or were there more? I think there were far more, for reasons that you will soon see. In any case, what you have read so far is a whitewashed version of the story. It gets worse – much, much worse. Add one word to the Google search list: "exchanged." Again, had I not found that NBC affiliate site, I would not have known to use this term. This brought me to a site run by the Freedom of Information Times. This revealing site specializes in World War II internment of German American civilians. Here, we read the grim reality regarding what other use these kidnapped Latin Americans had for the American government. I will bet that nothing that you have ever read mentioned this legacy of Roosevelt's New Deal. Facts: During the hearings before the U.S. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Edward J. Ennis, the Director of the Alien Enemy Control during World War II, on November 3, 1981 testified: Mr. Macbeth [a member of the Commission]: Did you have any experience with the internment of enemy aliens who were outside of the United States. Mr. Ennis: Oh yes, we had two programs...Now the other program was taking alien enemies from other countries in South America...If we couldn't get the [Latin American] countries to intern them we had to transmit them to the United States for internment...It was an aborted program, I don't think it accomplished anything. It had a security purpose to do in these countries [Latin America] what we were doing in the United States, about 5,000 German aliens were interned, and a few hundred German aliens in Cuba and in other countries in South America. But it didn't work very well. [Source: pp.157-159, Testimony of Edward J. Ennis before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians on November 3, 1981, R.G. 220. . . . The Latin Americans of German ancestry who [about 5,000] were brought to this country by the United States were incarcerated in several camps, most were in either of the following camps: Crystal City, Texas; Seagoville, Texas; Camp Kenedy, Texas; Fort Lincoln, Bismarck, North Dakota; and Ellis Island, New York Harbor, New York. Hundreds of the interned Latin Americans, many of whom were, by birthright, citizens of one of the republics, were exchanged for persons of the Americas held by the Third Reich, i.e., they were deported to Germany. Stephen Fox, "The Deportation of Latin American Germans, 1941-47: Fresh Legs for Mr. Monroe's Doctrine," Yearbook of German-American Studies 32 (1997): 117-42. Prior to the exchange, lists of internees in the U.S., including the names of German-Jews, were provided to the authorities of the Third Reich. The State Department citations herein are included in their entirety in Volume IV, The World War Two Experience of German-Americans of German-Americans in the World Wars, Edited by: Don Heinrich Tolzmann, K.G. Saur, Munich, 1995, pp. 1671-1674. Got that, folks? The U.S. government went to the trouble of identifying the kidnapped victims of Jewish German background, sent their names to Hitler's bureaucrats, knowing that these were "high priority items," and then shipped them off to Germany in exchange for Americans who had been inside the Third Reich when Hitler declared War on December 11. The only other explanation is that American bureaucrats deliberately identified the captive Jews in order that the Germans might be able to keep out those Germans whom they really didn't want. That's the "favorable interpretation." "My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty," etc., etc. Franklin Roosevelt's Administration did many horrible things. This is just one more example. Most of these things were covered up then, and professional historians still do their best to cover them up today, 56 years after FDR's death. For the New Deal-justifying liberals who write all of the American history textbooks, seeing just isn't believing. Facts like these are dropped down the memory hole, where they are thought to belong. Why don't Jews know about this neglected aspect of American history? Because they haven't been told. Why not? Because most academic Jews are political liberals, and their commitment to the Roosevelt Administration has been greater than their commitment to historical accuracy. So, politically conservative Jews don't know the story. Conclusion Anyone who points out this sort of thing is dismissed by the Establishment press and the Establishment academic community (guild) as a "conspiracy nut." I confess: guilty as charged. December 11 , 2001 © 2001 LewRockwell.com Gary North Archives ======================================================== |
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