is provided as a convenience to the reader.
There are references and hyperlinks to these documents elsewhere within
this web site.
"Patrolmen
and detectives have received lists of aliens [permanent residents]
who have registered with the government. On orders from Commissioner
Valentine commanders of detective divisions will get complete histories
of these aliens to go into precinct dossiers.
Detective
and other city operatives will visit every person who registered...they
will check home and business address, daily activity and routines.
Dossiers
will be made of aliens of enemy nations, natives of Germany, Italy,
Japan, and their lesser allies.
The records will check also on the
number of persons in each family and on the whereabouts of each member
of the family..." Editors note: This practice was planned throughout
the country for the 1,100,000 permanent resident aliens, Germans, Italians,
and Japanese, residing in the United States. It began with the 256,000 permanent
resident aliens in New York City. For more of the cited article click on
the
The History of Internment link below, then proceed to the April
1, 1942 entry.
To read this article in its entirety, click here >>> New York Times, April
1, 1942
--The little-known facts
of INTERNMENT
More than fifty years have passed since the beginnings
of the arrest and internment of European Americans in the United States
during World War II. For the most part, the
history
of internment has been either quieted or distorted. For example, the
majority of the best-selling collegiate and secondary school history texts
in the United States claim that, unlike Japanese Americans, the German
and Italian Americans were not arrested and interned; and both the print
and electronic news media have propagated this myth. Despite the fact that
there were more than
50 internment sites that held
European American internees, the often cited source,
Personal Justice
Denied, Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of
Civilians, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1982, lists
only four (4) internment camps, Santa Fe, NM, Bismarck, ND [Ft. Lincoln],
Crystal City, TX, and Missoula, MT [Ft. Missoula]. The facts that follow
are provided to help set the record straight.
- 56% of all internees (14,426 of 25,655)
were Europeans and European Americans--Germans, Italians, Hungarians,
Romanians, Bulgarians, even several Czechs and Poles. For more details
see Persons Received by the INS.[Source: Letter from Assistant Commissioner,
W.F. Kelly, Immigration and Naturalization Service, to Mr. A. Vulliet,
World Alliance of Young Men's Christian Associations, dated August 9,
1948] The cited Kelly letter notes that the number of internees include
those from outside the continental United States. We have interpreted this
to mean that the numbers include those from Hawaii and Alaska but not the
interned Europeans citizens and legal residents from the Latin American
republics who were relocated to the U.S. at the request of Washington. [Source: Memorandum from J.M. Cabot to Special
Division, Department of State, Division of the American Republics, Expressing
concern with U.S. Embassy meddling in the internal affairs of other republics,
November 24, 1943, declassified June 21, 1990]
- 64% of all those arrested by the FBI
between December 7, 1941 and June 30, 1945 (10,755 of 16, 811) were European
And European Americans. The arrested Europeans included seaman of foreign
ships in U.S. ports. These seamen were arrested as early as April 1941. [Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
Department of Justice, Reference Document 100-2-4014, entitled Apprehensions,
December 7, 1941 to June 30, 1945, unclassified on 8/17/90. Freedom of
Information and Privacy Act request number 319,228]
- The arrest of Germans, German Americans,
Italians and Italian Americans began on December 7, 1941--four days before
the U.S. was at war with Germany and Italy. [Source: ibid.]European and European Americans
were kept interned until July 1948--more than three years after the war
in Europe had ended.
- Congress has enacted laws in: 1948:
P.L. 80-886; 1951: P.L. 82-116; 1952: P.L. 82-545; 1956: P.L. 84-673;
1960: P.L. 86-782; 1972: P.L. 92-603; 1978: P.L. 95-382; 1988: P.L. 100-383;
and 1992: P.L. 102-371; providing financial compensation only
to former Japanese American internees.
- Personal Justice Denied [GPO,
Washington, D.C. 1982] the official government position on the subject
issued by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians:
(a) did not include the testimony from German American, Italian
American and other European American former internees; (b)
omitted the testimony of Edward J. Ennis and James Rowe, former officials
of the Department of Justice who were responsible for the internment
process, who confirmed that Japanese were not arrested in mass, or because
of race, and were given hearings; and (c) omitted the documents
in its own collected Papers of the Commission on Wartime Relocation
and Internment of Civilian which referred to the denial of civil liberties
to German and other European Americans.
- Former internment camps, which became
historic landmarks under P.L. 102-248, are to be officially identified
as having only interned Japanese Americans.
- Information on internment available
from the National Archives and Records Administration in World War
II Home Front addresses only the internment of Japanese Americans.
- The exhibition on internment by the
Smithsonian Institution, A More Perfect Union: Japanese-Americans
and the U.S. Constitution, focuses only on the internment of Japanese
Americans.
In conclusion, European American internment camp survivors
should receive a thorough hearing, and a new Congressional commission
is needed. Such a commission is required because Americans should know
that the arrest and internment of European Americans, like that of the Japanese
Americans, were based upon prejudices engendered by the war.
Revised: April 26, 1997
Joseph E. Fallon, Freelance writer, Rye, New York
