Unknown to most Americans, more than 10,000 Germans and German Americans were interned in the United States during WWII. This story is about the internment of a young American and his family. He was born in the U.S.A. and the story tells of his perilous path from his home in Brooklyn to internment at Ellis Island, N.Y. and Crystal City, Texas, and imprisonment, after the war, at a place in Germany called Hohenasperg. When he arrived in Germany in the dead of winter, he was transported to Hohenasperg in a frigid, stench-filled, locked, and heavily guarded, boxcar. Once in Hohenasperg, he was separated from his family and put in a prison cell. He was only twelve years old! He was treated like a Nazi by the U.S. Army guards and was told that if he didn't behave he would be killed. He tried to tell them he was an American, but they just told him to shut up. His fellow inmates included high-ranking officers of the Third Reich who were being held for interrogation and denazification. The book tells how the author survived this ordeal and many others, and how he fought his way back to his beloved America.
"The ... story of a secret FDR-approved prisoner exchange program run during World War II from Crystal City, Texas, an American internment camp where thousands of families were incarcerated"--Jacket flap.
SNYNOPSIS Many people may not understand the reasoning of this documentary and why I am rehashing the expulsions, the after-war tragedies that confronted a defeated nation, the hundreds of internment camps occupied by Germans and German-Americans, the treatment of German Prisoners of war upon the conclusion of hostilities, the enforcement of the Morgenthau Plan, and the Benés decrees regarding the mass murders of over two million Sudetenlanders, Prussians and other Eastern European Germans. I thought about this and decided that when certain people, whether they be American, British, Russian, French and others, stop their crucifying those of German extraction, then and only then, would it not be necessary to publish this book. The word "Nazi" is archaic, and does not apply to more than ninety percent of all Germans. Most Germans knew nothing about the Holocaust, except what was recently explained to them. They knew nothing about the internment camps where Germans and German-Americans were interned during the war; were unaware of the expulsions of millions of ethnic Germans from their historical homelands; the torture, rape and murder of millions of innocent non-combatant women and children after hostilities had ended; and the deliberate starvation to death of more than one million eight hundred thousand German POW's after the war, in complete disregard to the Hague, Geneva and other conventions. This documentary is not singling out others that may or may not be guilty of these atrocities. It is only the truth that we seek to be put into the history books and other texts; not the made-up revisions of Arrogant Revisionists. Much of the information published herewith is not even known by most Germans or people of other ethnic entities. This documentary therefore is one of clarity, reality and truth. It needs to be known! Everyone, Germans and non-Germans alike should read this book, so at least they will know the other side of the story.
During World War II, the US government confined thousands of Japanese-, German- and Italian-Americans to isolated, fenced and guarded relocation centers known as internment camps. At the same time, it shipped foreign Prisoners of War captured overseas to the US for imprisonment. Heartland reflects on the intersection between these two historic events through the story of a German-born widow and her family who take in two German Prisoners of War to work their family farm. But the German-American family and the POWs bond too well for the townspeople to accept, and the widow is arrested, interned and eventually suffers a breakdown, which tears her family apart. Based on true stories, Heartland illustrates what can happen when fear and prejudice pit neighbor against neighbor in times of war. A dramatic tale that grants insights into American history, Heartland is a winner of the Dayton Playhouse FutureFest and a runner-up for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award. “The story is shocking; for me it was revelatory,” wrote theatre critic Pat Launer. “Deporting our own citizens? Who knew? But the play, while conveying historical information, is not in the slightest didactic. It’s a family story, a tale of survival and acquiescence, of racism, of neighbor against neighbor. Not a pretty picture ....” While it may be read for pleasure, Heartland also is a useful tool for exposing students to important lessons in history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, women’s studies and other academic disciplines. Social Fictions Series Editorial Advisory Board Carl Bagley, University of Durham, UK Anna Banks, University of Idaho, USA Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida, USA Rita Irwin, University of British Columbia, Canada J. Gary Knowles, University of Toronto, Canada Laurel Richardson, The Ohio State University (Emeritus), USA Lojo Simon is a playwright, dramaturg and journalist. Her play, Adoration of Dora, about surrealist photographer Dora Maar, won the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award given by the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. She holds an MFA in Theatre from University of Idaho. Anita Yellin Simons is a political activist and playwright who combines both her love of history and activism in her many award-winning plays. From her first play Goodbye Memories about Anne Frank before going into hiding to a later play This We’ll Defend about female rape in the military, Simons presents thought-provoking theater with humor and pathos.
Joining the U.S.’ war effort in 1942, Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho ordered the dislocation of Japanese Mexican communities and approved the creation of internment camps and zones of confinement. Under this relocation program, a new pro-American nationalism developed in Mexico that scripted Japanese Mexicans as an internal racial enemy. In spite of the broad resistance presented by the communities wherein they were valued members, Japanese Mexicans lost their freedom, property, and lives. In Uprooting Community, Selfa A. Chew examines the lived experience of Japanese Mexicans in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during World War II. Studying the collaboration of Latin American nation-states with the U.S. government, Chew illuminates the efforts to detain, deport, and confine Japanese residents and Japanese-descent citizens of Latin American countries during World War II. These narratives challenge the notion that Japanese Mexicans enjoyed the protection of the Mexican government during the war and refute the mistaken idea that Japanese immigrants and their descendants were not subjected to internment in Mexico during this period. Through her research, Chew provides evidence that, despite the principles of racial democracy espoused by the Mexican elite, Japanese Mexicans were in fact victims of racial prejudice bolstered by the political alliances between the United States and Mexico. The treatment of the ethnic Japanese in Mexico was even harsher than what Japanese immigrants and their children in the United States endured during the war, according to Chew. She argues that the number of persons affected during World War II extended beyond the first-generation Japanese immigrants “handled” by the Mexican government during this period, noting instead that the entire multiethnic social fabric of the borderlands was reconfigured by the absence of Japanese Mexicans.
Challenging the notion that Nikkei individuals before and during World War II were helpless pawns manipulated by forces beyond their control, the diverse essays in this rich collection focus on the theme of resistance within Japanese American and Japanese Canadian communities to twentieth-century political, cultural, and legal discrimination. They illustrate how Nikkei groups were mobilized to fight discrimination through assertive legal challenges, community participation, skillful print publicity, and political and economic organization. Comprised of all-new and original research, this is the first anthology to highlight the contributions and histories of Nikkei within the entire Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia.
John E. Schmitz examines the causes, conditions, and consequences of America’s selective relocation and internment of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during World War II.
In 1932, a 15-year-old boy was transplanted from a small farm in northern Minnesota to a large hospital in Minneapolis. He had been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma and was undergoing radiation treatments that produced pain and mind-wrenching homesickness. At the same time, another 15-year-old boy was fighting for his life in a hospital room not far from Ernies. Tom had been forced to leave his home and was riding the rails, looking for work when he became sick. Thirteen years later, a second transplant occurred. This time it was Ernies brother, Raymond (Fat), who left the Minnesota farm to serve in World War Two. Fats letters home are replete with references to a brother with whom he shared a special bond while growing up together. Tribute: Th ree Lives Remembered is a story honoring the memories of three people whose worlds were both removed from and inextricably tied to each other. Its a story told through poignant letters that spoke consistently and longingly of hope for a return to the small farm in northern Minnesota and the people who lived there.
