I am reading The Train to Chrystal City about
FDS’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s only internment camp that
had Japanese, German and Italian families. During World War II isolating immigrants
in camps is a severe form of nonverbal punishment.
I have learned that:
So much of the general public’s prejudice back then mirrors
current prejudice against immigrants.
Eleonore Roosevelt opposed the entire idea of internment
camps and tried to stop them. She met
Congressmen and Senators and wrote articles under another name opposing the
camps and asking for acceptance.
FDR was adamant that they were necessary and was far more
racially prejudice than I knew. Also the secret motivations for the camps were to
gain spies for us that spoke Japanese and German and get people to trade for
POW.
We “kidnaped” Germans, Latin Americans, and Italians not
only from the US but also from Mexico and South America to put in the camps.
And that the rationalization for kidnapping people from other countries was
that they may harbor the enemy near our borders, but what ended up happening is
that those countries made money by “selling’ their immigrants.
Though I knew it happened, far more people than I thought
were reported as “spies” by their neighbors and coworkers in order for the
neighbors to gain property and for the coworkers to get the jobs of those they
reported or advancement.
The favorite song for the interred was, “Don’t fence me in.”
