Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, hosted three programs in the Fall of 2015 dealing with the Enemy Alien Control Program of WW II and its impact on civilian families. On September 12, “The WW II Enemy Alien Program and Lessons for Today” featured talks by historian John Christgau, author of Enemies: World War II Alien Internment, Larry DiStasi, editor of Una Storia Segreta: the Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II, and Grace Shimizu, director of the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project.
“German, Italian and Japanese Immigrants in the U.S. and the WW II Enemy Alien Program” followed on October 24, with guest speakers DiStasi and Shimizu.
On November 14, Grace Shimizu, Libia Yamamoto, a former internee from Peru, and Heidi Gurcke Donald, a former internee from Costa Rica and author of We Were Not the Enemy: Remembering the United States’ Latin-American Civilian Internment Program of World War II, spoke about “U.S. Rendition of Japanese, Germans and Italians from Latin America During WW II.”