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Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition Receives New Funding
On June 8, 2017, the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition was awarded $54,000 by the National Park Service, which administers grants from the Japanese Confinement Sites Grants Program. These funds will be used to continue their work documenting the history of the...
“Train to Crystal City” shortlisted for Dayton Literary Peace Prize
The Train to Crystal City, by Jan Jarboe Russell, has been shortlisted for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the only literary prize in the U.S. that recognizes the value of literature to help promote peace and reconciliation throughout the world. The winner will be...
Daily Life at Crystal City Internment Camp
Have you ever wondered what daily life was like for internees held in a WWII internment camp in the U.S.? Caitlin T. Dietze's thesis, “Daily Life at Crystal City Internment Camp 1942-1945” (2016), was recently published on-line by the University of New Orleans. She...
12 Dec 1942, Marshall Memo: shipping Latin Americans for exchange with Axis Nations
George Marshall Memo, 12 Dec 1942 Box 71, Subject Files, 1939-1954, Box 7; Accession Job No. N3-59-87-15, Records of the Special War Problems Division, Department of State, NA (?) — shipping of Latin Americans/exchange with Axis nations
Secretary of State’s response to FDR questions about repatriation
Department of State memo, Aug 1942, Cordell Hull to FDR Franklin D. Roosevelt Library’s Digital Collections, Series 2:Confidential File, Box 9, State Department, 1941-1942—discusses continued repatriation of enemy aliens in U.S. and Latin America in exchange for...
Werner Ahrens, Enemy Alien
Dad's Story: Werner Ahrens, Enemy Alien written by his oldest daughter, Shirley Weiss November 20, 2005 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,...
Distressed Seamen or Internees?
On January 19, 1939, having scuttled their boat off Cuba to avoid its capture by the British, German sailors from the luxury liner, the S.S. Columbus, were brought to Angel Island, California, March 1, 1940. At first these internees were labeled “distressed seamen...
Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition
The Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition formed in 2013 "to preserve the stories of the Japanese, Germans, Italians, Japanese Peruvians and others at the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, which was operated by the U.S. Department of Justice during World War II and was...
“Real People”—another family
Sigrid Banzhaf Toye shares some of her family's experiences during WW II with us. Her father, Eugen, mother, Emmy, and Sigrid were visiting her grandmother in Germany when war broke out. Scrambling to find passage back to the U.S., where her parents were legal...
Banzhaf Story
My parents Emmy Elfriede and Eugen Banzhaf's lives included two world wars, the severe inflation in Europe during the period between the wars, the depression in the United States, and the isolation and marginalization that came with interment during the second...
DOJ Office of Redress Administration Expands Redress for Internees
30 Aug 1993 Department of Justice's “Office of Redress Administration Announces Two New Eligibility Categories for World War II Internees” issues a press release authorizing redress payments for Japanese Americans born in internment camps to “volunteer internee”...
Latin American “Blacklists” of July 1941 & May 1942 posted
An internet search found two interesting WWII "Blacklists" on the Fraser Federal Reserve Archive website. The first includes The Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals: July 17, 1941, the Presidential Proclamation 2497 authorizing the list, and information for...
Internment Camp deaths from Crystal City, TX now on-line
Internment camp deaths and photographs of the three headstones at the Edgewood Cemetery in Crystal City are now on-line, thanks to Werner Ulrich, a former internee, who worked with Carmen Sanchez Diaz and Jose F. Cazares, residents of Crystal City, Texas, to collect...
Internee Graves at Edgewood Cemetery, Crystal City, Texas
The headstones from four internee graves were photographed by Werner Ulrich, a former internee, at the Edgewood Cemetery, Crystal City, Texas. He found no others. All of these internee families were from Latin America. (An earlier article mis-identified the...
Crystal City, Texas Internment Camp list of deaths
Crystal City, Texas Internment Camp list of deaths—from information provided by Carmen Sanchez Diaz and Jose F. Cazares, residents of Crystal City, Texas. List courtesy of Werner Ulrich, a former internee. (2016)
Schools Behind Barbed Wire: the Untold Story of Wartime Internment and the Children of Arrested Enemy Aliens
Riley, Karen L. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. 2002. Often overlooked in the infamous history of U.S. internment during World War II is the plight of internee children. Drawn from personal interviews and multiple primary source materials, Schools behind Barbed...
“Train to Crystal City” wins award
On April 17, 2016, "The Train To Crystal City", written by Jan Jarboe Russell, won the prize for best non-fiction book of the year at the Texas Institute of Letters banquet. There were 40 entries this year so the competition was steep.
Pilgrims of War: a Love Story
Veno, Carl A. Pilgrims of War: a Love Story. Fedeli Publishing Inc., 2011. (a novel) Beautiful Italian doctor Magdalena Russo is headed to a medical conference when the ship she’s on is seized at the Panama Canal. World War II is raging, and the passengers aboard the...
Recollections of Internment and Repatriation
The Missouri Humanities Council a tax-exempt, non-profit organization affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, published the internment and repatriation recollections of Arthur D. Jacobs, Major, USAF Retired, in Volume 3, No. 1: January 25, 2006.
Interview with Karen Ebel, President of the German American Internee Coalition
Karen Ebel, President of the German American Internee Coalition and daughter of a former internee, is interviewed by Arndt Peltner of Radio Goethe, on April 16, 2009. Interview
Interview with John Christgau, Author of “Enemies”
John Christgau, the author of Enemies: World War II Alien Internment, is interviewed by Arndt Peltner of Radio Goethe, in November 2009. Interview