Joseph O’Rourke, who commanded the Crystal City, TX Family Internment Camp, wrote this “Historical Narrative of the Crystal City Internment Camp” in 1945, as the facility was slowly being emptied. The report detailed its establishment, construction, organization and administration, as well internee populations and census numbers, camp life, education and activities, procurement and supply, problems […]
Simon and Schuster Books posted this video in 2015, with Jan Jarboe Russell, author of The Train to Crystal City, briefly presenting five facts about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the policy that led to the exchange of thousands of U.S. and Latin American civilians of German or Japanese ethnicity during WWII for U.S. citizens held behind […]
Lars Hemingstam, author and founder of a website about the ships of the Swedish American Line, discusses the exchange voyages during World War 2 between the Allies and Axis Powers using the Swedish American Line’s chartered ocean liners Gripsholm and Drottningholm.
The Tenement Museum of New York City has an online exhibit highlighting the experiences of some former German American and Latin American internees. These brief accounts were written by students of St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX, as part of a year-long history project (2018-19) documenting German civilian internment in WWII and working to get […]
As part of a year-long project (2018-19) highlighting the internment and expatriation of German American and Latin Americans during WWII, history students of St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX, made a number of small documentary films about internment. With the permission of Professor Teresa Van Hoy, who oversaw the students’ efforts, we are able to […]
Hesse, Monica. The War Outside. Little, Brown Young Readers. 2018. Set in the confines of the Crystal City, Texas Family Internment Camp during WW II. Teenagers Haruko, a Japanese American from Colorado, and Margot, whose German American family are from Iowa, form a friendship, even as life in the camp shifts and changes their perceptions. “…an extraordinary […]
Mc Conahay, Mary Jo. The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds, and Riches of Latin America during World War II. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018. The author is a reporter who has covered wars in Central America and economics in the Middle East. She details efforts of the U.S. to influence and shape […]
Crystal City, Texas Family Internment Camp map (2018) annotated by former internee Werner Ulrich—includes plot plans, drawings of building types, and location of work areas, as well as lists of internees held in the camp, births, and deaths. Staff, including teachers and medical personnel, are listed. Which cottage each interned family lived in is also shown.
“Good Neighbor Renditions and the Enemy Alien: the Latin American Civilian Internees of World War II and the Integrity of the Good Neighbor Policy,” a University of Colorado, Boulder honors undergraduate thesis by Casey VanSise, “…uses the case of WW II “renditions” to argue that Latin America’s diplomatic influence was at least on par with […]
Fiset, Louis; “World War II Internment of a German-American Couple in Hawaii” June 2012, American Philatelist, Journal of the American Philatelic Society. It is reproduced here by permission of the author.