Three inspection reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross delegates describe facilities and chronicle life in internment on Ellis Island during 1943-1946. (The last internees, of German ethnicity, were released in 1948.) Although the National Park Service’s highly regarded manuscript, Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites, by Jeffery Burton, et al. (1999), states that Ellis Island was basically a temporary detention center for German and Italian nationals (p. 380), the Ellis Island Immigration Museum’s timeline indicates that 7000 thousand men, women and children of German, Japanese and Italian ancestry (including Enzo Pinza) were detained on Ellis Island, some for years. German immigrants were there awaiting hearings, awaiting transfer to other internment camps, awaiting deportation and departing for Germany to be repatriated and exchanged for Americans in Germany. (More information about the Ellis Island detention facilities)
