This was sent to me on April 1 in response to this article. It would be comforting to think that this is an April Fool's joke. It isn't.
My wife was born of a German father and a British mother in one of these camps.
They were among many hundreds (thousands?) of families rounded up by the US in Latin America during WW II and transported (on dangerous munitions ships subject to sinking by the "enemy" early in the War.
Her dad was a German National who had fought in WW I as a German soldier, but seeing what was coming, left Germany and moved to Venezuela, becoming an employee of Royal Dutch Petroleum. There he met his future wife, a British citizen and nurse, also employed by Shell Oil.
When the US pressured Shell to discharge all German Nationals, my wife's dad took his family to neutral Costa Rica to settle to avoid becoming associated with the Nazis under Adolf Hitler, who had then taken power in Germany. During this time, a daughter came along that was purposely born in England to have her mom's British citizenship.
A few years later, while living a peaceful life in Costa Rica, they were rounded up and imprisoned in the USA when the US Government forced all Latin American countries to surrender any German Nationals (and Axis Power citizens in general) for deportation and imprisonment in "camps" located in the US. While my wife's mom and sister were not ordered (forced) to the US (and were free to go where they might) as they were "allies," the fact that they were a family, and that had they not accompanied their husband/father, all of their property except for $50 per person would have been confiscated and surrendered to the Costa Rican Government, so quite naturally they went along.
They were originally promised that they would safely be transported to the US by hospital ship, but they were actually were segregated by sex (families separated) put on military troop ships also carrying munitions, and therefore were fair game for attack by the Axis Powers.
Arriving in the US, they were put into barbed-wire camps with gun towers as if they were combatants, and in fact were called "Enemy Aliens." By all accounts, the guards and camp administrators were kind people, the living conditions were never the less certainly not especially pleasant.
It was there, AFTER the War was over that my wife was born. The "residents" of the camps were held far beyond the end of the war, and were eventually sent to Ellis Island for many months behind bars for deportation to their respective countries of origin. In my wife's case, her dad was to be deported to Germany, her mom and sister to England, and she to foster care in the US since she had US citizenship thanks to the 14th Amendment. The family used all of the money and resources they could muster, and after the story reached the newspapers were allowed to stay in the US, where all obtained US Citizenship, and sort-of lived happily ever after as American citizens....or at least as "happily" as traumatized people can eventually live. Even at the age of 78, my sister-in-law is deeply troubled by what we'd today call "PTSD" with nightmares about their kidnap, transport, and incarceration.
We last year attended a reunion of the camp members at the facility here in Texas, and I was amazed to hear stories of some whose families had been US citizens for their entire lives (after emigrating from Germany and Italy a generation or more earlier), yet were swept up in the hysteria, stripped of their US assets and put into the camp. Most I spoke to were, like my wife, US citizens, most born to their now-American parents, but thrown into the camp regardless.
A good number spoke of being traded for American prisoners (as was mentioned), and during the height of the war were "dumped" in Germany as "deported individuals," many or most being Americans who spoke absolutely no German, and feared for their lives as Germany was bombed, and overrun by the Soviets at the War's end.
I was astounded that MY COUNTRY had done this to loyal citizens, and was shaken out of my own naivete'. Amazingly, there was virtually no resentment of the part of any of the people I met at the re-union, a testament to the resilience of human beings, and the fact that most of the prison guards, and the "Colonel Klink" of the "Stalig" was by all reports an exceptionally kind man who personally transported the kids in his own car into the local town often for candy or just to get them from behind barbed wire if for only a few hours, and showed especially the families all of the latitude he could, even allowing a huge "lake" to be built as a swimming pond for the residents under the guise of an "irrigation pond," after a swimming hole proposed by him was turned down as overly generous to the "enemy."
One interesting fact to me was that in order to deport all of the folks they did following the War, they officially charged all of the detainees with the "crime" of having entered the US unlawfully, and without passports or visas. It seemed rather unfair and capricious to charge people who had been kidnapped at the point of a gun with "unlawfully entering" the nation they were kidnapped TO against their wishes. Amazingly, my wife's family managed to get their passports back at some point. I found it a curious and chilling experience to see her dad's, which was emblazoned with the Swastika and the symbols of the Third Reich.
My wife and her sister ARE grateful that they and their parents, now deceased, were eventually allowed to remain here, to become citizens, and to lead pleasant lives. So while I am somewhat indignant that these nice folks were treats as "enemies," I am glad that most were eventually left to lead normal lives. Many of those deported (traded) to Germany DURING the war eventually managed to return, at least the ones not killed by Allied bombing raids, and the reportedly unpleasant Soviet invaders who were indiscriminate with their treatment of those whom they encountered. Again, those "liberated" by American and British troops praised their sense of humanity as they conquered Germany.
I have no experience with how badly Japanese American citizen were treated in their OWN country (the USA) in the camps in Idaho, California, or Nevada, but my wife said that at least in the Texas camp where she lived, Japanese American families were treated no worse than those of German or Italian ancestry.
If anyone is interested in specific camps, at least the one where my wife was born into captivity can be Googled by combinations of "Crystal City," Internment Camps," or "Detainment." If most folks are like me, they have little idea of such camps that existed intermingled with ordinary American places. Not all were those horrible barren desert environments one normally sees depicted. On the other hand, the US made some propaganda films about the camps Edward Bernays would have been proud of. (Googling Edward Bernays is a study in itself, and explains not only political propaganda, but "Madison Avenue" advertising as well. Trust me, we are largely a product today of what we are trained to be!)
Amazingly HE, an American, was the "Father of Propaganda," and received personal letters of thanks from the Third Reich by no less than Joesph Goebbels, who praised him for teaching THEM how to "spin" information to mislead the public.
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