How come we didn't intern German-Americans like we did the Japanese

[Jackpine Radical]

in WWII?

Uh, well, we did. Not as many--only maybe 11-15,000 German-Americans in contrast to 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. But perhaps the most interesting thing is that, even after making formal apologies to the Japanese-Americans, the US Government is still covering up the internment of the German-Americans.

This story seems particularly apropos in the light of the present political environment.

Pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (50 USC 21-24), which remains in effect today, the US may apprehend, intern and otherwise restrict the freedom of "alien enemies" upon declaration of war or actual, attempted or threatened invasion by a foreign nation. During World War II, the US Government interned at least 11,000 persons of German ancestry. By law, only "enemy aliens" could be interned. However, with governmental approval, their family members frequently joined them in the camps. Many such "voluntarily" interned spouses and children were American citizens. Internment was frequently based upon uncorroborated, hearsay evidence gathered by the FBI and other intelligence agencies. Homes were raided and many ransacked. Fathers, mothers and sometimes both were arrested and disappeared. Sometimes children left after the arrests had to fend for themselves. Some were placed in orphanages. Read More Real Stories.

The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) instituted very limited due process protections for those arrested. Potential internees were held in custody for weeks in temporary detention centers, such as jails and hospitals, prior to their hearings. Frequently, their families had no idea where they were for weeks. The hearings took place before DOJ-constituted civilian hearing boards. Those arrested were subject to hostile questioning by the local prosecuting US Attorney, who was assisted by the investigating FBI agents. The intimidated, frequently semi-fluent accused had no right to counsel, could not contest the proceedings or question their accusers. Hearing board recommendations were forwarded to the DOJ’s Alien Enemy Control Unit (“AECU”) for a final determination that could take weeks or months.
Internees remained in custody nervously awaiting DOJ's order--unconditional release, parole or internment. Policy dictated that the AECU resolve what it deemed to be questionable hearing board recommendations in favor of internment. Based on AECU recommendations, the Attorney General issued internment orders for the duration of the war. Internees were shipped off to distant camps. Families were torn apart and lives disrupted, many irreparably. Family members left at home were shunned due to fear of the FBI and spite. Newspapers published stories and incriminating lists. Eventually destitute, many families lost their homes and had to apply to the government to join spouses in family camps, apply for welfare and/or rely on other family members who could afford to support them. Eventually, under such duress, hundreds of internees agreed to repatriate to war-torn Germany to be exchanged with their children for Americans. Once there, food was scarce, Allied bombs were falling and their German families could do little to help them. Many regretted their decision. Considering the spurious allegations, which led to the internment of a majority of internees, their treatment by our government was harsh indeed. Their experience provides ample evidence of why our civil liberties are so precious.

http://www.gaic.info/history.html

[Midnight Rambler]

1. Because they're white

n/t

[Warpy]

2. Partially. It was also because there are too many of them

Remember, the most predominant ethnic group here during the Revolutionary War weren't the WASPS in New England. They were Germans pushing the frontier back. We very nearly became a German speaking country.

Besides, Hitler wasn't supported by the German Americans. It was the WASPs like the Bush family who helped him along.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. A good many of the Germans in America were educated socialists.

[cosmik debris]

5. Right you are

Here in Texas we had whole towns with nothing but German Americans such as New Braunfels and Fredricksburg.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

27. Very true.

Admiral Nimitz was from Fredericksburg.

There is a whole large area between Houston and San Antonio, and beyond that to the Hill Country, is full of Germans and Czechs. Schulenburg, Flatonia, Cuero, Columbus, Sealy.

I believe that fairly recently, Czech was the third most popular language in Texas behind English and Spanish.

I once went to a wedding in Moulton. The reception was at the Americal Legion Hall. The refreshments consisted of Lone Star Beer and real kolaches(the real plural is kolachen), which look like a rectangular dinner roll. The fruit goop inside is completely covered up, and they do not have icing on them.

And now with the blending of Hispanic and Czech culture we now have jalapeno kolaches for sale!!!

[cynatnite]

6. Actually, Hitler was supported by some German Americans...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-American_Bund

This was one small group, but there were others in the larger cities, IIRC. Some German Americans even enlisted in the German Army.

[twilight_sailing]

8. predominant ethnic group

They would have had to round up most of the Hill Country in Texas.

[twilight_sailing]

9. Sorry, cosmik debris

I didn't see that you had beaten me to this point. ;)

I miss the old days sometimes. You could stop in Fredericksburg and get a great German meal and on the juke box it was 100% polka music. Not that I am a polka fan. It was just that it was all so cool.

[cosmik debris]

11. Admiral Nimitz was from Fredricksburg n/t

[Karenina]

14. I once chastised a German writer

who was waxing poetic about how there were "Little Tokyos, Italies Chinatowns" etc. worldwide but few Germantowns. I HOWLED when I read his remarks, did a bit of research to confirm what I knew from growing up in Maryland. Hey DUDE!!! Who needs a "town" when there are ENTIRE REGIONS??? I discovered that (IIRC) over 30% of Americans in the 19th century could claim German extraction. I made a LIST of towns and regions with German names. There are STILL tiny enclaves in Texas, Wisconsin and a few other states where a German dialect is STILL SPOKEN. Nothing that a modern speaker can comprehend, aber trotzdem! FUNNY THING, from those states if you move to Germany all you have to do is exchange your DL and pay a small fee to get a Führerschein. EVERYONE ELSE has to take an expensive driving course. :rofl:

[foo_bar]

26. don't forget Pennsylvania!

The word "Dutch" here does not refer to the people of the Netherlands. "Dutch" here is left over from an archaic sense of the English word, which once referred to all people speaking a West Germanic language on the European mainland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_German_language

In the United States, the largest concentrations of German speakers are in Pennsylvania (Amish, Hutterites, Dunkerites and some Mennonites speak Pennsylvania Dutch (a West Central German variety) and Hutterite German), Texas (Texas German), Kansas (Mennonites and Volga Germans), North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin, Indiana, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language

[Spider Jerusalem]

32. Sorry, but you're wrong.

German immigrants to the colonies were the most significant MINORITY group at the time of the Revolution; those of British descent still formed the majority (not just in New England, but in all of the colonies save Pennsylvania). The reason German almost became a language (but not THE language; it would have been co-equal with English) of the United States was the large number of monoglot Germans in Pennsylvania (and to a lesser extent Maryland and New Jersey).

[mmonk]

4. Many changed their name.

I know some families whereby they changed their names to similar names from places such as Holland.

[blogslut]

7. Well that's terrible

I never knew that happened and my family's ancestry is German.

America violated a lot of civil rights during WWII. I think it was shameful and apologies are owed.

[tularetom]

10. I guess they looked too much like everyone else

My great grandfather was born in Germany. He emigrated to the US before the turn of the 20th century and assimilated pretty well. He was a blacksmith, owned a feed store and his son (my grandfather) became the mayor of the small town they lived in. In the south to boot. My grandfather often told us stories as kids of his WWI service fighting Germans. By that time I guess he pretty much thought of himself as an American. Later on my mother and uncle (his children) both served in Europe fighting Germans.

I've never understood why the Japanese were treated differently.

[Art_from_Ark]

28. The Japanese were despised by the West after they became "uppity"

and decided to start their own empire, rather than let the Europeans and Americans carve their country up into trading zones like what happened in China. In the 1890s, American newspapers ran sensationalist stories about the "Yellow Peril" (Chinese and Japanese immigrants and Japanese empire-builders), and the acquisition of Taiwan by Japan in the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War had a major part in getting the United States to find some way to acquire the Philippines (held at the time by a very weak Spain) to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Japanese who were working their way south.

Anti-Japanese sentiment in the West was further inflamed a decade later when the Japanese Imperial Navy handily defeated the Imperial Russian Navy and Japan defeated the Czar's "white, Christian" land forces as well, in 1905. A year later, San Francisco passed a law that forbade japanese students from being educated in the same schools as caucasian students. The year after that (1907), Theodore Roosevelt, who had helped to negotiate the end of the Russo-Japanese War, concluded a "Gentleman's Agreement" with Japan whereby Japanese immigration to the United States was limited to professionals (crating a "brain drain" out of Japan.

Although Japan was technically an ally in World War I, it was an uneasy alliance, and Japan's persistance in expanding its empire, at a time when most European/American empires had been completed, led to more public opinion against Japan. It didn't help US-Japan relations much when Japan became the first nation to withdraw from the League of Nations, in 1933, after its invasion of Manchuria two years earlier.

[sakabatou]

12. This is the first gime of hearing about this

But it doesn't suprise me that it happened.

[genie_weenie]

13. Many German families changed their last names during WWI.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

30. Elisabeth Schumann-Heink was a famous contralto

Her recording of "Ave Maria" was famous. I think now she and Marian Anderson would be classified as mezzos with a bottom extension.

Madame Schumann-Heink had two sons on the American side and two sons on the German side in WW I. She sold Liberty Bonds.

[JNelson6563]

15. Well they're harder to spot for one thing

Their skin is white and they don't have those squinty eyes. It's best we keep our enemies looking different from us for easy identification.

Oy.

[hfojvt]

16. I asked my dad, who turned 8 when WWII began for America

First part was perhaps because it was the Japanese, and not the Germans who attacked us. Dad said that there were too many Germans in his area for German ethnicity to matter. In spite of his German name, his paternal ancestors had been in the US since well before the civil war. In his area though, they were upset about the Badger Ordnance Works
http://www.saukprairievision.org/histover.htm
"The coming of the plant decimated the Sauk Prairie farming community, displacing 80 farm families from 10,000 acres (after the War the Army sold some 2500 unneeded acres to families of veterans, on the east side of the property). Auctions occurred daily in spring 1942, and families moved off. Many farms were assessed at very low values, forcing some families to resort to suing the government at a time when the national psyche was one of government support and personal sacrifice. Hard feelings remain after six decades. Three one-room schools, three churches and a town hall were absorbed by the plant and, like the farmsteads, were torn down. A few homes were moved to local communities. The two cemeteries on the tract were carefully maintained (and another lone grave discovered) but burials were no longer allowed, leaving some family members interred beside the vacant plots of their survivors."

One cousin of my grandmother is buried in a different cemetery than her husband. They both died shortly after this incident. She split their two-story house in two pieces in order to move it, but then died a few months after it was moved.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. I'm utterly amazed at how many respondents to this thread MISSED

the central point here, namely, the fact that German-Americans were interned during WWII, and, unlike the case of the Japanese-Americans, the government is still covering it up.

[ecstatic]

20. I find it hard to believe, but I will check out your sources nt

[jeffrey_X]

24. Ok. Point taken, but they easily mixed in with all other white people after it was over.

this is the same thing as point out that there were "white slaves" or indentured servants during slavery.

[Bonobo]

33. Yes, but the numbers are very telling.

Without even researching the matter, it is obvious that there must have been 10-100 times as many German/Americans (or more) than Japanese-Americans.

So the cover up is troubling, but not as troubling as the fact that they did it to the Japanese-Americans in such numbers -based on the fact that they were not white.

[Princess Turandot]

34. How is it being covered up?

I read about this years ago,too long ago to remember the source. But it was long before the Internet was available to ferret out information.

[SoCalDem]

18. and don;t forget about the WWII version of "freedom fries"

There were signs in windows, and people with Germanic names or accents were ostracized..even if they had family still in Europe who were being killed by Nazis.

Austrians spoke german, even some Italians spoke german.. probably a LOT of europeansd had german as their native tongue. When they learned the language as kids, they could never have known that a guy like Hitler would come along and made them pariahs because of their accent or names.

[Karenina]

22. Liberty cabbage.

[Aristus]

23. Yeah, there was a lot of that shit going on in WWI and WWII.

Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage". Eddie Rickenbacher changed the spelling of his name to "Rickenbacker". Some fool even tried to rename German measles as "liberty measles." Show's you what we've learned in 90 years, doesn't it? :eyes:

[RPM]

19. There wouldnt have been anyone to run the camps n/t

[manic expression]

21. Wow I had no idea

thanks for the new info.

[Kickin_Donkey]

25. Because Germans are white ...

They did intern some German Americans and some Italian Ameiricans -- but in very small and select numbers compared to their total population in the United States.

By contrast, the West Coast, where the vast majority of Japanese Americans lived at the time (outside of Hawaii) was ethnically cleansed of every single person of Japanese ancestry (anybody who was found to have 1/16 Japanese blood), including my mother and father, who were 6 and 13 years old, respectively, at the time of their incarceration. It was a true ethnic cleansing.

[Generic Brad]

29. We had a German POW camp in New Ulm, MN

But it was for Germans captured in the war. Americans of German ancestry were not rounded up and shipped off there.

[GoneOffShore]

31. Italians as well,

A good friend of mine is still speaking to Italian-American societies here about this.

He did a documentary called, "Prisoners Among Us" about the internment of Italians and Italian-Americans at the start of WW2.

Here's a link http://www.prisonersamongus.com/

[Jackpine Radical]

35. Yes, most definitely. Italians as well.