Kooskia Internment Camp In Idaho

This is an important story. Most of us know that these camps were in existence. But I for one merely thought of them as detainment camps, more or less. I did not realize the prisoners performed forced labor too.

Were internment camps set up for Americans of Italian and German descent? I never heard of any.

If none were set up for them, why not? Could race have possibly been a factor?

Thank you for being civil in your response to my post, Foofie. It's refreshing.

Although I have very strong convictions about the way people should be treated regarding civil rights, I'm not the best informed about this particular subject. I had always assumed that Americans of Japanese descent were well-assimilated -- a "model minority," as some people would say. Of course, I dare say that Jews have also been a "model minority," yet they have been one of the most persecuted minorities in history. Factors such as the degree of assimilation don't impress racists of whatever stripe.

You make some good points, but I'm still not sure racism wasn't a factor. It's always been a constant in American history. Either way you look at it, the detention of Japanese Americans is a blot on our history.

Aside from all that, I find absolutely nothing offensive in your comments; so, I'm through here. Besides, I don't have the online personality suitable for arguing in this forum.

Thanks again for being civil.

These people were implicitly trusted with the most sensitive military intelligence materials. Betray their country to the Japanese enemy? Sure, foofie. Keep on dreaming.

The Japanese people of my personal acquaintance are the salt of the Earth. Far far removed from the regime that fought against us in WW II.

What would the purpose be, if any, to make Americans feel guilty for something that might just have been the most logical/expedient way to address a perceived danger?

Foofie wrote:

What would the purpose be, if any, to make Americans feel guilty for something that might just have been the most logical/expedient way to address a perceived danger?

It's not a matter of making the current generation of Americans feel guilty about the wrong-headed actions of generations past. I doubt that the ultimate purpose of maintaining Auschwitz as a Holocaust memorial is to assign never-ending guilt to Germans or to Poles of the present generation. The purpose of memorials of this nature is to remind the next generation not to make the same mistakes as the previous one did. We can already see the need for such reminders when we note how Arab-Americans and other Muslims are treated and looked at it in a number of communities today. These folks have committed no acts of terrorism, yet they are viewed with unreasonable suspicion.

Civil? Yeah right. I find Foofie's comments quite offensive.

Bigotry is Bigotry whether or not it is "civil" (and I prefer bigotry uncivil). Civility doesn't make up for ignorance.

The "assimilation" slur has been made against every minority group, including Jews, Italians, African-Americans, Hispanics and even Germans. It is complete bullshit.

In the time of these internment camps we had the "Asian exclusion act". These were racist laws specifically written to limit the number of Asians that could be in the United States. Obviously history has shown that the vicious lie that Asians don't assimilate is completely wrong. Once we got rid of the racist laws, they did quite fine in society (as did Jews, Italians and Hispanics).

This was racism pure and simple. The Japanese were targeted because they were easy to single out, and angry Americans needed someone to target.

There is no "civil" justification for this. Blaming the people forced into internment camps for their own persecution is bigotry.

At the start of World War II, under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the United States government detained and interned over 11,000 German enemy aliens, as well as a small number of German-American citizens, either naturalized or native-born. Their ranks included immigrants to the U.S. as well as visitors stranded in the U.S. by hostilities. In many cases, the families of the internees were allowed to remain together at internment camps in the U.S. In other cases, families were separated. Limited due process was allowed for those arrested and detained.

The population of German citizens in the United States – not to mention American citizens of German birth – was far too large for a general policy of internment comparable to that used in the case of the Japanese in America.[23] Instead, German citizens were detained and evicted from coastal areas on an individual basis. The War Department considered mass expulsions from coastal areas for reasons of military security, but never executed such plans.

A total of 11,507 Germans and German-Americans were interned during the war, accounting for 36% of the total internments under the Justice Department's Enemy Alien Control Program, but far less than the 110,000 Japanese-Americans interned. Such internments began with the detention of 1,260 Germans shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of the 254 persons evicted from coastal areas, the majority were German.

In addition, over 4,500 ethnic Germans were brought to the U.S. from Latin America and similarly detained. The Federal Bureau of Investigation drafted a list of Germans in fifteen Latin American countries whom it suspected of subversive activities and, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, demanded their eviction to the U.S. for detention. The countries that responded expelled 4,058 people. Some 10% to 15% were Nazi party members, including approximately a dozen who were recruiters for the NSDAP/AO, roughly the overseas arm of the Nazi party. Just eight were people suspected of espionage. Also transferred were some 81 Jewish Germans who had recently fled persecution in Nazi Germany. The bulk of those transferred from Latin America to the U.S. were not objects of suspicion. Many had been residents of Latin America for years, some for decades. In some instances, corrupt Latin American officials took the opportunity to seize their property. Sometimes financial rewards paid by American intelligence led to someone's identification and expulsion

The term "Italian American" does not have a legal definition. It is generally understood to mean ethnic Italians of American nationality, whether Italian-born immigrants to the United States (naturalized or unnaturalized) or American-born people of Italian descent (natural-born U.S. citizens).

The term "enemy alien" has a legal definition. The relevant federal statutes in Chapter 3 of Title 50 of the United States Code, for example par. 21,[4] which applies only to persons 14 years of age or older who are within the United States and not naturalized. Under this provision, which was first defined and enacted in 1798 (in the Alien Enemies Act, one of the four Alien and Sedition Acts) and amended in 1918 (in the Sedition Act of 1918) to apply to females as well as to males, all "...natives, citizens, denizens or subjects..." of any foreign nation or government with which the United States is at war "...are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed as alien enemies...."

At the outbreak of World War II, for example, an Italian businessman temporarily living in the United States, Italian diplomats, and Italian international students studying in the United States all became "enemy aliens" the moment Italy declared war on the United States. In some cases, such temporary residents were expelled (such as diplomats) or given a chance to leave the country when war was declared. Some were interned, as were the Italian merchant seamen caught in U.S. ports when their ships were impounded when war broke out in Europe in 1939.

The members of the Italian community in the United States presented an unusual problem. Defined in terms of national origin, it was the largest community in the United States, having been supplied by a steady flow of immigrants from Italy between the 1880s and 1930. By 1940, there were in the United States millions of native-born Italians who were American citizens. There were also a great many Italian "enemy aliens", more than 600,000, according to most sources, who had immigrated during the previous decades and had not become naturalized citizens of the United States.

The laws regarding "enemy aliens" did not make ideological distinctions—treating as legally the same pro-Fascist Italian businessmen living for a short time in the U.S. and trapped there when war broke out, anti-Fascist refugees from Italy who arrived a few years earlier intending to become U.S. citizens but who had not completed the process of naturalization, and those who had emigrated from Italy at the turn of the 20th century and raised entire families of native-born Italian Americans but who were not naturalized themselves. They were all considered enemy aliens.