At the book review for These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore at the Albany Public Library, Jim Collins made a passing reference to the WWII internment camps that held people of Japanese heritage. I made a comment that there were internment camps of Germans in the US as well. A few people had never heard that fact.
Indeed, there is a German American Internee Coalition (“GAIC”), “formed in 2005 by and for German American and Latin American citizens and legal residents who were interned by the United States during World War II.”
From the section Civil Liberties Violations: “German Americans constitute the largest ethnic group in the US. Approximately 60 million Americans claimed German ancestry in the 2000 US Census, more than any other nationality…
“Nevertheless, during World War II, the US government and many Americans viewed ethnic Germans and others of ‘enemy ancestry’ as potentially dangerous, particularly recent immigrants. The Japanese American World War II experience is well known. Few, however, know of the European American World War II experience, particularly that of the German Americans and Latin Americans.” Many ethnic Germans had moved to Brazil and Argentina.
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.
Started in WWI
War History Online notes: “The precedent was set during the First World War when laws dating back to the 18th Century were used to authorize the detention of anyone considered to be an ‘enemy alien’ and therefore a possible threat to security and the war effort.
“The Government set up four camps. The main ones were located in Hot Springs, CA and at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia. These camps were referred to as DOJ (Department of Justice) Camps.” But there were others, mapped here.
“By 1940, Germans made up a large percentage of the ‘non-American’ population in the United States. There were approximately 1.2 million German nationals as well as another 11 million US citizens who had at least one German-born parent.
“As the war in Europe continued, America was laying the groundwork. The 1940 census introduced a new question. It now required that all respondents included their ethnicity. This would make them easier to identify after America entered the war.” As a Census enumerator in 1990 and 2020, I was especially appaled that information that was supposedly used only in the aggregate was manipulated in this way.
Wikipedia addresses the internment of Germans and German-Americans during World War I, which was fairly well-known, and WWII. About 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were interned during the Second World War, as were about 1,800 people of Italian descent.
A poem by Sharp Little Pencil about the Japanese-American WWII experience: Concentration.
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