Review Summaries

• It is valued for making a little-known history of wartime detention visible through oral testimony.

Reviews

• Professor Fox' book opens up a proverbial can of worms. It makes the story of what happened to Italians and Italian-Americans living in the US in the early part of WWII extremely cogent. His is not the first work on this subject, but it is perhaps one of the most important. Morton Grodzin’s "Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation" (The University of Chicago Press, 1949) was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, academic work treating the issue of internment and relocation in the US during WWII. In this book, Grodzin discusses all three groups of "enemy aliens" - the Japanese, the Germans and the Italians. However, in the intervening years between 1949 and 1990 when Stephen Fox (Professor of History) released this book, the majority view is that only the Japanese suffered mass relocations and some internment. Throughout this time period, however, there have been a minority of scholars who kept the mention of what happened to Italians and Germans living in the US alive. However, with the publication of Fox' book, interest and research has surged. In 2000, Public Law 106-451, known as The Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act was passed by Congress and signed by then President Clinton. This book was a major linchpin to the work that resulted in this law being passed. Fox meticulously researched the actions and documented the actions of the US Government primarily in San Francisco, but brings in information from other parts of the US. He uses first-hand interviews, archival research and some newspaper documentation. Among the various topics explored - An Italian mother is simultaneously notified that both her sons were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor and she is told that she is now an enemy alien and must relocate. A portion of the Italian-American community in San Francisco was very active in commercial fishing - their fishing boats were confiscated for use by the US Navy and they were cutoff from fishing. An estimated 52,000 Italian (non-US citizens living in California) were ordered to relocate. It was common at that time, that Italian women did not seek out citizenship - while their husbands and children did become citizens. Thus, connected to those 52,000 Italians who were ordered to move, must be connected their American citizen family members -- a very low figure would argue that more than 150,000 Italian/Italian-Americans were forcibly relocated just in California. Fox details other abuses that were faced by this portion of the American population (600,000 just counting those with Italian citizenship) while 500,000 Italians/Italian-Americans were serving in the US military forces. Initially, I had a hard time believing what I was reading, but that disbelief turned to anger and then to the desire to research further. While concentrating on what happened to the Italians, this book will also assist in the understanding of what happened to both Japanese and Germans as well in this period. On the question of what happened to the Germans living in the US during WWII, Fox' "America’s Invisible Gulag: A Biography of German American Internment & Exclusion in World War II – Memory and History" (Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2000) provides a good starting point.

• Recommended. Sadly necessary to know about this part of Italian American history.

• Spent 3 years in Poston, AZ, Camp 1. Surprised to find out that some Italians were also incarcerated. When I learned of the existence of the camps, I was shocked/surprised. I found out entirely by accident when meeting grade school friends for dinner, one of them mentioned that she and her brother went with the parents to see the prisoners that were being held nearby on many weekends. It did not make sense that we were the ones incarcerated and was not aware that anyone else was. If anything, I feel that anyone would know, we would. I was 5 for ten or so weeks when we arrived there, too young to know then but what about the 50-70 years since???

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