CUNY Web Site, American Social History
Project,<< http://www.ashp.cuny.edu >>
infers that ONLY Japanese Americans suffered
under Executive Order 9066, and gives "short shrift" to the sufferings
and indignities of the Italian and German Americans during WWII.
When I brought this to the attention of Larry DiStasi, Project Director "Una Storia Segreta", and the President of the Western Chapter, American Italian Historical Association, he wrote to officials at CUNY with the response below.
Mr. DiStasi's reply is appreciated, but
so much more his "Una Storia Segreta" Exhibit, AND his involvement with
the "Enemy Alien Files" Exhibit!
=========================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:51
To: jbrown@gc.cuny.edu; dthompson@gc.cuny.edu
From: Lawrence Distasi <<distasi@launchnet.com>
Subject: EO 9066
TO: J. Brown and D. Thompson, CUNY:
I have recently received a copy of the following excerpt from your website, the American Social History Project.
Executive Order 9066:
The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation
<<"In an atmosphere of World War
II hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels
of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands
of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan.
Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military
broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal
area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland
into southern
Arizona. The order also authorized transporting
these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military
in California, Arizona, Washington state, and Oregon.
Executive Order 9066 never mentioned Japanese
as a category and was written broadly enough to encompass German-American
and Italian-American citizens.
But in the end, other than the few thousand
German and Italian "enemy aliens"
arrested and jailed immediately after
Pearl Harbor, no citizens of German
or Italian descent were ever herded into
camps and kept there for the duration of the war.>>
This is a profoundly misleading account of what happened on the homefront to immigrants of Italian, German and Japanese extraction during World WarII.
I represent the American
Italian Historical Association, Western Regional Chapter, and our exhibit,
"Una Storia Segreta: When Italian Americans Were 'Enemy Aliens," which
has been traveling since 1994, and which resulted in the Wartime Violation
of Italian American Civil Liberties Act, a bill which passed both Houses
of Congress
and was signed into Public Law #106-451
in Nov. 7, 2000 by Pres. Clinton, was created specifically to counter such
misleading notions. For a short look at the main elements of that exhibit,
see our website, www.segreta.org, and also my book on the subject, "Una
Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment
During WWII" (Heyday Books: 2001).
Sadly, this sort of misrepresentation continues in accounts like yours, in spite of the fact that as a result of our bill, the Justice Department issued a Report to the Congress of the United States in November 2001, specifically to verify the restrictions to which Italian Americans were indeed subjected. You can get a copy of that report by calling the DOJ at (202)514-4224.
As to your paragraph, though it may be technically correct, it clearly suggests that EO 9066 was meant to be used only against those of Japanese descent, and that what happened to German and Italian enemy aliens was an aside, and of little consequence. "Other than the few thousand German and Italian "enemy aliens" arrested and jailed immediately after Pearl Harbor, no citizens of German or Italian descent were ever herded into camps and kept there for the duration of the war," you say cavalierly.
The truth is quite other. The truth is,
those "enemy aliens" were mainly immigrants, resident aliens who had come
to the United States to live. In the Italian case, most were elderly women
who spoke little English and therefore were hard pressed to obtain citizenship.
Still, some 3200 immigrants of Italian descent were arrested for various
reasons (the government never told arrestees the charges against them),
and some 300 to 400 interned for the duration of the war with Italy (which
surrendered
in the summer of 1943, and joined the
Allies shortly thereafter), with many held well beyond that. The Germans
were treated even more harshly, with some 11,000 arrested (a large number
of whom were in fact naturalized citizens), and more than 5,000 interned,
some remaining in custody into 1947. To minimize this as "other than" is
to exhibit contempt for the ordeal of some groups in order to highlight
the
suffering of others.
This contempt is made
evident in the fact that you never mention that these insignificant "others"
numbered nearly a million residents of the U.S.--600,000 enemy aliens of
Italian descent and 330,000 of German descent. All of them had to abide
by restrictions of some kind--usually limiting their travel, their possessions,
and their right to constitutional protections (their homes could be, and
were, entered and
searched by the FBI and local constabularies
looking for "contraband"--radios with a shortwave band, flashlights, weapons
of any kind, cameras, and materials indicating ties to their country of
origin.)
Nor do you mention the mass evacuation that was ordered on the west coast, an evacuation from prohibited zones demanded by the military and administered by the DOJ (before 9066), and which caused the removal from homes and businesses of some 10,000 enemy aliens of Italian descent in cities such as Monterey, Santa Cruz, Alameda, Berkeley, Richmond, Pittsburg, Stockton and Eureka. These immigrants were not investigated individually but forced to move because of their status as enemy aliens. This evacuation, by the way, and indeed all the initial measures taken in the first two months of the war, were applied equally to Japanese, German and Italian enemy aliens.
After 9066, the prohibited zones for enemy aliens were expanded in places such as Stockton, and the curfew which enemy aliens had to abide by was extended from 9PM to 8PM. In addition, nearly 200 naturalized citizens of German and Italian descent were ordered out of vast military areas (some 27 states) in the individual exclusion program, all under the authority of EO 9066.
Indeed, EO 9066 arose
out of the Western Defense Command's attempt to do two things: 1) expand
the prohibited zones to include the entire Pacific Slope, from which hundreds
of thousands of Italian and German enemy aliens would have to move, and
which the Eastern Defense Command seriously considered adopting for the
east coast as well; and 2) exclude American citizens of Japanese descent
from Bainbridge Island. So your attempt to point out that it was intended
solely to remove Japanese Americans ignores the inciting events leading
up to its promulgation (see
Morton Grodzins, the historian who wrote
about these events soon after they occurred).
A final note: most Japanese
Americans and Japanese American organizations are now fully aware of the
larger picture of what happened on the homefront, and are eager to promote
the complete story. I am involved with a joint project, the "Enemy Alien
Files" exhibit, which focuses on the plight of enemy aliens of all three
groups,
as well as those who were kidnapped from
Latin America and brought to American internment camps, partly to serve
as hostages. The exhibit is a project of the Japanese Peruvian Oral History
Project, the National Japanese American Historical Society, the German
American Education Fund, and the American Italian Historical Association,
Western Chapter. The project is supported by a California Civil Liberties
Public Education Program grant, made possible by then-Assemblyman Mike
Honda. Congressman Honda, as a further indication of this movement to tell
the complete
story, has recently introduced into the
U.S. Congress a resolution calling for a Day of Remembrance for all three
groups--Italians, Germans and Japanese.
I would suggest that you and your scholars catch up with this broader movement and stop trying to present an outdated and erroneous and essentially condescending impression of what happened during those trying years. Many people were hurt, many communities were permanently damaged, and the damage is only exacerbated by distorting the historical record.
Lawrence DiStasi
Project Director
Una Storia Segreta
http://www.ashp.cuny.edu/
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