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AMERICAN ITALIAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
Western Regional Chapter  
     P.O. Box 533       (415) 868-0538            Bolinas, CA   94924

December 14, 2001

To: The Weekly Standard

Re: The Right Way, By Stephen Schwartz, Dec. 10, 2001. 

    The reckless misrepresentations and falsehoods in Stephen Schwartz's "The 
Right Way" are so breathtaking that one hardly knows where to begin. Slander 
must not go unrefuted, however, so begin with the simple truth:
 
    Schwartz offers no facts in his essay. Like the totalitarian propagandists he 
claims to oppose, he simply accuses. Italian Americans, he claims, are waiting 
for "a public apology" to those accused of "sympathy for Italian fascists in 
WWII." This is false on several counts. 

    First of all, those suspected of "sympathy" are virtually all dead, so 
apologies to them are moot. 

    Second, the Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act 
asks not for apology or redress but for simple acknowledgment that the 
restrictions on 600,000 enemy aliens of Italian descent took place-because 
for sixty years, these events have been routinely denied. 

    Third, these 600,000 Italian immigrants were not accused of anything, not 
even sympathy. Indeed, none, including those interned, were accused of 
anything, or charged with anything, or tried for anything. This is because 
none had committed a crime. 

    The branding of 600,000 immigrants as "alien enemies" of their 
chosen country was done on the basis of their birth in Italy and the 
suspicion that because they had not completed the citizenship process, they 
might still harbor loyalties to their mother country. For this, they were 
made to register as enemy aliens, carry pink identification booklets at all 
times, abide by travel and movement restrictions, and submit to searches of 
their homes on warrants that satisfied "probable cause" by the 
constitutionally shaky expedient that any home could be entered simply 
because an "enemy alien" lived there. 

    Fourth, the approximately 10,000 enemy aliens of Italian descent in 
California who were forced to move from their homes in "prohibited zones" were 
not accused of anything either, except, again, their birth in Italy. This "suspect 
condition" made them unfit to be on wharfs or docks or near the Pacific coast 
or in cities such as Monterey or Pittsburg or Alameda, even if they were 
fishermen whose lives depended on it, which many were. 

   Thus the only accusation here, totally unsubstantiated, is Mr. Schwartz's 
blanket accusation that those affected were "pro-Axis agitators." This consitutes 
the worst kind of slander. For even those who were interned were in fact not 
accused but only suspected of being "potentially dangerous," a suspicion 
which landed them on the FBI's Custodial Detention Index. Information from 
informants-informants they were never able to confront-constituted much of 
the evidence against them. 

   Not one, not a single one, was ever tried or even acccused of 
sabotage or espionage or any other crime. They were simply arrested, 
questioned, and given hearings before three-man hearing boards, denied 
lawyers to represent them, and expected, without knowing what made them 
suspect, to prove their innocence. If they failed, they were interned. 

   The National Archives are full of files on these men (and a few women), many 
of whom, like Louis Berizzi, had sons in the U.S. Armed Forces and never stopped 
trying to find out why they had been targeted. Most were paroled in 1943 after Italy 
surrendered, some, like Carmelo Ilacqua, to be then employed by the U.S. 
Government to teach Italian to intelligence operatives bound for Italy.
 
Yet Mr. Schwartz accuses and condemns them all in one breath, to support 
his argument that the government was justified.

   It simply won't wash. For what Mr. Schwartz either does not know, or 
purposely ignores is the ample evidence demonstrating that even the United 
States Justice Department believed the government had erred. Two examples 
will suffice. 

    First, on July 16, 1943, the Attorney General of the United States, 
Francis Biddle, in reviewing the cases of individual exclusion directed 
against Italian Americans-naturalized citizens these, who could not be 
interned-issued a stinging repudiation of the entire basis for targeting immigrants. 
In a memo to J. Edgar Hoover, Biddle wrote: 

   The department fulfills its proper functions by investigating the activities 
of persons who may have violated the law. It is not aided in this work by 
classifying persons as to dangerousness...the notion that is is possible to make 
a valid determination as to how dangerous a person is in the abstract and without 
reference to time, environment, and other relevant circumstances is impractical, 
unwise, and dangerous.

   That is, the Custodial Detention Index used by the FBI to arrest thousands 
and intern hundreds, and said by Mr. Schwartz to have been used "judiciously," 
was not only deeply flawed but itself represented a danger, and should be 
abandoned.
 
    Second, in a review of 100 of these exclusion cases-wherein Italian 
Americans were ordered to leave military areas because of their "potential 
dangerousness"-Biddle's Department of Justice again drew conclusions 
devastating not only to the Exclusion program, but, by implication, to the 
entire process it had directed at enemy aliens as well. In that report, the 
DOJ concluded that not only were the persons excluded not dangerous-having 
been targeted mainly for the pre-war sympathies they bore for the nation of 
their birth. Not only were they forced to move to areas which, said the Report, 
offered more targets for sabotage than the areas they had been forced to leave. 

   Worst of all, in order to defend themselves, excludees were given hearings 
before three-man military boards whose procedures-like those of the hearing 
boards faced by internees, and those of the military tribunals the Bush 
administration has recently authorized,-prevented them from knowing the charges 
or evidence against them, or from questioning the witnesses who had provided 
that evidence. In the face of this, the Justice Department's Preliminary Report 
on Individual Exlusion Order Cases concluded: 

Practically, the use of phrases such as this [i.e. "potentially dangerous"]suggests 
that those who use them hold the view that a subject of an exclusion case must 
be excluded unless it is clear that there is no reason to exclude him. This 
is analogous to saying that the burden of proof is on the excludee, although 
the excludee, of course, cannot meet the burden, since he is not advised of 
the charges against him. 

In short, the highest law enforcement official of the United States in 1943, 
with war still raging, concluded that targeting thousands of individuals of 
Italian descent during World War II as "potentially dangerous," and then 
punishing them for that in the absence of any action or even threatened action 
against the United States, was not only a classic Catch 22, but also a violation of 
the most basic constitutional principles for which the nation was fighting a war. 
 
Judging by his article, Mr. Stephen Schwartz seems not to mind such 
violations, and, in fact, recommends them. Fortunately for us all, he is not 
in charge.     

I would appreciate an immediate reply.
                                Respectfully,

                                Lawrence DiStasi
                                President

Bio line:   Lawrence DiStasi's most recent book is Una Storia Segreta: The 
Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War 
II, (Heyday Books: 2001). He is President of the American Italian Historical 
Association, Western Regional Chapter, and project director of the traveling 
exhibit, Una Storia Segreta.