U.S. Children of Internment

[temporal1]

U.S. Children of Internment

“German families in US camps”
http://childrenofinternment.com/presskit.pdf

.. Thousands of German and Japanese families were interned by the United States during WWII. They were taken from their homes and schools, denied "due process" and imprisoned in over 200 detention and internment camps throughout the United States and Latin America. ..

This has been a topic of interest (for me) for several years:
How German-Americans, U.S. citizens, were affected by the two World Wars.

i suspect profound and far-reaching affects - ignored and denied. by everyone, including themselves.

this documentary takes a stab at balanced history.
it explains how it wasn’t Japanese, alone, but Germans and Italians, too.

which, of course, is logical. considering what was happening.

my interest is in understanding history. (not changing laws, or seeking restitution.)

“Biographies”
http://www.childrenofinternment.com/?page_id=15

17. Richard Santos – International Research Historian who has authored and co-authored 37 books, over 3,000 articles and a number of television documentaries. Richard tells us:

Because I am a historian, I was very displeased and outright angry at the way the internment of alien families was recorded that are being given to junior high and high school and college students in which emphasis is placed on the Japanese only and not the Germans who suffered just as bad and were treated just as bad or good as the Japanese.

But unfortunately, the internment of the other aliens, the members of the Axis powers, like the Italians, the Bulgarians, the Romanians, the Czechoslovakians – they're not recorded. And they're not reported in the history books.

So that in our textbooks, we mention only the Japanese Americans and we give the impression that they were all from California, which, again, that's incorrect.

Because the U.S. government went to great lengths to get both Japanese and Germans from the Latin American countries and bring them for internment in the U.S. So to me as a historian, I wanted to set the record straight.

And I've been at this now for 10 years trying to get people to understand what happened here, and that it was an injustice to intern U.S. born citizens just because their father or mother had been born in Germany or Japan.

But these were U.S. citizens who were being interned.

The language in this documentary is confusing, because of references to “German,” “Japanese,” etc.
It’s about U.S. FAMILIES of “other” descent. Which is about everyone in the U.S. These were legal U.S. citizens.

[temporal1]

As a child, i felt a little of this resentment/discrimination WITHIN my family ..
because my mother married a young man of partial German descent, with a German surname. He was not 1st generation, but several generations in the U.S. A U.S. citizen in every way. He hated wars. Did not want the U.S. to get caught up in wars (like Europe’s history is steeped in).

But, still, i felt the occasional “jab” from some extended family members.
They didn’t dare be too obvious. My mother would not have allowed it. She was quiet. But strong.

i do wonder about all the multitudes of ways these discriminations have impacted U.S. life.
because, frankly, Germans were important in early U.S. history. many schools taught in both English and German.

German influence was a big deal in the U.S.
Then, a big change. Mostly unrecognized.

Not everyone lusts-after the victim card. (As partisan politicians+media so very much want everyone to buy into.)

How does this work?
How can people be victimized yet refuse to exploit it for personal/political gain? Why is this a better way?

[Bootstrap]

U.S. Children of Internment

“German families in US camps”
http://childrenofinternment.com/presskit.pdf

.. Thousands of German and Japanese families were interned by the United States during WWII. They were taken from their homes and schools, denied "due process" and imprisoned in over 200 detention and internment camps throughout the United States and Latin America. ..

This has been a topic of interest (for me) for several years:
How German-Americans, U.S. citizens, were affected by the two World Wars.

i suspect profound and far-reaching affects - ignored and denied. by everyone, including themselves.

this documentary takes a stab at balanced history.
it explains how it wasn’t Japanese, alone, but Germans and Italians, too.

My family was affected by this. During this time, they no longer wore German jewelry in public or spoke German on the streets. Before World War II, the headstones in the family cemetery were in German, during World War II and afterward they were written in English.

My grandparents moved into a neighborhood that was Germans and Italians during this time. I hadn't made the connection, but I wonder if this is the reason that the neighborhood was these two ethnic groups.

How did this affect conservative Mennonites of Germanic descent?

[temporal1]

My family was affected by this. During this time, they no longer wore German jewelry in public or spoke German on the streets. Before World War II, the headstones in the family cemetery were in German, during World War II and afterward they were written in English.

My grandparents moved into a neighborhood that was Germans and Italians during this time.

I hadn't made the connection, but I wonder if this is the reason that the neighborhood was these two ethnic groups.

How did this affect conservative Mennonites of Germanic descent?

i have been curious for years about this, not reading or viewing anything about it, but wondering, “how is it Germans contributed so much, and were even represented in bilingual public schools - then. NOTHING.”

The history does not add up.

i have broached the subject a few times over the years on this forum - because i presume there are German descent folks here that might have some memories, family stories, history, etc. i don’t believe anyone has before replied.

The world is so super-dependent on media to present “all” our questions, along with “all” our responses -
(in very politicized and divisive manner) - what about questions and responses they DON’T offer?

This is one question never mentioned.

What about broaching history for history’s value, without underlying motives to change laws, to pilfer the public treasury?
To me, this is a matter of basic education and history. i hope some remnant of it survives. somehow.

Bilingual education? - “German in public elementary schools 1840-1919” ..
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1085040?seq=1

80 years of public ed history - gone, and rarely mentioned. along with an awful lot more. logic would suggest.

[Bootstrap]

The world is so super-dependent on media to present “all” our questions, along with “all” our responses -

But we don't have to be. We can look things up, read books, etc. When I was growing up, this was very much part of the stories my aunts and uncles would tell.

Do you know about oral histories? Recordings of people telling their stories, they are fascinating to listen to.

On this topic, Wikipedia has a few good starting points:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internmen ... _Americans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-German_sentiment

[Josh]

U.S. Children of Internment

“German families in US camps”
http://childrenofinternment.com/presskit.pdf

.. Thousands of German and Japanese families were interned by the United States during WWII. They were taken from their homes and schools, denied "due process" and imprisoned in over 200 detention and internment camps throughout the United States and Latin America. ..

This has been a topic of interest (for me) for several years:
How German-Americans, U.S. citizens, were affected by the two World Wars.

i suspect profound and far-reaching affects - ignored and denied. by everyone, including themselves.

this documentary takes a stab at balanced history.
it explains how it wasn’t Japanese, alone, but Germans and Italians, too.

My family was affected by this. During this time, they no longer wore German jewelry in public or spoke German on the streets. Before World War II, the headstones in the family cemetery were in German, during World War II and afterward they were written in English.

My grandparents moved into a neighborhood that was Germans and Italians during this time. I hadn't made the connection, but I wonder if this is the reason that the neighborhood was these two ethnic groups.

How did this affect conservative Mennonites of Germanic descent?

“Conservative Mennonites” didn’t exist until the 1950s; regardless, plain background people were some of the least affected by this and retained the most of their Germanic culture, ranging from surnames to cuisine to town names. Where I live, New Berlin got renamed to North Canton and Osnaburg to East Canton.

Similar things happened in World War I. Italian-American culture as we know it mostly consists of culture handed down from post-WWII Italian immigrants; ones who came before then almost entirely assimilated.

Whether or not this is a good thing is an open question. My grandparents all felt like they were one common people. Nowadays, most Americans seem to identify more as very different people, often at odds with one another. But that begs the question of if “American” is something that is somehow noble or virtuous to be; I argue it is not.

[ohio jones]

How did this affect conservative Mennonites of Germanic descent?

“Conservative Mennonites” didn’t exist until the 1950s; regardless, plain background people were some of the least affected by this and retained the most of their Germanic culture, ranging from surnames to cuisine to town names. Where I live, New Berlin got renamed to North Canton and Osnaburg to East Canton.

I suppose this is true whether referring to "conservative Mennonites" or "Conservative Mennonites" (beginning the sentence with a capital C makes it somewhat ambiguous); before 1954 we were Conservative Amish Mennonites.

At the founding of C(A)MC in 1910, one of the five items on the agenda was "What can we do to maintain the German language?" It did not survive as long as the other concerns. When the Herold der Wahrheit began in 1917 an English section was included; by 1920 both languages were used in the conference sermons, and the conference reports were printed in both German and English editions. World War I undoubtedly accelerated the trend away from the German language, and by WWII the transition was essentially complete.

In my part of Ohio, not all of the towns with non-plain people got renamed. We still have Leipsic (an anglicized spelling of Leipzig), Glandorf, and New Bavaria, for example. Lots of German immigrants, more Catholic than Lutheran in that area, who gave up the language but retain other parts of the culture. Not least of which is the love of beer.

[JohnHurt]

I understand in WWII they used the US Census data to round up the Japanese, German, and Italian US citizens and put them into camps.

If you swore allegiance to the US, you were put into a somewhat acceptable camp. If you refused, you were put in a camp with "lesser" accommodations.

Either way, you lost your freedom for several years, not based on your activities or breaking any laws, but based on your race or ethnicity - and the information you willingly provided to them on the US Census form.

I did not fill out a Census form in 2010, and they hassled us a lot, and they finally came out to our house and "guessed" the number of people that live here. In 2020, my wife got tired of my "shenanigans" and filled out the form herself. She is a real saint.

The US Census was designed only to find the people living in a State so that the number of districts for the House of Representatives can be correctly apportioned. The idea that that they can also demand your race, ethnicity, or other information in the Census is dangerous to your own freedom, as history has shown.

I now identify my ethnicity as "Other", as in "N-Other of your business!"

My Great-Great Grandfather's brother was interned in a Federal Prison camp in 1861 called "Johnson Island" in Lake Erie. When he came back, his family did not recognize him. He looked like a walking skeleton. My grandfather told me that he had to live off rats to survive. 3,000 prisoners died in the camp at Johnson Island, which held only 6,000 inmates, although 30,000 where shuttled through it - which is how they cover up the 50% death rate and make it seem like "only" a 10% kill rate. The related Camp Douglas in Chicago also killed a lot of Confederate soldiers. The Oak Woods Cemetery is where their bodies were buried and is the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Woods ... ry#History

I am very sorry to hear about any of your relatives being put into a camp, but at least they were not starved to death. And you are better off to hide, or leave the country, than to be put into a camp.

[Wayne in Maine]

There are some interesting stories from the Bruderhof about their experiences in England. Though many of their members had fled the Nazis, when the war broke out they were still considered enemy aliens and some members were sent to camps. One English sister married a German Brother and thus became a "enemy alien" herself! This was the reason why they left England and went to Paraguay, though the English Community thrived and was much more spiritual and Christ centered than the Paraguayan colony. Eventually Eberhard Arnold's son solved that problem by shutting down the English community.

[Josh]

How did this affect conservative Mennonites of Germanic descent?

“Conservative Mennonites” didn’t exist until the 1950s; regardless, plain background people were some of the least affected by this and retained the most of their Germanic culture, ranging from surnames to cuisine to town names. Where I live, New Berlin got renamed to North Canton and Osnaburg to East Canton.

I suppose this is true whether referring to "conservative Mennonites" or "Conservative Mennonites" (beginning the sentence with a capital C makes it somewhat ambiguous); before 1954 we were Conservative Amish Mennonites.

At the founding of C(A)MC in 1910, one of the five items on the agenda was "What can we do to maintain the German language?" It did not survive as long as the other concerns. When the Herold der Wahrheit began in 1917 an English section was included; by 1920 both languages were used in the conference sermons, and the conference reports were printed in both German and English editions. World War I undoubtedly accelerated the trend away from the German language, and by WWII the transition was essentially complete.

In my part of Ohio, not all of the towns with non-plain people got renamed. We still have Leipsic (an anglicized spelling of Leipzig), Glandorf, and New Bavaria, for example. Lots of German immigrants, more Catholic than Lutheran in that area, who gave up the language but retain other parts of the culture. Not least of which is the love of beer.

In Hartville, the justification for the local CAMC affiliate's move away from the German language (which happened in the late 1920s, if my menory is correct) happened mostly for evangelistic purposes, although (according to oral legend) the tent revivals had both Pennsylvania Dutch and English preaching. The pace away from the German language seems to entirely coincide with how much cultural assimilation has taken place.

The most conservative groups still use Bibles printed in Fraktur alphabets, which isn't even used in Germany proper anymore outside of the occasional Ye Olde Sign.