Is That Legal?

Were any U.S. citizens of German ancestry interned, without specific findings of individual disloyalty, other than minors who when into internment with their Enemy Alien relatives? My understanding, which could be wrong, is that those were the only categories of German Americans interned.

The internments of Germans in WWII were not on the basis of disloyalty, but dangerousness.

I am told that a limited number of ethnic Germans were interned who were naturalized U.S. citizens at the time of their internment. I have not looked into the facts closely myself to verify.

I believe that few, if any, American-born people of German ancestry were themselves directly targeted for internment (as distinguished from going into internment with their alien parents).

Senator Russ Feingold has introduced a version of a bill to establish a commission to address this issue during the last three or four congresses.

I think the latest was
S.1691 The Wartime Treatment Study Act
introduced in October of 2003.

See
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:9:./temp/~mdbsQ4NUTt::

My dad, Karl Vogt, was abruptly taken away from his family when F.B.I. agents appeared at our farm near Plaza, Washington on the afternoon of December 9, 1941. When my mom asked where they were taking Dad, they replied that it was none of her business. My mother, brother and I, all American born citizens, were left behind, but were subjected to harassment by the U.S. government including the freezing of our bank account. Dad, who had immigrated to America in 1925, was a legal resident of the U.S. and had started the process of procuring citizenship. For nearly two years he was never told what the so called charges were against him and he was never told who his accusers were. Dad was "paroled" after two years. He was one of the lucky ones. Many of the 10,000 German internees were "penned up" much longer, some for 3 or 4 years after the war had ended. Then there were the 4000+ German Latin Americans who were literally kidnapped from their homes and sent to internment camps in the U.S. Not one of any of these people was ever convicted of a crime against the U.S. or any Latin American country.
Let me just say to you who are so arrogant about how this was an OK thing to do---you need to feel what it is like to be thrown into a situation where you cannot defend yourself because you don't know what to defend against. You need to feel the anguish of losing everything you own and the respect of your neighbors simply because of your ethnicity.

Ursula, thanks for posting this. I hope that by the "you who are so arrogant" line you are not referring to me. Are you?

My Dad and Aunt and My Grandmother and Grand father were also held in one of the camps.I have a picture of them taken in the camp.

I have researched into this extremely deeply and most people were interned based on last names and military status. I believe the number of German Americans interned ranged between 10k-20k. If I remember correctly it was 14k, but that might be a little off. Most of which had absolutely no criminal record to their name whatsoever, were not given a trial of any sort, and were given less than 48 hours to pack, and could only bring what they could carry. They rode there in simular forms of transportation to that in which nazis actually transported jews in concentration camps, most of the time there were excessive numbers of internees packed into a single car.

ELM: This is the first I've ever heard of the claim that the government "packed" excessive numbers of German (or any other) internees into train cars. I've read and interviewed extensively about the transportation of Japanese Americans and Japanese aliens, and there was no such overcrowding. And even if there was some overcrowding, the comparison to the Nazis' transportation of Jews in cattle cars is most assuredly false.

Your readers will be interested in a new website created to inform the public about the full extent of the United States' civilian internment programs. Sponsored by a group of former German American and Latin American internees and their families, the German American Internee Coalition web site ( www.gaic.info ) has a wealth of information.

Heidi Gurcke Donald
(a former German Latin American interned in Texas between 1943-44.)