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An important topic that more people should definitely know about. We've all heard about the Japanese camps, sadly, but to hear how much bigger this was is so sad. Especially in today's climate, this is a piece of history everyone should learn more about and she's done a great job gathering this history from various sources.
If I were only to talk about the writing of this book, though, I would give it a much worse review. She jumps from person to person trying to make a story between them when there really isn't one, and because the person of interest in a given section kept changing there were many times I had to re-read entire pages to figure out who she was currently discussing. There were also a number of sentences - many regarding Eleanor Roosevelt - that are weird opinions presented as fact. Of course all history (like the "fact" that these camps were a bad thing) is opinion, but a sentence like "Eleanor hated the idea of the camps but it was her job to support her husband" (paraphrased, but it's what I gathered from the sentence) is an oddly sexist and non-factual sentence presented as history.
Overall review: read this book for the important topic, not the writing.
If I were only to talk about the writing of this book, though, I would give it a much worse review. She jumps from person to person trying to make a story between them when there really isn't one, and because the person of interest in a given section kept changing there were many times I had to re-read entire pages to figure out who she was currently discussing. There were also a number of sentences - many regarding Eleanor Roosevelt - that are weird opinions presented as fact. Of course all history (like the "fact" that these camps were a bad thing) is opinion, but a sentence like "Eleanor hated the idea of the camps but it was her job to support her husband" (paraphrased, but it's what I gathered from the sentence) is an oddly sexist and non-factual sentence presented as history.
Overall review: read this book for the important topic, not the writing.
Coming from a family where both of my grandparents were interned in Canada as well as currently living within 50 miles of the historic site of this internment camp made this book doubly interesting to me. I've heard the personal stories from my grandparents and I was again reminded of the hardships and prejudice that my ancestors and many others experienced.
All I can hope is that the American and Canadian governments have learned from the past and will not repeat similar actions in the future.
This book gave insight to the everyday life of internees and the events that led up to internment. The decisions that family units had to make in order to stay together or in some cases the sacrifices in order to be reunited had horrifying repercussions. My life would be wholly different if my grandparents had been repatriated. I appreciated how this book incorporated view points from the different ethnic groups that were affected. I will be sharing this book with my family members, and as someone of Japanese I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in WW2.
All I can hope is that the American and Canadian governments have learned from the past and will not repeat similar actions in the future.
This book gave insight to the everyday life of internees and the events that led up to internment. The decisions that family units had to make in order to stay together or in some cases the sacrifices in order to be reunited had horrifying repercussions. My life would be wholly different if my grandparents had been repatriated. I appreciated how this book incorporated view points from the different ethnic groups that were affected. I will be sharing this book with my family members, and as someone of Japanese I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in WW2.
This book narrates governmental actions that should never have happened. While there are some who opposed, people higher than them pursued. While there was an attempt to treat prisoners humanely, prison is still prison. Arresting on the basis of nationality alone was indefensible, not to mention the arrest of US citizens. I had been familiar with Japanese internment camps, but that Germans and Italians were also imprisoned, though in smaller numbers, was new. And that Japanese from Latin America were brought to the US to be imprisoned was also new and devastating information.
The history of Crystal City Internment is told through the experiences of the imprisoned. There is an extensive narration of Ingrid Eiserloh's family's experience and shorter interspersed vignettes of that of others. The events of World War II are background and referenced briefly where relevant, but the focus is on the people imprisoned. And deported.
It started with an overzealous FBI surveillance such that when the war began, people could be found and arrested and imprisoned without trial. At first it was just the men arrested; then wives and children could be reunited if the father agreed to be repatriated to their country of origin, reunited as a family at Crystal City, then "repatriated" together. (How does one repatriate children who never lived in the target country?)
The trauma of entry into Germany and Japan and the impact of encountering devastation unimaginable to those living in a country not directly attacked is devastating. Though the detail is hard to read, the style and organization makes for easy following of detail. There is one contrasting experience, that of Irene, a German Jew who was one of the reverse enchangees. She was Ingrid's counterpart on the exchange lists, traveling from a German concentration camp to the US (with some bureaucratic detours).
Reading this book is important memory activism
The history of Crystal City Internment is told through the experiences of the imprisoned. There is an extensive narration of Ingrid Eiserloh's family's experience and shorter interspersed vignettes of that of others. The events of World War II are background and referenced briefly where relevant, but the focus is on the people imprisoned. And deported.
It started with an overzealous FBI surveillance such that when the war began, people could be found and arrested and imprisoned without trial. At first it was just the men arrested; then wives and children could be reunited if the father agreed to be repatriated to their country of origin, reunited as a family at Crystal City, then "repatriated" together. (How does one repatriate children who never lived in the target country?)
The trauma of entry into Germany and Japan and the impact of encountering devastation unimaginable to those living in a country not directly attacked is devastating. Though the detail is hard to read, the style and organization makes for easy following of detail. There is one contrasting experience, that of Irene, a German Jew who was one of the reverse enchangees. She was Ingrid's counterpart on the exchange lists, traveling from a German concentration camp to the US (with some bureaucratic detours).
Reading this book is important memory activism
This was really interesting, although it took a while to get into. This book profiles several families and inmates to a family internment camp in Texas which held Japanese, German, Italian, and Latin American people who were forcibly detained during WWII. Many of the people in this camp ended up being "repatriated" to either Germany or Japan during or after the war, although some later came back to America. I still can't get over the fact that my country did this. I always read these books with a sense of disorientation; I just can't understand. I really can't. I was even unfamiliar with the stories of many Japanese who lived in Latin America who were basically kidnapped by the US; we leaned on other governments to round up their Japanese people and ship them to us, where we promptly arrested them (because they were illegal immigrants???? That we forced to come here????) and detained them for the duration of the war; many were sent to Japan after the war. This book also told the stories of Germans who were labelled "enemy aliens" and detained. The circumstances of this look about as flimsy as the justifications to intern Japanese, just there were many fewer. One man was basically labelled an enemy alien because he worked for a company that built bridges, and some of his neighbors said he sometimes had people over to his house. ??? What a terribly sad chapter in our history. This is very relevant today in 2015 as we hear some political leaders speak approvingly of treating others (Hispanic immigrants, Muslim immigrants) in similar ways. It would be a dear wish of mine that we should all HAVE to learn this history, in order to make sure we do not embark on similar tragedies today.
A true account of an interment camp where families of Japanese, Italian, German, or Latin Americans of Japanese, etc. descent were kept to be traded for American POWs. Some, especially the children, were American citizens, but had no choice.
A tragedy often overlooked (and only a group of Japanese/Americans received apology or reparations) that should not be forgotten, as racism and hate are too easy to fall on. But the book suffers from trying to do too much, to follow the stories of too many people, resulting in a bewildering array of names, and ending in a litany of death dates.
A tragedy often overlooked (and only a group of Japanese/Americans received apology or reparations) that should not be forgotten, as racism and hate are too easy to fall on. But the book suffers from trying to do too much, to follow the stories of too many people, resulting in a bewildering array of names, and ending in a litany of death dates.
4 star information, 2 star writing. The writing is not so much bad as sometimes poorly organized. A better editor would have made this a much better book.
A colleague at work told me about this book and recommended it highly. Boy, was she on the mark.
Shortly after WWII, the US government began arresting and imprisoning foreign nationals (and some citizens) from Axis nations. The story of the Japanese internment camps in the western US is fairly well known. But I live only 200 miles from the only family-centered camp for all nationalities that was run for the purpose of trading these prisoners for US citizens trapped in Axis countries. And I had never heard of the Crystal City Internment Camp.
Russell describes the background of the camp, its administrators and the daily life of its inhabitants. She focuses primarily on the stories of three teenage girls, two of them (Japenese and German) US citizens who were forced to live there due to their fathers' statuses. The third, ironically, was a US citizen who lived the opposite experience -- a survivor of Nazi extermination campus who was traded back to the US. The stories are extremely compelling, and it's so fortunate that they got to be told. In each case, families had to choose whether to live apart, or together, whether to take loyalty oaths to the government that was trampling their civil rights, and whether to repatriate to countries that no longer wanted them and had little to offer them after the war.
An interesting part of this history that I wish had been explored further were the many citizens of Latin American countries of Japanese and German descent whom the US government basically kidnapped from their homes and interned at Crystal City. It's such a lesson about what lengths war can drive nations and individuals to. This whole story is an example of the US behaving at its worst out of fear.
Everyone should know this story. It's well told and the stories are so vivid. It was especially interesting to me in that this happened so close to home. Also, the town that the German family in the story returned to is one I visited quite recently.
Shortly after WWII, the US government began arresting and imprisoning foreign nationals (and some citizens) from Axis nations. The story of the Japanese internment camps in the western US is fairly well known. But I live only 200 miles from the only family-centered camp for all nationalities that was run for the purpose of trading these prisoners for US citizens trapped in Axis countries. And I had never heard of the Crystal City Internment Camp.
Russell describes the background of the camp, its administrators and the daily life of its inhabitants. She focuses primarily on the stories of three teenage girls, two of them (Japenese and German) US citizens who were forced to live there due to their fathers' statuses. The third, ironically, was a US citizen who lived the opposite experience -- a survivor of Nazi extermination campus who was traded back to the US. The stories are extremely compelling, and it's so fortunate that they got to be told. In each case, families had to choose whether to live apart, or together, whether to take loyalty oaths to the government that was trampling their civil rights, and whether to repatriate to countries that no longer wanted them and had little to offer them after the war.
An interesting part of this history that I wish had been explored further were the many citizens of Latin American countries of Japanese and German descent whom the US government basically kidnapped from their homes and interned at Crystal City. It's such a lesson about what lengths war can drive nations and individuals to. This whole story is an example of the US behaving at its worst out of fear.
Everyone should know this story. It's well told and the stories are so vivid. It was especially interesting to me in that this happened so close to home. Also, the town that the German family in the story returned to is one I visited quite recently.
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
What a really great book (I can't give it five stars, I'll explain later). Extremely well researched and well written. Ms. Russell's writing is extremely easy to read and it's not dry at all which a really good thing for history books as that tends to turn people off. I had known about US concentration camps since I was a young child and even knew of the anti-German feelings in the country (my grandmother was fired from her teaching job because she spoke German). But I had never heard of Crystal City before and the history of it. It was really interesting to read.
I especially enjoyed the fact that Ms. Russell followed the families until the present day. A lot of times, the aftermath of war isn't as documented.
As for the reason I can't give this five stars is the fact that as much as it was interesting, Irene's story really wasn't necessary and really wasn't about Crystal City. It wasted at least two chapters that could have been spent talking about some of the inhabitants of Crystal City like those of Italian decent. I do get this that this book was supposed to be about the exchange program but it doesn't read like that which is really frustrating. Because both would have been interesting. It was almost like the author couldn't pick which topic to focus on, the history of Crystal City or the exchange program (which I get, both are fascinating and should be talked about).
Overall, I really enjoy this book and it's a really good read!
I especially enjoyed the fact that Ms. Russell followed the families until the present day. A lot of times, the aftermath of war isn't as documented.
As for the reason I can't give this five stars is the fact that as much as it was interesting, Irene's story really wasn't necessary and really wasn't about Crystal City. It wasted at least two chapters that could have been spent talking about some of the inhabitants of Crystal City like those of Italian decent. I do get this that this book was supposed to be about the exchange program but it doesn't read like that which is really frustrating. Because both would have been interesting. It was almost like the author couldn't pick which topic to focus on, the history of Crystal City or the exchange program (which I get, both are fascinating and should be talked about).
Overall, I really enjoy this book and it's a really good read!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement
Moderate: Deportation
Minor: Alcoholism, Animal death, Child death, Death, Genocide, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Suicide, Violence, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, Abortion, Death of parent, Pregnancy, War
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
This book was amazing. We think of America's first toe in the water with kidnapping or capturing individuals, Abu Ghraib holding people illegally in other countries, HA, welcome to AMERICA 1942. Crystal City, a real city in Texas where Germans some born here, Italians, and Japanese were put into interment camps and used as pawns for trading American GI's for Germans. Nationalism again and again, WOW what an eye opening book, almost said novel, but historical.