Text 13842, 122 rader
Skriven 2008-04-02 08:41:00 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 13767 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
Ärende: Interned Germans, Italians and Japanese
===============================================
31 Mar 08 15:05, Ward Dossche wrote to Roy Witt:


 RW>> WD> According to what I read the first wave attacked at 07.48am,
 RW>> that
 RW>> WD> means 12.48pm in Washington DC. Right? Or did I miss one?

 RW>> I think you did. It was nearly 2pm in Washington.

 WD> Hmmm ... I thought it was 2hrs from Hawaii to California and then
 WD> 3hrs more to the eastcoast. But OK.

Washington DC time is -4 zulu...Hawaii time is -11 zulu. (no 'daylight
saving time' in December)

 RW>> Congress declared war on Germany on December 11th...

 WD> So they awaited Hirler's declaration first?

I don't know about that. It could have been that they were busy with a lot
of other business, such as what else would be needed to get Pearl Harbor
back in business again. Money appropreations?

 RW>> WD> So there must have been a pre-conceived plan that could be set
 RW>> in WD> motion.

 RW>> Yeup...preconceived from the 1798 document mentioned above.

 RW>> WD> Rounding up of Germans and Italians had already started long
 RW>> before
 RW>> WD> that, half a year or more before Pearl Harbor even.

 RW>> I don't think so. AFAIK, they may have been under observation, but
 RW>> no Germans or Italians were rounded up earlier than Dec 11th.

 WD> I did some reading first prior to responding and it is different.

So did I...and I concur with the following.

 WD> Several German, Italian and Danish (yes!) ships were stuck in
 WD> American ports and near the locks of the Panama Canal since 1939 when
 WD> the war in Europe had started.

 WD> Britain had made certain that all civilian German, Italian and Danish
 WD> vessels would be considered hostile, boarded, its crew interned, the
 WD> ship and cargo confiscated.

 WD> On the last week-end of March 1941, 8 months before Pearl Harbor,
 WD> President Roosevelt under the authority of the _1917_ "espionage act"
 WD> that made it a crime to damage a ship whether foreign or domestic,
 WD> harbored in the territorial waters of the USA, ordered 69 German
 WD> Italian and Danish vessels seized. The 775 Italian and 100 German
 WD> seaman were taken into "protective custody". Danish sailors were left
 WD> on their ships.

 WD> This was explained as being necessary because of worsening tensions
 WD> between the government of the USA and Nazi Germany. Rumours went
 WD> around that ships were being sabotaged or could be scuttled in
 WD> essential coastal waterways.

 WD> So in April 1941, 7 months before Pearl Harbor, these sailors were
 WD> already interned and shipped to Fort Missoula in Montana. Prior to
 WD> the outbreak of hostilities photographs of Benito Mussolini were
 WD> allowed on the walls.

 WD> The seizing of the ships is well documented in the issue of "LIFE"
 WD> magazine of April 14 1941.

 WD> The newspaper "Missoula Sentinel" ran a bunch of articles and photos
 WD> of the Italians arriving in Missoula MT on May 9th 1941. They were
 WD> first detained on Ellis Island and then shipped by train to Montana,
 WD> that was a 3-day train ride.

 WD> I'm assuming I do not need to publish ISBN-numbers nor scans from
 WD> authentic articles?

Correct.

 RW>> They were detained in Souther California too...one 'historical site'
 RW>> marker remembers those Italians who lived and worked near Campo,
 RW>> CA...

 WD> Where would that be about?

Mitchell Convalescent Hospital (PWC), Campo,  California 91906

Campo is just East of San Diego in the high desert area along the Mexican
border.

A list of Italian and German POW camps can be seen here;

http://www.gentracer.com/powcamps.html

It looks like we spread them out quite a bit. I suppose it was to keep
them disoriented and not able to find an easy way back to their homeland
if they escaped.

 RW>> I ran across a mention of a German detention center in Texas, but I
 RW>> didn't go look at that site and now I've forgotten the name...

 WD> Well if you ever do, then write about it.

The list above gives the name of a lot of Texas camps, but none of them
sounded familiar to me.

 WD> Quite often we are better informed about what the Romans did than
 WD> what happened 50-60 years ago.

I we still lived in San Diego, I could take a ride to Campo and read the
historical marker again...there was also a historical write up  about
that camp, in the San Diego newspaper, many years ago.

 WD> A pity,

Yeup...history is something that shouldn't be left undocumented.

                R\%/itt



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