Art Jacobs, former internee, U.S. Air Force Major, and educator at Arizona State University, died November 20, 2023, at the age of 90, in Tempe, Arizona. Art was the one of the first former internees to educate the public about internment policies with a website, a book about his family’s experiences, and a lifelong campaign to have the government acknowledge publicly that innocent people of German ethnicity were interned along with Japanese Americans. In a 2010 interview for the Texas Historical Commission, he said: “I would want everybody to remember that Germans, Italians, and Japanese were ..read more

Tracking the Lorenz Family Through Franklin Roosevelt’s Internment by Karl Malek Early in 1942, while World War II was ravaging the globe, my great-grandfather, my great-grandmother, my grandfather, and my great-aunt were being detained by the Peruvian government in Lima. Being Germans, they were deemed untrustworthy potential Nazis by Peru. Their detentions were part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s larger internment program. The United States president cooperated with Latin American republics in the program, bringing their suspected Axis sympathizers to the U.S. My family made up a small part ..read more

The yearly pilgrimage to Crystal City, Texas, by former internees, their families and friends is planned for October 26-29, 2023. This year’s Pilgrimage theme is “Reaching Across Barbed Wire Fences.” In addition to learning about the unique history and stories of survivors of the Crystal City Internment Camp, this year’s Pilgrimage will look at the legacy of solidarity and activism between the internees and the present-day Crystal City community.  A stunning Swimming Pool Memorial Monument will be unveiled at the Crystal City Camp site created by the award-winning Art Director & Desig ..read more

Wendel, Joe. Bloomington, Indiana: Archway Publishing, 2017. Dr. Joe Wendel writes a wide-ranging history of German and German Americans, focused on providing insights into the two World Wars from the viewpoint of a German American who lived in Austria during WWII. Justice Denied offers compelling facts, interpretations, and points of view unfamiliar to most Americans, including the personal stories of German Americans sent to internment camps in World War II. The post Justice Denied: an Historical Sojourn appeared first on German American Internee Coalition ..read more

On December 2, 2021, Adam Schiff, a California delegate to the House of Representatives, spoke to the Congressional Record, recognizing the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station in California and commending the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition for their work “to preserve and document the historical site and the story of the lives that were forever changed” by incarceration at the site during WWII. The County of Los Angeles also formally proclaimed December 16, 2021 as “the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Day of Remembrance” and resolved “to fight for the rig ..read more

Schmitz, John E. Enemies Among Us: the Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans During the Second World War. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2021. In Enemies among Us John E. Schmitz examines the causes, conditions, and consequences of America’s selective relocation and internment of its own citizens and enemy aliens, as well as the effects of internment on those who experienced it. Looking at German, Italian, and Japanese Americans, Schmitz analyzes the similarities in the U.S. government’s procedures for those they perceived to be domes ..read more

An updated version of the “The Enemy Alien Files: Hidden Stories of World War II” exhibit begins its tour at the Angel Island Immigration Museum in San Francisco Bay on October 1, 2022. There will be a panel presentation that day with guest speakers Lawrence Distasi, Italian American Studies Assn./Western Regional Chapter, Dr. Sigrid Toye, German American Internee Coalition and Grace Shimizu, Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project. You may remember the older exhibit, which toured the country years ago, including a summer’s long stay at Manzanar. If you can’t make the openin ..read more

Grace Shimizu, director of Campaign For Justice: Redress NOW For Japanese Latin Americans! recently announced that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published its verdict in the case Isamu Carlos “Art” Shibayma vs United States, holding that the U.S. government owes redress to brothers Art, Tak and Ken Shibayama for human rights violations perpetrated on them as children during World War II. The Shibayama brothers, along with over 2,200 other children, women and men of Japanese ancestry and 4,085 of German ethnicity from 13 Latin American countries, were subjected ..read more

The Uvalde Leader-News, a newspaper “Informing Southwest Texas since 1879,” published “Texas visitor recalls war internment” on May 15, 2022 about Werner Ulrich Jr., who, with his family, was interned in the Crystal City, Texas Family Internment Camp during WWII. Way to go, Werner!   The post Werner Ulrich, Jr., former internee, featured in Uvalde, TX Newspaper appeared first on German American Internee Coalition ..read more

By Margret S. de Oliveira Castro— Friedrich Walter Schlösser was jailed in El Salvador, interned in the USA, and deported to Germany. He always maintained he had been the victim of an illegal international kidnapping. Born in Hamburg on July 2, 1902, he was only 12 years old when the first World War began. At 15 he was called upon to enroll and served as a helper in a military hospital. Barely 16 by the time the Armistice was signed, he finished his secondary education and went on to study Chemistry at the recently established University of Hamburg. My father back in school after World War I ..read more