I am surprised by the response from Deb Messling on my post about sources of information on the internment of Germans in the US during WWII. I am a librarian., (you are one as well, Deb) and I thought I was just pointing out some sources for information.I quickly scanned the San Jose article as an abstract. Although many of the 31,000+ "enemy aliens" were not citizens YET, many had children born in the US, were married to citizens and , according to the oral histories, HAD no ties to Nazi Germany. There is even reference to a German Jew, who after escaping to San Francisco and avoiding the concentration camps, was picked up in one of these sweeps AND deported BACK to Germany. Perhaps a good source for further info could be a search on the "wartime treatment study act" mentioned in the San Jose Mercury article. The very point of the question seems to be what level of abuse and infringement on personal freedoms can/will we ,as a society, permit to create the illusion that something is being done and that therefore "we are safer". I too have German stock in my exceedingly mongrel bloodline, actually on both sides, along with French, English, Scot, Irish. One side is Pennsylvania Dutch, and I have wondered how those communities (with their pacifism) weathered the war years.
