During the war. Operated from 19421948 the camp was the center of a program called quite passage in which hundreds of detainees were exchanged against their will for american diplomats and soldiers and others held behind enemy line. Cspan Jan Jarboe Russell, author of the train to crystal city, who is sumi . Cspan sumi is the japaneseamerican main character of my book, who was born in los angeles, and her father was a photographer, the most successful japanese photographer in los angeles. And he was arrested as an enemy alien because he was a photographer. During world war ii, as you know, photography was like the internet. Anybody that had access to it could take photos of military bases and things like that. So the 32,000 enemy alien fathers who were arrested were largely arrested not based on anything they had done as human beings, but on their occupations, which could have been harmful, according to the government, to our war effort. And sumi is this was this remarkable, plucky tomboy who was going to high school at Central Junior High School in los angeles when pearl harbor was bombed, and her life changed in an instant. Cspan is she still alive . Guest she is still alive. Shes in her 80s, and she lives in oakland, california. And she has she kind of is the mother of all the japaneseamericans that were in crystal city who are still alive. She operates a newsletter called the crystal city chatter, and that keeps people up to date on deaths, on childrens issues. And she was critical to me, because one, she agreed to talk to me. All of her friends talked to me as well. And so i began going around the country trying to interview as many former children who were in the camp as possible. Cspan where is crystal city, texas . Guest crystal city, texas is located 120 miles southwest of san antonio, which is my home, about 35 miles from the u. S. Mexican border. The lights of the internment camp could be seen from mexico at night because the land there is incredibly desolate. It was in fact chosen as the enemy alien internment camp that housed multiple nationalitiesgermans, germanamericans, italians, italianamericans, japanese, and japaneseamericansthe only camp that housed multiple nationalities of families during the war. And it was chosen in large part because it was in such an isolated location. And if you wanted to have a camp like crystal city internment camp, it was a very good place to locate it. Cspan how did you find sumi . Guest well the first thing is that it was a long journey to sumi. I first learned about this camp many years ago, 42 years ago, when i was a student at the university of texas. And i met a remarkable man, alan taniguchi, who was the dean of architecture. Now this might sound funny, but i was very, very young and from a very small town in east texas, and i had never seen an asian person before. I was 19 years old. And so i met this guy at a Faculty Senate meeting; i was a young reporter for the daily texan. And after the meeting, i went up to him and i said, you know, ive never met an asian person before. Where are you from . And Alan Tanaguchi said, brentwood, california. And i said, well you know, we ask this question a lot in texas, i said, well professor, how did you get to texas . And he said, my family was in camp there. Now my father was a baptist minister. And so when he said he was in camp here, i came up with the answer, church camp . And he said, not exactly. And he told me that his family had been interned in crystal city. Over the years, i stayed in touch with alan, and always the subject of this mysterious camp came up. But in 2010, i stopped by his office in austin just to talk to him, and i had read the book unbroken, and i wondered what alan had to say about the comparison between americans held in pow camps in japan and the treatment of japaneseamericans and germanamericans in crystal city. I learned that alan had died, and i was devastated because i thought, i have missed this chance to tell the story of crystal city. But his son handed me a file that had alans all of alans notes on crystal city. And the number one name on that list was sumi. So i called her that night, and i explained my situation, and i asked if she would help me. And she said yes, and i flew out to los angeles that week, and the Real Research of the book began. Cspan how many hours did you talk to her . Guest over the course of these five years, hundreds of hours. And the other main character was ingrid eiserloh, the germanamerican. And the same. You know, one of the great things about doing books as opposed to magazine pieces and newspaper stories is that is the long lead time and the research. And first i interviewed these people, and then they had no idea why they were in the camp, or what was going to happen to them. So that brought me to the National Archives. And the records of the camp are located in the National Archives, some in National Archives one and some in college park National Archives two. So the book became this process of a vertical structure that had to do with the timeline of the campwhen it opened, when it closedand then interviews that were horizontal, the heart of the book, which was all these amazing survivors of the camp who were children in the camp. Cspan you mentioned ingrid eiserloh. Who is she . And is she still alive . Guest ingrid unfortunately died on pearl harbor day in 2014. Im extremely sad that she cant be part of this celebration. Sumi and all her friends are. But she has a brother, lothar, and a sister, ensi, who are still alive. But ingrid lived in honolulu, and so i spent the same amount of time with ingrid that i did with sumi. And these two girls essentially form the basic structure or the main characters of the book. But there were so many fascinating characters that i couldnt leave them out. And so there are a lot of other characters in the book as you go along. Cspan what were the circumstances between that were different between ingrid and sumi . Guest well you know, according to the geneva convention, we were not supposed to have an internment camp that had multiple nationalities. And so even though but it happened in crystal city anyway. The germans arrived first into camp in 1942, and once those families had been reunited in crystal city, they couldnt exactly throw them out, and so the japanese and the germans had and a small number of italians had to live together. So in the camp, they didnt have very much to do with each other. These, they it selfsegregated. But in terms of the arrest of their fathers, their time in the camp, and what happened to them when they left the camp, the situation between sumi and ingrid was very much the same. Neither knew why their father was arrested until i was able to get their fbi files declassified, and then they began to understand what the governments case was against them, which was very flimsy indeed. Both of it had to do sumis father, as i said, was a photographer, and ingrids father was a very, very wellknown engineer in cleveland, ohio, and he had built a lot of dams and bridges and roads. And so the fbi concluded, based on some flimsy testimony from his colleagues, some of whom wanted his job, that if her father, mathias, could build a bridge or a road, they might be able to blow it up. And so based on that, he was a socalled enemy alien. Cspan just to get a flavor, and ill be interested in your reaction to this film itself. Its a government film. Guest right. Cspan and do you happen to know when that government film was originally produced . Guest i do. It was done in 1945 as the war was coming you know, we were, you know, getting ready to end it. And so the camp had been secret. And then suddenly, the government decided to do this film, and it shows the camp in the best possible light, as you could see. Cspan lets just watch a minute of it, and then ill get your reaction to it. Guest sure. This clip is going to show you how women, men, and children lived and worked under the standards of decency and humane treatment. Female here is a party of women and children arriving in crystal city following their voluntary decision to join husbands and fathers and detention. Practically all the children and many women were american born. Incoming parties were greeted by a detainee welcoming committee and band music. Cspan first of all, when the fellow that opened it up there said that decent and humanitarian treatment by the americans, was it . Guest i have to answer that question yes. It was. I think our National Honor was truly saved by earl harrison, the head of the ins, and joseph orourke, who was the commander. The other thing it said is that these people were there voluntarily. But what it didnt what the thing does not say is that essentially, these people had no other choice, because in ingrids case, in sumis case, in all the kids cases, their fathers had been taken, had been arrested and held without charges and under terms of indefinite detention in allmale camps. So immediately, ingrid and her family lost her home in strongsville, ohio and had nowhere to go. And sumi and the japaneseamericans were in relocation camps around the country. So the government comes to the fathers and said, we have a deal for you. We will reunite you with your families in the crystal city internment camp, the family internment camp, if you will agree to go voluntarily. And then i discovered what the real secret of the camp was. If you they also had to agree to voluntarily repatriate to germany and to japan if the government decided they needed to be repatriated. So the truth of the matter is that the crystal city camp was humanely administered by the ins. But the special war divisions of the department of states used it as roosevelts primary Prisoner Exchange. It was the center of roosevelts Prisoner Exchange program. And literally thousands of americanborn children, german and japanese mothers and fathers, were traded into war as ingrid was and sumi, in exchange for ostensibly more important americans. Cspan how long did sumi and ingrid live in this camp, and when were they sent back to japan or, well, not back, because they were american citizensjapan and germany . Guest sumi was in heart mountain when her fathers heart mountain camp, and her father a cspan where is that . Guest heart mountain was a relocation camp in wyoming. Her father was in an allmale camp in santa fe. And they and he agreed right then in 1943 that he would go back to japan. So before she came to crystal city, she was supposed to be traded in the 1943 exchange. In the negotiations between tokyo and washington, the numbers for that exchange were cut, and so they came to crystal city, and she was traded into japan in 1945. Ingrid was and her family were traded into germany before the war ended in january 1945 into some very, very difficult situations, both of the girls were. But this is the real tragedy of the camp, from my point of view, is that we traded americanborn children into war as a consequence of the fact that they had prisoner of war fathers. And these people that were exchanged in the war really suffered terrible situations. They also in fact, despite what it said on the internment on the tape, they also lost all their freedom. They werent free to go anywhere. They lived behind barbed wire, daily life in crystal city, when they were interned there. Sumi lived there two years. Ingrid was there two years. And they couldnt they had roll call every day. It was hot as it could be in these you know, there were these you know, there were snakes and scorpions and they all have memories of that. Their parents were displaced from their lives and suffering from all kinds of maladies. So it was no picnic in crystal city. Cspan lets watch a little bit of an overview of the crystal city, the camp. Guest sure. Female the sun shines practically every day in the year with a cool breeze from the gulf in the evening. Originally, it was a migratory labor camp of approximately 100 housing units, utility and recreation buildings. To provide for the population of 3,600, we added more than 500 housing units, school buildings, a hospital, administrative and maintenance buildings. We tripled the number of streets and extended the electric and sewage facilities. This is the perimeter, over which armed guards kept a 24 hour watch. At night, the illumination from the lights along the top of this fence was visible almost to Mexican Border. Cspan you said they voluntarily went in but could not get out voluntarily. Guest absolutely. And as you could see that those guard towers, they were always under armed guard. Everyone knew the penalty for an attempt to escape was death, and in the entire history of the camp, no one ever attempted to escape, because for one place, where would go . You were in the middle of nowhere. And so despite the fact that they said there was a cool breeze from mexico, nobody that i ever talked to felt that cool breeze. And so it was an internment camp and but the japanese kids had a kind of great sense of humor. Sumi said that the boys in the camp, the japanese boys, would go at night to serenade the guards, and they would sing, oh give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, dont fence me in, and the camp and the guards would laugh and the boys would laugh. So theyre remarkable resilient, plucky kids. I mean, i guess kids are kids, you know. And they had lots of tension amongst loyalty issues, because by this time, most of the japanese fathers were pretty sour on the United States, and most of their american born children were very bullish on america. Cspan what did the People Living in the camp know . Did they have a newspaper they could see or radio they could listen to . Cspan where did they get the money to spend . Guest well they didnt they had camp tokens. They did not get money. So a man that was given 10 cents in a token for one hours work, and of course the internees all worked, they made their own they grew their own vegetables, they had they made their own mattresses and Everything Else right there in crystal city. And so for that, they were paid 10 cents in this funny little it looks kind of like a casino chip. They were red and green and yellow chips. And they bought their stuff in the camp store with those tokens. Cspan give us an overview, please, of the entire idea of putting japanese, italians, germans, in these internment camps nationwide. How many camps were there . Guest this was the only camp, brian, of its kind that had multiple nationalities and that had families. And so and it was specifically for these two purposes one, humane, to reunite enemy alien fathers with their children, and the other purpose, exchange. Roosevelt needed to create a pool of people. Early on in the war, he realized Prisoner Exchange has been going on in every war weve ever had since the american revolution. We just think, we dont seem to know that as americans. But he knew that some of our people would be taken in war and that he would need people to trade. And so, in addition to the people i just mentioned, he also brought in about 4,000 japanese and germans from 13 different latin american countries, like bolivia, peru, colombia. And he brought some of these people in, and many of those people wound up in crystal city speaking spanish. So you had people speaking spanish, german, japanese, italian, and english in this one little camp. And some of those people were traded the japaneseperuvians, and german and ecuadorian germanecuadorians were traded into their into war too. So essentially, that was the reason reuniting people and exchange. Cspan what about we showed up a chart on the screen or a map of a lot of other camps around the country. Do you know how many camps there were total, and how many people were in these camps . Guest well there were 120,000 japanese and japaneseamericans taken after the evacuation order. So 120,000, 60 percent of those were japaneseamericans. And there were 10 war relocation plants around mostly in the west coast. But there were other camps as well that had prisoners of war in them. I personally counted 52 different kinds of camps, including the one at crystal city, but there may be more. Cspan what about the germans, how many camps were the germans a guest i mean, 52 in total. Cspan everything . Were there more japanese than germans . Guest yes, yes. In fact, the history of internment in our country is pretty much only understood in history books from the japaneseamerican experience because there were so many more of them. But now what were learning, those of us who are interested in this as historians, is that there were much more many more germans that were arrested that we knew. And we dont know exactly how many there were. Cspan the largest number of ancestors in this country, 50 Million People are of german ancestors, theyre at the top of the list in numbers. Guest they are, they are. Cspan how did they pick the people to go into the camps back in those days . I mean, like, how do they find the germans a guest yes, it was a problem for the president , because you know, there were a lot of those people were working in factories, you know, for the war effort, and there were so many of them. So one of the ways that they picked them was if they were not citizens of this country, if they were german born and they were not citizens, then that was one thing that cut down the list. And if they were a member of the bund, which was the american nazi party, then they were arrested. And then if they had any kind of occupation that could aid germany in the war or japan in the war, then that was it. So thats how they culled them down. But you know, the other thing is that germans and germanamericans in this country are kind of a silent majority. They dont talk about these kinds of things. I think that the bearing the burden of the holocaust is so great that they dont talk about their particular very much, they dont talk at all about the hardships they endured during the war. One of the reasons that i think the story of the germanamericans was never told in crystal city is that when i talked to the germans and germanamerican children in the camp, they told me that when their parents left crystal city, either to be exchanged or to be freed, or to be paroled, as they said, they signed at oath that they would never speak of their experience in camp, that they would not disclose it to anyone. And the secrecy oath i mean, they were afraid of the government, having been arrested once. And so the children learned didnt get much information from their parents, and then they were of course then reluctant to speak as well. Cspan why did they break their silence when you talked to them . Guest i think that they are all getting old, and then i think that the other thing is, they