The Right Way to Lock Up Aliens
SCHWARTZ, STEPHEN
The Right Way to Lock Up Aliens The lessons of World War II are not all negative. BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States government...
...The fact that the FBI had been keeping watch on these groups is unsurprising...
...The Wartime Violation of Italian-American Civil Liberties Act also directed the attorney general "to review wartime restrictions on Italian Americans to determine how civil liberties can be better protected during national emergencies"—a request that turned out to be more timely than its sponsors could ever have imagined...
...106-451—enterprising Bay Area historical revisionists led by an undistinguished scribbler, Lawrence DiStasi, and an elderly woman, Rose Scherini—have said they don't want money, just "recognition" of unfair treatment...
...However, the German and Italian cases may be useful precedents, especially since Arab and Muslim extremists have been voluble, in the style of the Bund and the Italian fascists, and are thus fairly easy to distinguish...
...A draft was instituted, and evaders of it were imprisoned...
...whole chunks of the economy were requisitioned for military use...
...Much less discussed is the government's internment and relocation of Germans and Italians...
...The German-American Bund was a U.S...
...This legislation, introduced with bipartisan backing by New York congressmen Rick Lazio and Eliot Engel, called for a comprehensive review of "the treatment of Italian Americans during World War II...
...government during World War II was small...
...Americans, however, may be losing patience with this argument...
...Boats were requisitioned by the federal authorities through charter or purchase, and the only craft that were confiscated belonged to owners who had repeatedly made incursions into prohibited waters...
...The Roosevelt administration's handling of Japanese Americans—some 120,000 were sent to relocation camps—has become notorious, although few of those who expatiate on the topic nowadays know very much about it...
...Further, the charge that Italian-American fishermen were unfairly prohibited from fishing in prohibited zones falls flat...
...The official investigation of Italian-American victimization has produced at least one ridiculously exaggerated conclusion: We are told that "the impact of the wartime experience was devastating to Italian-American communities in the United States, and its effects are still being felt...
...consumer goods were rationed...
...For example, it is rarely mentioned that Japanese government-controlled Shinto religious temples in America were found to be subversive organizations, a precedent for possible investigation today of mosques financed by foreign governments...
...Among Italian Americans, 10,000 were reportedly evacuated from strategic zones and tens of thousands more were required to observe a nightly curfew by remaining in their homes...
...Venturing into restricted waters was forbidden to all vessels of every kind, whether commercial or pleasure boats, without regard for their owners' citizenship...
...bans on fishing in prohibited areas...
...Late last year, at the end of the clinton administration, congress passed Public Law 106-451, the "Wartime Violation of Italian-American Civil Liberties Act...
...enforcement of curfew, contraband, and other regulations...
...Fishing boats owned by enemy aliens, many of whom were Italian, were a highly sensitive issue at the outset of the war, as Japanese submarines were sinking American ships off the Pacific Coast...
...authorities made judicious use of a custodial detention list already compiled by the FBI...
...Quite a few of us already knew that, and more are learning it every day...
...The report is probably a colossal embarrassment to those who commissioned it...
...Indeed, the Justice Department's current pattern of arrests and interrogations seems limited and focused, notwithstanding the overheated rhetoric employed against it...
...Loyalty tests may be especially uncomfortable to some, but should not trouble those whose loyalties are clear...
...attorney for questioning, and were not actually detained...
...Allegations that Italian-American fishing boats were confiscated also turn out to be a hoax...
...wages, prices, rents, and other transactions were controlled...
...travel was limited and ordinary people were regularly stopped and interrogated...
...consider the preposterous ongoing effort to confer martyrdom on World War II-era Italian Americans...
...It turns out that when Italian aliens were "taken into custody," many were merely directed to report to the office of the U.S...
...The Italian stalwarts of Mussolini in this country had a longer and even more vicious history...
...The alleged violations of civil liberties were hardly atrocious: arrest and internment...
...With luck they will have a long wait...
...Notwithstanding the rampant fascist activity among Italian Americans before 1941, the number of those sanctioned in any way by the U.S...
...People have become more realistic since September 11 about what a wartime government must do to deal with internal threats, and less inclined to apologize about it...
...Wars are by definition unfair and uncomfortable...
...After all, what American's freedom was not restricted during World War II...
...The Italian Americans who came under scrutiny during the war were mainly those suspected of fascist sympathies—a topic omitted from the debate over this law...
...The Justice Department today seems wisely to be following this same course with Arab aliens in Michigan...
...Unsurprisingly, advocates for Arab detainees have exploited the Japanese parallel to the maximum, seeking to paint today's terrorism suspects as innocents and the entire Arab and Muslim communities as victims of wholesale discrimination...
...At the outset of the war, U.S...
...The instigators of PL...
...The propaganda worked, as it often does: In 1935, when Mussolini's armies invaded Ethiopia, committing widespread atrocities, 10,000 Italian-American housewives in california donated their wedding rings to the Italian war effort, and San Francisco garbage collectors of Sicilian origin amassed scrap iron for the same cause...
...The reason is obvious...
...They mounted a strident public defense of the dictator from the beginning of his regime, terrorizing antifascists in the Italian-American community and even murdering enemies on American soil...
...In contending with the pro-terrorist tendencies among Arab Americans or American Muslims, the U.S...
...The dictator's line was purveyed to Italian Americans through newspapers like the infamous II Progresso Italo-Americano, a daily printed in New York by Generoso Pope, who would go on to publish the National Enquirer...
...and dismissal from strategic employment...
...It's hard to imagine a more dubious cause these days than a public apology to those accused of sympathy for the Italian fascists in World War II...
...a Japanese sub even shelled Goleta, near Santa Barbara...
...About 5,000 German aliens and 250 Italian aliens were interned during the war, mainly pro-Axis agitators, members of pro-Nazi and fascist groups, and others with demonstrable ties to Germany and Italy...
...BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States government faced an array of internal enemies...
...Nevertheless, it was probably predictable that a group of Italian-American complainants would come forward demanding redress...
...These included aliens and Americans of German, Italian, and Japanese ancestry...
...and flamboyant mass rallies...
...History's bottom line, as identified by Congress: "The freedom of 600,000 Italian-born immigrants in the United States and their families was restricted during World War II by Government measures that branded them 'enemy aliens' and included carrying identification cards, travel restrictions, and seizure of personal property...
...individual orders to move away from strategic areas...
...But was this the wrong thing to do...
...But this remains contemporary America, where until September 11, public self-flagellation over Japanese relocation was a firmly established element in the catechism of political correctness...
...The civil rights division of the Justice Department was directed to report to Congress by November 7, 2001, a deadline that has come and gone with little public notice...
...confiscation of fishing boats...
...The lesson to be learned from this legislative folly is that in the realm of civil liberties, our government is seldom deliberately malicious, even when sorely tried, and has usually acted practically and sensibly...
...branch of Hitler's ruling party, replete with uniforms Stephen Schwartz is the author of the forthcoming book The Two Faces of Islam...
...The conclusions of this review, adopted as findings of Congress and released in the form of an executive summary in mid-November (the full report has yet to be released to the public), shed little light on this challenging directive, however...
...But the document also exposes the extent to which those who drummed up this folderol made exaggerated and ambiguous claims...
...the right of labor to strike was abrogated...
...The treatment of enemy sympathizers and agents is, of course, immensely relevant at the moment...
...government has the example of Japanese relocation before it as a model of what not to do: label an entire ethnic or religious group as uniformly suspect...
Vol. 7 • December 2001 • No. 13
