That many of the 'enemy aliens' were Jewish refugees and therefore hardly likely to be sympathetic to the Nazis, was a complication no one bothered to try and unravel - they were still treated as German and Austrian nationals. In one Isle of Man camp over 80 per cent of the internees were Jewish refugees. More than 7, internees were deported, the majority to Canada, some to Australia. It was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of lives, most of them internees.
Others being taken to Australia on the Dunera , which sailed a week later, were subjected to humiliating treatment and terrible conditions on the two-month voyage. Many had their possessions stolen or thrown overboard by the British military guards.
An outcry in Parliament led to the first releases of internees in August By February more than 10, had been freed, and by the following summer, only 5, were left in internment camps. Many of those released from internment subsequently contributed to the war effort on the Home Front or served in the armed forces. As regards British citizens interned by the Nazis, in September the Germans sent 2, British-born civilians from the Channel Islands to internment camps in Germany.
Another were deported in January , as a reprisal for a British commando raid. In approximately , civilians from Allied countries living and working in colonies invaded by the Japanese were interned. The camps varied in size; some were segregated according to gender or race but there were also many camps of mixed gender.
One of the largest un-segregated camps was the Stanley internment camp in Hong Kong, which held 2, mainly British internees. Unlike prisoners of war, the internees were not compelled to work, but they were held in harsh conditions in primitive camps.
The six dormitories had single or double rooms and were furnished with chests of drawers, desks, chairs, and beds. Communal laundry, bathing, and toilet facilities were located on all floors. Each dormitory had a kitchen with refrigerators, gas stove, and dishwasher, as well as a dining room with four-person maple tables, linen table coverings, cloth napkins, and china.
Internees prepared their own food under supervision. Other facilities at the Seagoville camp included a hospital and a large recreation building. A female doctor directed the hospital and supervised a staff of six physicians, ten registered nurses, a dentist, and a laboratory technician.
The recreation building provided a variety of activities, such as ballet and stage productions performed by internees in the auditorium. In addition, the recreation building had orchestral instruments, twelve classrooms for English and music instruction, a multilanguage library, and sewing and weaving rooms. Outside activities included gardening, farming, tennis, baseball, badminton, and walking around the prison grounds.
Although conditions at the Seagoville camp were unusually comfortable for a prison environment, the internees did have some complaints. Many resented being held at a penal institution, which was still administered by a warden, Amy N. The prisoners also disliked the censorship of their letters and the limit on their outgoing correspondence. In late summer of , the INS planned to reunite Japanese men from other internment camps with their families already at Seagoville.
Anticipating this transfer, Seagoville received fifty one-room plywood enclosures known as "Victory Huts" from the INS detention camp at Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a large building was constructed as a kitchen and mess hall. Laundry rooms and separate male and female communal toilet and bath facilities were built. The largest population interned at Seagoville was In June the Seagoville alien enemy internment camp was closed and detainees were repatriated, paroled, or moved to other INS internment camps.
The camp received its first large group of prisoners on April 23, , and during the course of its existence housed more than 3, aliens. The United States Army took over the operation on October 1, , and from then until the end of the war it housed wounded and disabled German prisoners of war.
To reduce hardships during internment and to reunite families, the INS originally intended to detain only Japanese at Crystal City, especially the many Latin-American Japanese families brought to the United States for internment pending repatriation. Germans and Italians, however, were also held in Crystal City. Existing facilities were forty-one three-room cottages, one-room structures, and some service buildings. Eventually, the INS spent more than a million dollars to construct more than buildings on the camp's acres.
Warehouses, auditoriums, administration offices, schools, clothing and food stores, a hospital, and many housing units were built.
Like the camps at Kenedy and Seagoville, the Crystal City internment camp provided jobs and revenue for the town. The first German internees arrived in December The first Japanese arrived from Seagoville on March 10, The population of the Crystal City camp peaked at 3, in May Languages spoken at Crystal City included Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, and English; ages of internees ranged from newborn to elderly.
The variety of prisoners added to the complexities of camp organization and administration. Camp officials tried to arrange housing so that similar races and nationalities would be together, but even so, strong differences emerged between those who wanted repatriation and those who wanted to stay in the United States or return to the country they were expelled from.
Army as a security matter. The entire West Coast was deemed a military area and was divided into military zones. Executive Order authorized military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas. Although the language of the order did not specify any ethnic group, Lieutenant General John L. Next, he encouraged voluntary evacuation by Japanese Americans from a limited number of areas; about seven percent of the total Japanese American population in these areas complied.
Because of the perception of "public danger," all Japanese within varied distances from the Pacific coast were targeted. Unless they were able to dispose of or make arrangements for care of their property within a few days, their homes, farms, businesses, and most of their private belongings were lost forever.
From the end of March to August, approximately , persons were sent to "assembly centers" — often racetracks or fairgrounds — where they waited and were tagged to indicate the location of a long-term "relocation center" that would be their home for the rest of the war. Nearly 70, of the evacuees were American citizens.
There were no charges of disloyalty against any of these citizens, nor was there any vehicle by which they could appeal their loss of property and personal liberty. Incarceration rates were significantly lower in the territory of Hawaii, where Japanese Americans made up over one-third of the population and their labor was needed to sustain the economy. However, martial law had been declared in Hawaii immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Army issued hundreds of military orders, some applicable only to persons of Japanese ancestry.
In the internment camps, four or five families, with their sparse collections of clothing and possessions, shared tar-papered army-style barracks.
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