Jan Jarboe Russell

At first glance, Ghettoside and The Train to Crystal City don’t appear to have much in common. Ghettoside tells the story of a detective determined to solve the murder of a fellow officer’s son and highlights the fact that a disproportionate number of murder victims in America are young, black men. It falls squarely in the true crime genre and reads like a gritty police procedural. The Train to Crystal City is a book about our history, specifically the only family internment camp in show more America during WWII, home to families (including American-born children) some of whom were exchanged for American POWs against their will. What made me choose to review these books together is that they are both exemplary works of narrative nonfiction.

These books reminded me of quote from E. B. White: “I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time.” These books got of bed and did both. Despite the different tones and plots, both of these books fascinated me. Both told incredibly interesting stories and were engagingly well-written. I couldn’t put either of them down! They also had in common meaningful topics. Ghettoside is certainly more relevant today, covering events which took place in the 2000’s, but reparations have yet to be made to German internees at Crystal City, so both are calls to action.

In both books, I enjoyed the many direct quotes the authors included. Direct quotes from people who were there are one of my favorite things in narrative nonfiction. They add emotional depth to a story, while simultaneously showing that the author has done their research. I also admired both authors’ ability to incorporate peoples’ back stories into the narrative without getting sidetracked. Both of these authors shared personal details about the people involved in a way which made me feel like I knew them without losing the thread of the main story. I find it incredibly impressive when authors manage to achieve this blend of entertainment and education, research and good writing. These books are both truly wonderful examples of the narrative nonfiction genre and I highly recommend them.

This review first published at Doing Dewey. show less

Jan Jarboe Russell’s remarkable book tells the relatively unknown story of Americans being traded for other Americans during World War II. She tells of the “family” interment camp in Texas known as Crystal City. Japanese, German and Italian families were incarcerated there as potential threats to US security, but many of these families were also targeted for repatriation to their original homelands—including those who were US citizens. Although the book has a much larger scope, its show more most important focuses are the stories of three young women. Sumi Utsushigawa had Japanese parents who lived in Los Angeles. Despite his statement to Sumi: “This is America. They don’t put innocent people in jail here. Don’t worry,” her father was arrested and the family is interned together only if they agree to be repatriated to Japan. They lost everything they had built in America; were asked to give up allegiance to the country of their birth and to swear allegiance to a country that imprisoned them. Nevertheless, they were model prisoners, adopting the Japanese concept of gaman (to endure the unbearable with dignity and forbearance). Ironically, until they actually arrived in post-war Japan, they thought that Japan had won the war.
Ingrid’s family was German from Ohio. Her father, Mathias, was arrested and interned. He quickly learned there was nothing he could do to prove his loyalty. “An individual need not have been guilty of subversive activities to warrant his internment if all the facts appear that he may be potentially dangerous to the internal security of our county during the war period.” The family was only sent to Crystal City together after agreeing to repatriation to Germany.
Irene was a Jewish girl whose family was deported by the Nazi’s from the Netherlands and eventually sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The Nazi’s traded her for German POW’s. Eventually she made it to America and was shocked when she discovered about the prisoner exchanges that took place during the war: “I had no idea that American-born children were part of the exchange, it’s dreadful. What on earth was Roosevelt thinking.”
All three suffered extreme hardships following their repatriation or release in the case of Irene. Germany, Europe and Japan were almost totally destroyed, there was little food, clothing or shelter.
Fear and paranoia were rampant in America during the war. Suddenly being Japanese or German in America was dangerous. This bred a particularly virulent form of racism that is reminiscent of what exists today against Muslims. Some saw the camps as a horrible mistake, including Eleanor Roosevelt (“We have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes.”), but FDR and his advisors thought otherwise.
Russell describes Crystal City as humane, but with many serious flaws: different ethnic groups were mixed despite vast differences in culture, loyalty and beliefs. Many remained loyal to their original homeland, while others saw themselves as Americans. This split was particularly evident between the Japanese Issei and Nisei. Internees were unsuccessful in challenging the constitutionality of their incarceration. Feelings of betrayal by their government, shame and depression extended well past the war. A sign at Ingrid’s home in Hawaii late in her life aptly captured that sentiment: “If you can’t afford a doctor, go to an airport—you’ll get a free X-ray and a breast exam, and if you mention al Qaeda, you’ll get a free colonoscopy.” O’Rourke wrote of watching “typical American boys and girls develop deep feelings of betrayal by their government. After all, in a situation rife with absurdities, they were being taught the Bill of Rights in schools at Crystal City, where those rights had been taken away from them.”
Another jaw-dropping revelation in the book was that people of Japanese descent were secretly kidnapped at the request of the Roosevelt administration, notably a large contingent from Peru, and held for use in the hostage exchange program.
Another unsettling revelation involved how the Allies operated the Nazi concentration camps after their liberation. The Jews were kept in the camps as displaced persons, remaining behind fences with little change in their living conditions.
Surprisingly, though their internment may have been the worst thing in the children’s lives, some of them formed lasting bonds. They still have reunions, a newsletter called Crystal City Chatter and their memories, which Russell ably chronicles in this marvelous book. show less

Americans, despite their mythology, really don't like immigrants very much, and when war comes they like them even less. Everyone knows about the internment of the Japanese during World War II, but hardly anyone knows that German and Italian citizens were also rounded up and placed in camps for the duration (and sometimes longer). Additionally, German and Italian immigrants were rounded up in Central and South America, shipped to the US and upon arrival arrested for entering the country show more illegally & sent to the camps. The Train to Crystal City deals with a family camp in south Texas and focuses on three or four families, tracing their journey from being arrested at the beginning of the war. their lives in the camp and what happened afterwards.

While most (but not all) of the adults were non-citizens, their children, who were almost all born in the US, were citizens. And while most of the people who were rounded up were Japanese, there were also German ans Italians who were held in the camp for most of the war and even in some cases afterwards. The camp was not completely closed down until 1948.

With few exceptions (mostly, at least in this book, German) those incarcerated were in no way a danger to this country. Instead they were victims of the xenophobic hysteria that swept this country after the attack on Pearl Harbor. One would like to say that something like this will never happen again, but the current hysteria against Muslims and undocumented Hispanic immigrants makes it impossible to make that statement.One can hope, however, that people will read this book and, perhaps, learn something from history. show less

Russell has written a necessary and eye opening work with The Train to Crystal City. While more has become known in recent years about the plight of Japanese and Japanese-American internees in the United States during WW2, Russell uncovers a story which includes Germans, German-Americans and Latin Americans who, along with Japanese and Japanese-Americans, found themselves in the only family internment camp in the country. Faced with the choice of being interned as a family or not being with show more their spouses, many wives agreed to "voluntary repatriation" to countries their children had never seen and only vaguely knew in exchange for being together as a family. Most of the stories from Crystal City are seen through the eyes of these child internees looking back as adults who felt torn between doing the right thing by their elders and wanting to be US citizens and remain in the country of their birth. This was most clearly evident in the differences between the older Japanese issei and their children the nisei.

Yet unlike other histories of this period, Russell provides balance in trying to understand the motivations of people involved on the government side, including the INS's Harrison and the likable, if lonely alcoholic, O'Rourke who was charged with running the camp. O'Rourke in particular comes across as a caring man who did all he could to support the children and teenagers in the camp including encouraging attendance at Federal High School that functioned as a regular American high school within the barbed wire, so much as such a thing was possible. He tried to make sure that many young people who were US citizens were given the opportunity to be sent out of the camp to continue their education.

Russell makes it clear that the camp did hold notorious fascists such as the German American Bund's leader Fritz Kuhn and doesn't shy away from talking about the pro-fascist rallies held within the camp by some. In fact massive arguments were held between families with regards to allegiances or lack thereof to Japan, Germany and the United States. It is her ability to tell the human story of all involved while recognizing the difficulties and contradictions of the period that makes this such a compelling read.

She also brings to light a little known exchange program that occurred under FDR where prisoners at the Crystal City camp were exchanged with enemy nations for US POWs and other US citizens stuck in Axis countries. This exchange program created an atmosphere which encouraged internment to enable the US government to have enough "prisoners" to trade. This included US citizens, mostly children and spouses of the detained. In addition, the US government kidnapped Japanese and German citizens who were living in Latin America and then arrested them as "illegal" once they were on US soil and used them in the prisoner swaps - all in the name of greater security in the hemisphere.

This program was kept secret during the war. Yet despite the obvious heartache and disruption that it caused for those arrested, here too Russell highlights the plight of a German Jew named Irene who was one of those who was able to come to the US as a result of the exchange after spending years at Bergen-Belsen. As with most events that happened during the unprecedented upheaval that was the Second World War, nothing was ever simple.

Overall Russell does a great service by highlighting these practices and bringing to light the personal and human tragedies that resulted from the unnecessary internment of US citizens and innocent non-citizens while maintaining balance and perspective. The Train to Crystal City a must read for anyone interested in civil liberties, war and the history of the untold stories from the home front of WW2 America. show less