Refugees & Alien Internment in World War II

HIS 206

Failure to Admit Jewish RefugeesNo more than 250,000 refugees from Nazis admitted to U.S. in 1930s-40sAlien Registration Act (1940) required registration & fingerprinting of all aliens

Also tightened definition of subversives to include past affiliationApprox. 5 million aliens registeredINS moved to Justice Dept.

Wilbur Carr & Breckenridge Long in State Dept. used LPC clause to block admission of Jewish refugees

Travel visas renewed indefinitely for 15,000 following KristallnachtQuotas unblocked in fall 1940

FDR invited 32 nations to Evian Conference in 1938, but refused to change or relax immigration lawsSt. Louis turned back in 1939The St. Louis in Havana, 1939

Breckenridge Long

The War Refugee BoardWar Refugee Board (1944) rescued 200,000 Jews

Worked with foreign gov’tsEst. refugee camp at Ft. Ontario, Oswego, NY

U.S. military refused to bomb Auschwitz, despite bombing nearby factories

Hull, Morgenthau & Stimson, March 21, 1944

Registration at Ft. Ontario

Race War in the Pacific

WWII Propaganda Posters

Internment of Japanese Americans300,000 aliens (1/2 Japanese) rounded up in week after Pearl HarborFDR issued Executive Order 9066 Feb. 19, 1942

120,000 (2/3 U.S. citizens)West coast, but not HawaiiWar Relocation Authority ran internment campsUpheld by Supreme Court in Korematsu v. U.S. (1944)

Nisei 442nd Regiment one of the most highly decorated units in WW II

Challenging InternmentHirabayashi v. U.S. (1943)

Hirabayashi was U. of Washington studentSupreme Court unanimously upheld curfew as reasonable wartime measure

Korematsu v. U.S. (1944)Korematsu was U.S.-born welderCourt upheld internment 6-3Roberts, Murphy & Jackson dissented:

• guilt must be individual, not collective• no imminent threat existed

Case reopened in 1983 & conviction overturned

• Historian Peter Irons discovered gov’t has suppressed its own finding that Japanese Americans weren’t threat

Pres. Clinton awarded him Medal of Freedom in 1998

Gordon Hirabayashi

Fred T. Korematsu

Tule Lake Internment Camp

Going to School at Tule Lake

German & Italian Internment

11,000 German & German Americans interned 4,000 Germans shipped to U.S. from Latin America2,000 exchanged for American POWs in Germany1,800 Italians arrested by FBI; 500 interned German internees

Camp Kenedy, TX

Crystal City Internment Camp

Former FSA camp for migrant farm workersPeak population was 3, 326 in May 1945Separate sections for German and Japanese interneesClosed Nov. 1, 1947