The General Who Defied Columbus Day 1942

Note:  *Please note the terms “enemy alien” and “alien” used in this article were used in 1942.

It took the General one week before he acknowledged United States Attorney General Francis Biddle’s announcement on Columbus Day 1942 that the Italians, both citizens and aliens, across America were no longer considered “enemy aliens.” He exonerated all and termed the “enemy aliens” as American-Aliens.

Every story needs a villain, and in this case, Lt. General Jonathan DeWitt, has been cast as the chief offender for his role of the internment of the “enemy” aliens on the West Coast in 1942.  Headstrong about the internment of not only the Japanese but the Germans and Italians, he was responsible for the worst abuses of civil liberties in United States history to date.

As the commander of the Fourth Army and Western Defense Command at the Presidio of San Francisco that extended from Alaska all along the Pacific Coast, DeWitt fervently believed that fifth columnists from these alien communities were waiting for strike orders from Rome, Berlin, or Tokyo to hit the United States internally crippling the government.  He could point to Italian pro-fascists radio broadcasts that told their listeners that “Roberto will win the war.”  The “Ro” stood for Rome, “ber” for Berlin, and “to” for Tokyo.” (1)

Although the internment and relocation of the Japanese was unconscionable, few have known of the internment and relocation of the Italians.  This is the story of those Italian “enemy” aliens who faced internment, if they were suspected of being saboteurs, spies, or members of fifth-columns. They could have also been repatriated or exchanged for American diplomats, missionaries, business people, women and children, and especially soldiers, if they agreed to surrender their American citizenship, or their rights to it.  However, none were ever convicted of these treasonous crimes; they were interned for being born Italian.

West Coast politicians, the Department of the Army, and notable political commentators stroked the fires of wild hysteria about fifth-columnists who would obstruct the government.  This fear, in later years, was seen as unfounded, as there were no fifth columnists hiding under any rocks.  The only person in the government not to believe in the fifth-columnists was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who in her daily column, “My Day,” appealed for calm and reminded her readers that the Bill of Rights was paramount and that wartime emergencies should not override civil liberties (2) And, she would not buck the President about internment.

But it was DeWitt, who was convinced that the fifth-columnists were poised to strike the heart of the US government. A modern-day conspiracy theorist, DeWitt was unsuited to command the West Coast military. Up to now, his career was as quartermaster, who was without battle experience and was described as an “excitable, myopic man” known to screech out orders, did not engage with civilians, as he considered most San Franciscan civil officials as “damn fools” and that only he understood the gravity of the situation. Calm was not in his lexicon and he ordered search lights to scan the night skies, claimed that the unidentified radio signals and ship-to-shore signal lights were set to invade the city.  Based on what he called “absolutely reliable source” a Japanese battle fleet 164 miles out at sea had 34 warships and aircraft carriers ready to bombard San Francisco.  Asked by reporters to confirm his source, he ignored them and then went on to cancel the Rose Bowl, annual East-West game, horse racing in both Bay Meadows and San Anita race tracks, as well as other public events (3)

DeWitt was an army brat, whose father and brothers were generals.  Leaving Princeton University, DeWitt enlisted in the 1898 Spanish-American War that was followed by four tours of duty in the Philippines.  He became a supply officer and rose through the ranks, working in the office of the quartermaster general in Washington from 1914 to 1917 and then as assistant chief of staff for the army’s War Plans Division in the early 1920s.  He became quartermaster general in 1930 and then commander of the Presidio’s Fourth Army and Western Defense Command. (4)

Was DeWitt’s army experience the source of his enmity towards ethnic Japanese and his lack of trust in their loyalty as Americans?  Perhaps, it was his experience during his 1904-1905 tour of duty after Japan’s victory in the 1905 Sino-Japanese War which embolden Japan as the first Asian power to defeat a European power and later reinforced during Japan’s War with China in the mid-1930s. Although these experiences may have contributed to DeWitt’s negativity towards the Japanese, what grievances did he hold towards the Italians and Germans?  None, except that their countries of birth were at war with the United States, his native country that he was sworn to defend.

Fearful that he would suffer the same fate as Lieutenant General Walter Short and Pacific Fleet commander Rear Admiral Husband Kimmel, who were relieved of their duties on December 17, 1941 for not having their forces in Hawaii “on the alert,” at Pearl Harbor.  De Witt reasoned that only he understood the perils of the current situation.  Two days after Pearl Harbor, the FBI rounded up 60 Germans, 16 Italians, and 90 Japanese citizens on the orders of the Attorney General Francis Biddle. He ordered that 1,400 Italians from San Francisco’s fishing industry to stop fishing because they had knowledge of the strategic waterfront.  As these events unfolded, DeWitt found the ghost in the closet:  fifth columnists, who he feared almost as much as the Imperial Japanese Navy.  He began advocating that the Germans and Italian aliens were to be relocated immediately after the Japanese were interned.  (5)

Without a doubt, this was the shame of America and a discreditable episode in the Roosevelt Administration (6).  The American Civil Liberties Union called the evacuation and internment of the Japanese as “the worst single wholesale violation of civil rights of American citizens in our history” and included the violation of the constitutional rights of unnaturalized Italians and Germans (7).  In one swoop, the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments to the Constitution were swept under the rug, as the right to be informed about accusations against them; the unreasonable searches and seizures of their homes; and not be a witness against themselves as well as denied property without due process of law were denied them.  No questions asked; no explanations given.  This was war.

But there is a twist to the story.  As unconscionable as these internment and relocation camps were worst was the government’s offer to give up their American citizenship, or rights to it, in a trade or exchange for American civilians and soldiers who were held captive in Germany, Japan, and Italy. This policy of exchange began with the creation of the Emergency Detention Program that instructed the Justice Department to “arrest and detain those persons deemed dangerous in the event of war, invasion, or insurrection in and of a foreign country.”   On September 9, 1939, President Roosevelt had created this program eight days after Germany marched into Poland.

Under its auspices, FBI field officers created files and prepared detailed reports on Germans, Italians, communist sympathizers and fascist supporters, as they knocked on doors of these unnaturalized citizens holding them in violation of their civil rights without telling them of any reason for their confinement.  Along the Pacific Coast, 52,000 Italian aliens now became suspect “alien enemies,” whose names were on a “custodial detention index,” a master list of civilians whom the FBI would arrest without regard for their constitutional rights even if they or their children were American citizens. 

History would later reveal that the FBI was notoriously irresponsible, biased and a constant source of irritation to the alien community disrupting their lives and revealing no credible evidence of subversion. (8). In the Italian community of San Francisco, the FBI hunted for fascist supporters of Mussolini, and didn’t Americans think highly of Mussolini when he first came to power?  Charismatic but a thug, Mussolini booted out the socialists and communists unifying Italy into a nation, advocating education and a standard language–the Tuscan dialect, and successfully negotiating with the Catholic Church over the Vatican property.  But in the end, when they had their fill of his bombastic rhetoric, they strung him up feet first.  For the moment, Italians praised him, and who could deny their pride in a national leader?  These admirers were called pro-fascists.

But war was war, and the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, had their orders.  Knocking on the doors of enemy aliens, they confiscated their cameras, guns and firearms, radios that had short-wave capacity.  My paternal grandparents, who had completed their first papers towards citizenship, and were hard-working folks with modest incomes, my grandfather working as a mason on the Palace of Fine Arts and my grandmother plucking and cleaning chickens for a poultry house, turned in their radios, hopeful that the receipt for these possessions would enable to reclaim them after the war.  They never were.

Personal photographs with questionable backgrounds of military installations were confiscated and off-limits were dams, relay towers, docks, harbors and wharves, and hydroelectric plants.  Curfews were established and these enemy aliens could not travel more than five miles from their homes without permission and had to report change of addresses and employment.  The fishing boats of the bay fishermen were taken from them and used by the army and navy for patrols that were later returned in poor condition.  Unfound stories were rampant of secret broadcasts to off- shore enemies, including flashing lights and other signals that an invasion was imminent.  On February 4, 1942, Attorney General Francis Biddle announced that the entire coastline of California, from 30 miles to 150 miles inland were restricted for all enemy aliens and regulated by strict curfew laws. (9)

By February 1942, Californians were gripped by fear, intolerance coupled with suspicion of all foreign aliens.   Italian aliens apprehended by February 18th numbered 277 in San Francisco, 115 in San Diego that had a large ocean fishing fleet; and 983 in Los Angeles.  This was before FDR signed Executive Order 9066 (10).

Political commentator, Walter Lippman, once a supporter of New Deal liberties, called the Pacific Coast a combat zone.  He was joined by Westbrook Pegler, another popular columnist but an anti-New Dealer, who screamed the “hell with habeas corpus” and first win the war (ibid).  The pressure on President Roosevelt to instill a vigorous internment policy was enormous.  All unnaturalized aliens were to register at their local post offices, and if need be, furnish their own interpreters and be fingerprinted according to the Alien Registration Act of 1940.  The president had in his authority the power to expel dangerous aliens, as well as to detain them and confiscate their property.  (11)

Latin America became a hot zone as the United States was greatly concerned that Germany would seize power in the southern hemisphere and lay claim to the Panama Canal threatening the security of the United States. To counter this, FDR created a Special War Problems Division within the State Department to track and monitor enemy aliens that aimed to repatriate thousands of American citizens (12).  These detainees provided a group of people who were to be exchanged for Americans in combative Germany and Japan, pure and simple.  They were pawns to be traded. 

The winter months of 1942 were bleak filled with ominous news, as the United States operated two theatres:  one in Europe and the Pacific, a theatre that they seemed to be losing. The war in Europe seemed a continent away for most Americans, but for Californians the threat of a Japanese invasion was terrifying as news of suspected Japanese submarines were patrolling the California coastline. Against this backdrop intolerance for enemy aliens increased.  Local and stateside officials clamored to intern all enemy aliens without regard for their guilt or innocence.  Beginning with California’s Attorney General, Earl Warren, who would later become governor and then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court panicked as he viewed fifth columnists as traitorous agents and feared bacteriological and gas warfare (13).  In Washington, the War Department and Department of Justice locked horns as to who would control the internment of the enemy aliens.  They saw these aliens as prisoners of war as their petty bureaucratic rivalries fueled more fear throughout the country.  Unless Attorney General Biddle agreed immediately to a program of enemy alien restrictions enforced by the FBI at its discretion, the president could transfer authority from the Justice Department to the War Department.  In this game of chicken, Biddle blinked first and the Army took control of the internment and relocation of the aliens with the president siding with the Army. This would result in the FDR’s proclamation of the infamous Executive Order 9066, signed on February 19, 1942 that put in charge Lt. General Jonathan DeWitt, commandant of the Presidio of San Francisco, and a staunch believer in the treachery of fifth-columnists.  Whatever he suspected of the Japanese Americans, he projected onto German and Italian enemy aliens.

In San Francisco, the Committee to Aid Italians Loyal to the United States warned the Army that moving the Italians was a greater logistical problem than relocation of the Japanese given the number of Italian aliens. As for the Germans and Italians, the Committee stated that this mass evacuation was unnecessary or desirable, as there were 51,923 Italian aliens in California as compared to 19,422 Germans and 33,569 Japanese  (14).  Furthermore, this would take fighting soldiers away from all theatres of the war to guard enemy aliens.  A ludicrous idea, but then internment was without justifiable merit.  The Tolan Committee, the House Select Committee, studied the consequences of the large-scale evacuation and relocation of the Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, and given the number of German and especially Italian aliens, stated that this mass evacuation was unnecessary or desirable. On the East Coast, the threat of interning hundreds and thousands Germans and Italian enemy aliens would be demoralizing seriously affecting the national security and war production.  It was DeWitt, however, who wanted the FBI to search every house and residence and “not fool around.” Justice caved giving the FBI authority to harass and hound the aliens.

Biddle compromised with a plan of expelling everyone from a specified zone if a military necessity existed.  Zones were created Zone A-1 and Zone Area 2 (15).  At first, Biddle thought that the Executive Order 9066 only applied to the Japanese but he came to find out that it applied to the German and the Italian aliens as well.  The Italian aliens were never considered a serious threat, as FDR counseled Biddle that they were a bunch of “opera singers” unlike the Germans, who he feared were dangerous. (16) Nonetheless, the Italians became a “potentially dangerous” group in General Dewitt’s thinking who he clearly sought to intern as well as the Germans.

But how did the Italian aliens become suspect?  Since the 1850, the San Francisco Italian community had prospered in California.  They regarded themselves less than the gold seekers but as entrepreneurs who opened grocery and dry good stores, liquor firms, small hotels, boarding houses, and restaurants expanding their enterprises throughout San Francisco and California.  From North Beach to the upscale Marina District, and like my paternal grandparents to the Outer Mission District, where they purchased an affordable set of flats.  From their base in North Beach, the Italians farmed the rich agricultural lands, produced awarding winning wines, created a solid fishing enterprise  as well as produce industry that, in part, led to the Del Monte Corporation, contracted with the city for a  garbage refuse company, established schools and education centers for their children, built churches, circulated a number of language newspapers and a radio station, established a social welfare agency and other benevolent societies, enjoyed a number of variety theatres that was the basis of city’s War Memorial Opera House under the baton of Gaetano Merola,  traded through the Italian  chamber of commerce, and possibly the greatest achievement was that of the Bank of Italy becoming the Bank of America that by the 1930s was a national banking institution that toppled Wall Street.  Across the continent, San Francisco-born, Joe DiMaggio, known as the Yankee Clipper, helped the New York Yankees win the World Series. And in 1942, the mayor of San Francisco, was Angelo Rossi, a native-born California of Italian parentage, who would be accused of being a fascist.  And, Rossi did not even know how to speak Italian.  (17).

Did they assimilate into the fabric of America?  While some historians said “no,” the evidence of their economies in California said “yes.”  Slowly adapting to America was Armando Zucchi, who said that “after 71 years I am now an American…but there is an inner core within me…that will always be Italian.”  Others assimilated by incorporating the American economic and social values into their way of life as they found a better way of life in this adoptive State that they called “La Regina del Pacifico:  The Queen of the Pacific.” They belonged to two cultures with their American-born children leading them to complete the transition to becoming full-fledged Americans.  In the words of Jerre Mangione, who quoted an immigrant’s reaction to his classification as “enemy alien” said, “Don’t those imbeciles in Washington understand that to have American-born children is to become an American for the rest of your life?” (18)  They believed that having American-born children automatically conferred citizenship on them.  This is how they understood citizenship not by law but through family.

By the time that Biddle made his Columbus Day proclamation on October 12, 1942, there were 600,000 Italian aliens in the United States, including 52,000 in California and before the war, 254 were designated as dangerous and were ordered to move out of the Pacific coastal states (19). Aliens apprehended in the San Francisco area were held in a temporary detention center on Silver Avenue and an Immigration Service facility at Sharp Park, Pacifica.  Later some would be transported under armed guard by train to Fort Missoula, Montana.  Among these apprehended were Fernando Lucchini, a machinist, with a sixth grade education, who had held First Papers towards citizenship who was interned locally but it was Nereo Franchesconi, a radio announcer for the Italian Radio station, who lived in my maternal grandparents Columbus Avenue flats, who would be interned at Fort Missoula, Montana.  An anti-fascist, his only crime was a misunderstood devilish wit and a flashlight that got him interned and was taken away in handcuffs by the FBI in the presence of his screaming wife and children.

Many of these aliens were hard-workers, who struggled learning English some of whom knew only their regional dialects much less the standard Italian language.  Some did not apply for citizenship papers citing these difficulties plus understanding of the US Constitution required for citizenship.  For many, they gained a sense of ethnic nationalism as “Italians” on the streets of America with allegiance to their home towns in a spirit of campanilismo, that is, loyalty to one’s home town.  They did not understand the meaning of citizenship even on Italian terms.  It would be during the war years under the tutelage of the Salesian Fathers at Saints Peter and Paul that these Italian aliens came to classes in the Americanization School learning English and becoming naturalized citizens. (20) Alphonso Zirpoli, an assistant US attorney at the time who would become a US district judge, recalled that many of the Italian aliens were teaching each other about the Constitution.

On the night of February 23, 1942, a California highway patrolman stopped traffic on U.S. Route 101, the main coastal highway because of reports of explosions.  A newly married couple, my parents, were traveling down the route on the way to their honeymoon destination in Santa Barbara.  They were married on February 21, 1942. The patrolman asked them about their travel plans, and then told them that there were reports that a Japanese submarine was firing shells. Frightened, they turned the car around and drove all night back to San Francisco, where their parents concurred the patrolman’s account. (21).

By February 24th, the most restrictive regulations came when Biddle ordered the first enforcement of restrictions.  All enemy aliens were to surrender contraband items and could not travel past the boundaries of their home communities.  For the Italian aliens in Eureka, Arcata, and other areas in Humboldt Bay, who lived near the waterfront, they were forced to move, give up their homes and livelihoods and were not permitted back to this “sensitive” area.  From the Mad River to the Eel, enemy aliens found west of Highway 101 would be interned for the duration of the war.  For years, Italian aliens talked of living on F Street in Eureka or G Street in Arcata, or their beloved communities as Samao and Manila that they had to move out of to comply with these restrictions. Families were separated, with unnaturalized aliens restricted, while those who were naturalized could live outside these areas.  Children, who were American-born lived with one parent or the other, or went back and forth. Life, as they had known it, was totally disrupted, as families suffered shame and humiliation of being regarded as “enemies” of the country they had come to love.  And, they were angry, asking why did the government do this? Some cried that they had sons who died at Pearl Harbor, but this was to no avail even though they were gold star parents.  By virtue of their births, they were enemy aliens. 

In Pittsburg, California, where the Italian aliens were facing expulsion, they requested preferential treatment from the War Department, but their request was denied.  Three thousand Italian aliens in Pittsburgh were relocated, and as one man said, “I helped build the town” (22) In Monterey, fishermen’s purse seiners were required to have American crews and several boat owners telegraphed FDR pledging $50,000 in defense bonds and would donate an 80-foot diesel craft to the Navy.  San Francisco crab fishermen offered 250 boats for coastal patrolling Denied.  Fishermen cried out:  Didn’t the government need fish to feed the soldiers?  Who’s going to do that work? 

Nonetheless, Italians were dragged out of their homes and found themselves sent to internment camps at Camp Sharp Park, California; Ft. Missoula, Montana; City Crystal City, Texas; San Pedro Immigration Station, California; Fort McDowell, Angel Island, California.  Others were sent further away.

Meanwhile DeWitt bid his time to evacuate Germans and Italians.  The likeness of these so-called planned communities that were no more than dismal dusty concentration camps was a grim reality to more progressive Americans who saw these camps as no different than Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.  Yet, the Japanese endured their confinement.  Interestingly, Imperial Japan had yearned for world supremacy since the visit of their prime minister, Prince Tomomi Iwakura, in January 1872.  (23) Possibly they had hopes that California could become a province of Japan.  This dream lived on especially after the 1905 Russo-Japanese War.

On March 11th, 1942, DeWitt spoke to the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, which had responsibility for the evacuees’ property, and it was expected that the Bank would care for the needs of the German and Italian aliens.  By the last week in March, DeWitt issued his orders excluding everyone of Japanese ancestry from the designated areas on the West Coast. Military zones were established with the Army in charge and no one was to leave without permission.  DeWitt’s superiors in Washington grew worried, as there was no congressional support to remove the Germans or the Italian aliens.  But De Witt was bidding his time, and FDR became alarmed, if the Department of the Army were to take action against the Germans and the Italian aliens. While DeWitt kept up his plan to evacuate them, his support staff backed down on the evacuation of the Germans and Italian aliens, as Roosevelt planned for the invasion of Sicily.

Distrustful of the Justice Department, DeWitt saw these officials as “inefficient” civilians.  San Francisco’s John Molinari, then an attorney with Italo-American clients and future justice of the state court of appeal spent his days at immigration stations.  He would tell FBI agents of the worthiness of prospective detainees who were questioned at loyalty tribunals, as did Alphonso Zirpoli, who would later become a US district judge.  Neither man felt that DeWitt understood the Italians or Germans or their application for naturalization even if cleared by the Justice Department.  DeWitt did not comprehend the urgency that Washington wanted the least number of Europeans involved (24), if the US was to win the war.

On June 4, 1942, the Japanese offensive in the Pacific was overturned and the United States began offensive action in the Pacific at the Battle of Midway.  The United States was on the march towards victory.  On the home front, DeWitt was advised to rescind curfew and travel restrictions because they were unenforceable and were hampering the war effort.  The President understood that reclassifying aliens would help the war effort, but DeWitt was stubborn.  By June 26, DeWitt was told to abolish the six-month prohibition and restricted zones even though loyalty hearings continued.  Italian aliens were bitter, saddened, angry, and shamed that their loyalty was questioned.  Marino Sichi said of DeWitt, “…that son of a bitch…took us to Sharp Park….one thing though, the Army handed me my citizenship papers with an M-I rifle.”  Stories surfaced about the anger of Italian detainees, with some wearing a “green” patch saying “Italy” when they were furloughed from their internment camps.  Remo Bosia, who was court martialed and prosecuted because he enlisted in the US Army after he had been ordered by DeWitt to leave his home and move no less than 150 miles from the Pacific Coast, wrote an account of his experience, entitled, “The General and I” in which he blasted DeWitt.  Bosia, educated in Italy and had been editor-in-chief of L’Italia, the Italian-language newspaper with a distribution of 200,000 subscribers, but himself was anti-fascist and unsympathetic to Mussolini.  He was seen by DeWitt as a dangerous alien, and ordered interned even though Bosia was an ace-flyer, and the War Department rescinded DeWitt’s order and freed Bosia.  But  DeWitt held to his order. Finally, it was FDR who exonerated Bosia. (25).

The Roosevelt administration gave Attorney General Biddle the go-ahead to address an assembled audience at an evening concert at Carnegie Hall that was broadcast to a national audience from a radio hook-up.  Biddle told his listeners that the unnaturalized Italians living in the United States were now “free from the stigma of being enemy aliens of this country.”  They had earned their “loyalty to the United States” and these “600,000 Italian ‘alien enemies ’were not enemies at all.” ( 26).  Breaking from the traditional speech of recounting Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the new world and the pride that Italians, as Americans and unnaturalized, had in this celebration, Biddle’s speech exonerated them.  Henceforth, he would refer to them as American aliens. With this ban lifted, those Italian aliens incarcerated in internment camps were released after the surrender of Italy to the Allies on September 8, 1943.  Several months later, my paternal grandparents received notification from the Department of Justice that they were no longer “enemy aliens” but were now persons loyal to the United States.  It was through my paternal grandfather that I gained dual citizenship.

In the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this was a “masterly stroke of international statesmanship and good politics.”  (27).  But good politics for whom?  Roosevelt’s words concealed his two-fold goals:  his wooing of Italian American for their votes and their support of an allied invasion of Italy that was in the making.  Dewitt refused to budge until a week later when he grudgingly lifted all military restrictions on Italians.  Biddle also hoped that Congress would eliminate the literary test enabling Italians to participate in the war effort; namely, the invasion of Italy that would strengthen the anti-fascist underground. 

If the East Coast Italians cheered, the West was lukewarm. On the same day that this announcement was made, in San Francisco, Sylvester Andriani was suspended from his chairmanship of the Local Draft Board.  He was a former supervisor and police  commissioner who was sent to Chicago because DeWitt wanted him out (28).  In the end, DeWitt’s superiors were so worried by his recalcitrant stance that in a private ceremony at the Presidio, Roosevelt authorized a parting gift of an Oak Leaf Cluster for Distinguished Service and then retired him. (29.)  Booted out and gone. 

But the harm that he had done to the “enemy” aliens---Japanese, Germans, and Italians was immoral and indefensible.  As for the Italians, they suffered humiliation, insult, without any redress of grievances.  They, too, had lost their pride in being American Italians, the loss of property, homes, and livelihoods and their families separated.  Families cautioned their children not to speak Italian openly, refused to discuss these events that they relegated to the margins of their awareness leaving my generation to peel away the layers of shame as they learned Italian, discovered family recipes, traveled to Italy basking in the magnificent of Italy, and some, like myself, becoming dual citizens. 

Eighty-one years ago, the policies of internment shattered the lives of the Japanese, Germans, and Italian American-Aliens.  Racism, fear of foreigners, the highest level of government xenophobia, anger over the attack at Pearl Harbor, irrational fear of fifth columnists all came together in an evil confluence that brought out the worst in America.

The fabric of this story is spun over decades interwoven tightly with the threads of long-standing resentment and prejudices over land ownership against the Japanese; the restrictive immigration policy of 1924 that limited the immigration numbers of both the Japanese and Italians; and jealousy towards immigrants who gained an economic advantage in America.

In an interesting twist of numbers, 1492, recalls the school poem that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue while 450 years later, in 1942 the Italians who honored him were interned as “enemy aliens.” Columbus Day was meant to celebrate Columbus as much as their success in this new land. On October 17, 1869, the Italian Colony of San Francisco held a festival they called Discovery Day that became an annual event commemorating the blending of the old world traditions they held dear with the newness and individuality of their life in America (30) They espoused, then, as now the values of citizenship: respect, responsibility, understanding, tolerance, and inclusion in the fabric of America. 

We must work to never let this, and similar insults, prevail in our national consciousness.

FOOTNOTES

1.      Stephen Fox, The Unknown Internment:  An Oral History of the Relocation of Italian Americans during World War II (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990), 34.

2.     Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day, February 19, 1942,” The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), accessed 1/15/2023, https:www2.gwu.erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1942&_f=md056112.

3.     Arnold Krammer, Undue Process:  The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.  1997), ps. 45, 50, 52, 57

4.     Niiya, Brian. John DeWitt. (2020, July 15). Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved 13:19, May 15, 2023 from https://encyclopedia.densho.org/John%20DeWitt. Bill Yenne, Panic on the Pacific:  How American Prepared for a West Coast Invasion (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2016), 44.  Francis Biddle p.94 see Yenne, 94 San Francisco Chronicle, see Yenne p 11.

5.     Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 720.

6.     Francis Biddle, In Brief Authority (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1962),  213. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1970), 216.  Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 321-322.

7.     Frank S. Donner, The Age of Surveillance, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1980), 163

8.     Krammer, 55.

9.     Lillian Baker, American and Japanese Relocation in World War II; Fact and Fiction and Fallacy (Medfield, Oregon: Webb Research Group, 1990), vi.

10.  Burns, 216; Krammer, 55.

11.  John E. Schmitz, Enemies Among Us:  The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans During the Second World War (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2022), 82.

12.  Yenne, 187.

13.  Fox, 4

14.  Yenne, 124.

15.  Biddle, 207.

16.  Deanna Paoli Gumina……; Rose Marie Cleese

17.   Jerre Mangione (to be added later).  Rose D. Scherini, “Executive  Order 9066 and Italian Americans:  The San Francisco Story,” California History,Winter 1991/1992. 367, 377.

18.  Gumina, 177. Fox 64.

19.  “Submarine Shells Ellwood Oil Field,” Santa Barbara News-Press, 1

20.  Fox, 66.

21.  San Mateo Historical Society 

23. Fox,160, 164, 129

24.  Fox, 94, 434. Remo Bosia

25.  see for citation:  New York Times, “U.S. Italian Aliens Not to be’Enemies’,” October 13, 1942; “The Text of the Attorney General’s Speech”, )ct0ber 13, 1942; Schmitz, 4; SF Chronicle “Sylvester Andriano”

26.  Gumina, 47, 49.