Refugees%20

1
Refugees Alien Internment in World War II

• HIS 206

2
Failure to Admit Jewish Refugees

• No more than 250,000 refugees from Nazis admitted
  to U.S. in 1930s-40s
• Alien Registration Act (1940) required
  registration fingerprinting of all aliens
• Also tightened definition of subversives to
  include past affiliation
• Approx. 5 million aliens registered
• INS 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 Kristallnacht
• Quotas unblocked in fall 1940
• FDR invited 32 nations to Evian Conference in
  1938, but refused to change or relax immigration
  laws
• St. Louis turned back in 1939

Breckenridge Long
The St. Louis in Havana, 1939
3
The War Refugee Board

• War Refugee Board (1944) rescued 200,000 Jews
• Worked with foreign govts
• Est. 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
4
Race War in the Pacific
5
WWII Propaganda Posters
6
Internment of Japanese Americans

• 300,000 aliens (1/2 Japanese) rounded up in week
  after Pearl Harbor
• FDR issued Executive Order 9066 Feb. 19, 1942
• 120,000 (2/3 U.S. citizens)
• West coast, but not Hawaii
• War Relocation Authority ran internment camps
• Upheld by Supreme Court in Korematsu v. U.S.
  (1944)
• Nisei 442nd Regiment one of the most highly
  decorated units in WW II

7
Challenging Internment

• Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943)
• Hirabayashi was U. of Washington student
• Supreme Court unanimously upheld curfew as
  reasonable wartime measure
• Korematsu v. U.S. (1944)
• Korematsu was U.S.-born welder
• Court upheld internment 6-3
• Roberts, Murphy Jackson dissented
• guilt must be individual, not collective
• no imminent threat existed
• Case reopened in 1983 conviction overturned
• Historian Peter Irons discovered govt has
  suppressed its own finding that Japanese
  Americans werent threat
• Pres. Clinton awarded him Medal of Freedom in 1998

Gordon Hirabayashi
Fred T. Korematsu
8
Tule Lake Internment Camp
9
Going to School at Tule Lake
10
German Italian Internment

• 11,000 German German Americans interned
• 4,000 Germans shipped to U.S. from Latin America
• 2,000 exchanged for American POWs in Germany
• 1,800 Italians arrested by FBI 500 interned

German internees Camp Kenedy, TX
11
Crystal City Internment Camp

• Former FSA camp for migrant farm workers
• Peak population was 3, 326 in May 1945
• Separate sections for German and Japanese
  internees
• Closed Nov. 1, 1947