Crystal City Internment Camp 1945

Housing all three Axis nationalities, Crystal City (Family) Internment Camp was intended to be populated by people of Japanese ancestry and their immediate families. However, on December 12, 1942, the camp’s first internees to arrive were a mix of German Americans and German Enemy Aliens. On February 12, 1943, the first group of Latin Americans arrived––also Germans––deported from Costa Rica. On March 17, 1943, the first group of Japanese American internees arrived. The Immigration and Naturalization (INS) planned to transfer all German internees to another camp, but the German spokesman asked camp officials if they could remain because their living conditions here were far better than at previous confinement sites they were held at.

From its inception in mid-1942 through June 1945, Crystal City (Family) Internment Camp interned 4,751 (this included 153 people born in the camp). The camp’s population peaked at 3,374 on December 29, 1944, more than two thirds of which were of Japanese nationality or ancestry. Approximately 11,507 German Americans were interned in the U.S. during the war, accounting for 36 percent of the total internments under the DOJ Alien Enemy Control Unit Program. In addition, an estimated 4,500 ethnic Germans and Italians from Latin America were brought to the U.S. during the war, as part of the Department of State’s Special War Problems Program, with many held at Crystal City. Millions of native-born Italians––later naturalized––and their American-born children lived in the U.S. when the country went to war with the Axis in 1941. In addition, there were also many Italian Enemy Aliens residing in the U.S., estimated at nearly 600,000. However, the percentage of Italians, classified as Enemy Aliens and interned during the war was far smaller than those interned from the Japanese and German American communities. Following the surrender of Fascist Italy in 1943, most Italian American and Enemy Alien internees were paroled or outright released by the end of that year. A few Italian Latin Americans, held in very small numbers at Crystal City, remained well after the end of the war.

By late 1942, the U.S. Army realized it needed to focus the efforts of it's Provost Marshal General's Office on the expected task of guarding hundreds of thousands of Axis Nations [Japan, German, and Italy] prisoners of war. In response, the DOJ gave the INS further authority to house potentially dangerous Enemy Aliens (including U.S. citizens) at internment camps throughout the U.S. Early in the war, many detained Enemy Aliens were fathers, and the INS faced an increasing number of requests from wives and children volunteering to be interned so they might be reunited with the head of their households. This need to house families together was the genesis of theCrystal City (Family) Internment Camp. In April 2013, the THC conducted a low-invasive archeological survey in an effort to gain a better understanding of the camp’s history. This survey is funded through a 2012 grant from the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, and will aid the THC with its National Register of Historic Places nomination for the confinement site.
http://www.thc.texas.gov/preserve/projects-and-programs/military-history/texas-world-war-ii/world-war-ii-japanese-american-2

@ col mikel COL Mikel J. Burroughs @ ltc stephen LTC Stephen C. @ ltc stephen LTC Stephen F. @ capt marty Maj Marty Hogan @ smsgt doc SMSgt Minister Gerald A. "Doc" Thomas @ tsgt joe TSgt Joe C. @ sfc joe SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL @ sfc george SFC George Smith @ sgt david SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth @ sp5 robert SP5 Robert Ruck @ sp5 mark SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO2 (Anonymous) @ po2 robert PO2 Robert M. @ po1 chip PO1 William "Chip" Nagel Alan K.