What Happened To The American Children Interned During WW2? I World War II US History Documentary

do you always get that question why weren't these camps for hardcore Nazis and my answer is always the same yeah there were a few but they were by and large a very small minority and they didn't represent the character the so-called threat that all the other alien enemy internees might have presented but that Distortion persists people wonder because they see pictures that well there were Nazis in Camp I've talked to many Japanese who don't know at all that there were five thousand people at Thule Lake who renounced their citizenship because they were so bitter and wanted to go back to Japan but those stories and those characterizations hardly represent the great majority of people who were interned and wound up behind barbed wire Fritz Kuhn I know about him because my parents talked about him and the fact that my dad accompanied him to New York to put him on a plane for Germany I didn't know very much about the inside I can't say except that I always understood that the people that were in there had been found guilty of crimes against the United States government that's all that that's all that I knew everybody felt that they were innocent and the other people were guilty but it's just to show you what happens when you're locked up if you talk to an internee he'll tell you that being in prison being behind barbed wire no matter how well they fed us how warm they kept the barracks and how much Recreation they provided us it was still prison and the Germans had a term for it called getter Cronkite defense sickness and it meant that if you are behind barbed wire for so long you begin to feel like a prisoner even though you know you've done nothing wrong I did see my mother suffering a lot there it was hard on the women I think it was very hard it was back to a very primitive lifestyle we had Community showers and community toilets and it was hot and buggy and miserable I I don't know I'm trying I've never saw my mother happy there we as kids we were with our folks we kind of rolled with the punches that pool that was the most wonderful thing in that whole Camp they had just finished it before we were placed in the camp and it was opened and that was where I loved spending time and you heard the story about the two Japanese little girls drowning there and then it was promptly closed up again and we always heard the stories about snakes in there too I hung out with the group like Ed four and other guys but the 90 percent of the time we were in a swimming pool what else was there to do if somebody had a regular accordion down there and I got a hold of that thing to start putting with it my nickname is grunt you couldn't bring a Squeeze Box along you know you could play anything just saw this music they didn't care what it was as long as the music so I don't know how good or how bad or whatever but I do have memories of it and one shape or another but yeah I'm not sure they're mine or they're talked about you know what I mean it's all kind of we rented current movies the story of Irene and Vernon Castle but unfortunately that movie was about World War One and the sensors cut out a lot of that movie and it was really strange to see these young Japanese men coming to visit their parents uh you know with their uniform it touched me that this would happen to anybody they were tar paper Shacks my mom just went so my dad said I'll fix it up so he he fixed it up so he painted the wall and so we survived that too we used public latrines and we ate in a mess hall where my father was a baker and and probably a cook too my folks had access to whatever little money they had he had an insurance policy he had savings bonds uh you know called war bonds at that time the camp was pleasant you know I mean from my perspective a child's perspective you didn't know you were behind a fence and I went to German School learned that we were going to go to Germany and so my father thought we had to learn to speak German I learned my German and I went to Germany a year and a half after my father had first been arrested which was in mid-1942 he finally had a hearing it was the first time he'd had a hearing that even looked at the question of his innocence or guilt it was the first time he had ever heard any of the charges against him after the hearing they really decided that he really he wasn't dangerous he didn't really need to be in the camp and he was allowed to leave that's why I was asking you who is saying that there were so many people that never had a trial or never anything and were just put in there without I mean I'm curious about that I'd really like to know who has proved that you know I mean just because uh if that was the case I I think that's very sad in October 44 there was an exchange Voyage where we exchanged uh attorneys that were here German American attorneys for Americans that were overseas so my theory is that when that happened they needed more bodies more exchange bait and that's why my father was arrested he had a family of four well that gives him four now we can we can exchange for four more people back from her fourth wartime journey of Mercy the Swedish exchange ship grips Home arrives in New York Harbor aboard our 663 Americans home from Nazi internment and prison camps [Music] of Soldiers war correspondents and diplomats are among her passenger lists we're very glad to get home we've been 13 months in turn in Germany and 13 bad months for the Germans as well as for ourselves because in those 13 months Germany has lost the war they know they're whipped but they're wondering how they're going to get out of it my father was asked whether he would agree to go to Germany he didn't know when he was going to get out of Camp because they didn't give you you didn't violate any law and the only way he could get out was to agree to be shipped to Germany we were on the Last Ship the government made four trips to Japan and four trips to Germany and they altered them well I went to Japan one went to Germany one went to Japan the U.S didn't have enough Japanese prisoners to exchange Japan had lots of American prisoners you know people who were stranded there and it wasn't an even exchange so in 1943 the government made wanted to make sure they had enough hostages that's when they collaborated with the Peruvian government to kidnap 2 000 Japanese peruvians to use in the prisoner of war exchange President Truman issued an order that says all those that are in turn will be deported so my father just rather than being deported decided to repatriate you know if you're deported it's a it's a bad mark on your record at two locations the location you're coming from and the location you're going to because usually you Deport people who violated the law or something so my father decided to repatriate so in December 45 we leave Crystal City 101 of us and go to Ellis Island on a train they took us to Berets France where we were handed over to the German Belmont because France was now under the occupation of the Germans and everybody was sad or freaked out or morose or as I say it was a totally gray Society totally different from the German society that we were a part of in New York I mean we were happy people and here we are now in Germany and getting ready to survive the war all our trunks were just stolen like I say all we arrived with was the with the suitcases we carried that's all we had and we lived with my grandmother in a two-room apartment I used to love to go greet my American buddies I'd hear planes and I'd run outside and wave at my American Buddies and one time I'm waving and I see this bomb coming out of a plane of course I did know better and I ran and I just made the threshold of the house when this bomb hit some of the civilians in town did get killed in that instance my guardian angel saved me so that was my experience with waving at my American Buddies and every time there was an air raid we used to they used to everybody downstairs to the vault and I used about three guys to hold the door make sure they didn't lock until it was safe to go up again we moved around and we used to hide in the in the in the Black Forest too because they didn't they wouldn't bomb there and we were virtually starving the U.S army came into the town we were living in we ran down to where the U.S troops were having dinner one said it came around he said get out of here you little [ __ ] So I responded and said who are you calling [ __ ] and the whole lying turned around how come I speak such perfect English he said do you have a sister I said yeah is her name Ingrid I said yes he said I was going with her so it was a fortuitous because we had no food he was the chef of the regiment [Music]