Crystal City Internment Camp

Early in the war, in the name of "hemispheric security", the United States government began negotiations with several Latin American countries to round up and deport German and Japanese nationals who had been living in those countries.[10] Upon their arrival in New Orleans, Louisiana, the initial male deportees were arrested on the grounds that they had attempted to enter the country illegally (having been denied visas by immigration authorities) and detained at various INS stations in the region, before being relocated to the internment camps at Kenedy, Texas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.[11] Their wives and children followed them later — ostensibly as volunteers, although most families lacked feasible alternatives to deportation.[11]

Once incarcerated in the United States, they could then be sent to Germany or Japan in exchange for the return of American citizens and diplomats stranded in Axis nations.[3][10] The prisoner-exchange program proved to be short-lived, and eventually transitioned into a "repatriation" program in which German and Japanese nationals and their families (including many children who had never been to their "home" country) were deported once again to Germany and Japan. The majority of Crystal City's Latin American population was transported to Germany and Japan at the end of the war, although several hundred Japanese Peruvians were allowed to remain in the U.S. after a two-year legal battle.[12]

Of the nearly 1,500 Latin American Japanese confined in Crystal City during the war, almost 80% came from Peru. The 234 Latin American Germans had been deported from Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, in addition to a few from Haiti.[4]

The Crystal City camp also held Japanese and German Americans who previously lived in many different parts of the United States. Noncitizen Japanese and German men were arrested in large numbers immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and forcibly incarcerated in various INS, U.S. Army, and Department of Justice detention sites before being transferred to Crystal City, where they were reunited with their families.[2][4] The first German American incarcerees arrived in December 1942 from Ellis Island and Camp Forrest.[4] The first Japanese Americans were women and children brought to Crystal City from Seagoville in March 1943.[6] Additional Japanese Americans were transported by train from western detention facilities and WRA camps in the following months.[4][6] Most of the Japanese-American incarcerees were transported from the West Coast, while the German Americans were brought from numerous locations throughout the United States.[4]

Almost all of the children held at the Crystal City internment camp were native-born American citizens whose parents were alien non-citizens.[4] Each child at the Crystal City Internment Camp received a quart of milk each day.[3] Three schools were established: the German School, the Japanese School, and the American Schools of Federal Elementary and Federal High School.[4] The schools provided the interned students with all of the basic programs that schools in Texas were required to have.[4]

Established in January 1943, the American School at the Crystal City Internment Camp educated over 1000 students before being closed in June 1946.[4] Most of the American School's students at Crystal City were Japanese-American internees and a large number of the students were later accepted into various universities in the United States. The parents of German-American students refused to send their children to the American School, preferring education at the German School.[4] The German-American children who transferred into the German School from the American School often struggled in the classroom because they were unable to speak German fluently.[4] The German School and the American Schools had similar enrollments, and each school educated about 350 students.[4] The Japanese School educated about 300 Latin American Japanese and Japanese American students. The Japanese School's curriculum resembled the curriculum students in Japan received, focusing on Japanese morals, ethics, and physical education.[4]

On January 24, 1946 Crystal City Internment Camp official J. L. O'Rourke closed the German and Japanese schools and ordered that all remaining students enroll in the American schools.[4] The American schools were then closed on June 28, 1946, but only 16 Japanese students still remained in Crystal City with their parents.[4] The population of the camp was already low because numerous internees were repatriated to their native countries after the war ended. The INS rejected the proposed idea of transferring the Japanese students into public schools near Crystal City.[4] Due to the INS decision and the lack of resources to move elsewhere, the remaining Japanese internees reinstalled the Japanese School.[4]