Read Online The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange by Jan Jarboe Russell - Free Book Online
Authors: Jan Jarboe Russell
Ads: Link
federal minimum-security prison camp for women. In the spring of 1942, Stannard’s facility was adapted to an alien detention camp for women and children, and she was named officer in charge. “I was surprised,” she later told an interviewer. “We didn’t have much advance notice, so I didn’t much dwell on the novelty of being the only woman with this kind of job. I had to get to work.”
The women’s camp in Seagoville was built on eighty acres andwas surrounded by a six-foot, woven-wire-link fence topped by barbed wire. The guardhouse was manned at all times by agents of the Border Patrol. Guards also patrolled the perimeter of the camp, sometimes on horseback. The women and children lived in Victory Huts, prefabricated, small dwellings built during World War II, and six dormitories. Many of the women were Japanese, including fifty Japanese-language teachers from California. In addition, there were women and children from Latin American countries sick with flu, some with tuberculosis.
“We began admitting women and children from Central and South America. They were the families of male aliens, of enemy nationals—Germans, Japanese, and a few Italians who had been interned in other camps in the States. They had been caught up in a sort of dragnet because they were thought to be potentially dangerous to the security of the United States,” Stannard said. “It isn’t clear to me why the State Department came to work that out. Apparently it was the result of some fear that Japanese, Germans, and Italians in Central and South America might rise up in some way to endanger the United States. I know of no episodes where that happened, however.”
It was November and the temperature was about eighty degrees as Harrison, Stannard, and Kelly walked around a 240-acre Crystal City site that was used as a migrant-worker camp for Mexican laborers. Later, an additional 50 acres was acquired to the south of the existing camp, enlarging it to 290 acres. Due to the mild winter climate, landowners in Crystal City had four growing seasons a year, much of it devoted to spinach. In March 1937, a statue of Popeye, built of shiny fiberglass, was erected in front of the tiny, one-story city hall in Crystal City. It was dedicated to “the children of the world.” City leaders, all Anglo, proclaimed Crystal City the Spinach Capital of the World. Spinach was referred to as green gold. In 1945, the Del Monte Corporation bought the town’s cannery and produced 2.5 million cases of spinach a year. Popeye became the city’s iconic symbol, a totem with mixed messages. On the Angloside of town Popeye meant prosperity, a tribute to the thriving spinach industry. But on the Mexican side of town, where a majority of the citizens of Crystal City lived, the statue symbolized poverty.“We hated that statue,” said Jose Angel Gutierrez, who grew up in Crystal City and later became a civil rights leader in Texas. “The statue symbolized our servitude to the spinach and the Anglo owners of the company.”
On this day, only a few Mexican workers still lived on the migrant-worker site, which was owned by the Farm Security Administration. When war broke out, many Mexican migrant workers who came to Crystal City from the Northwest and Midwest each winter stopped coming for fear of being arrested. The federal government had doubled the number of agents patrolling the Mexican border, which was in effect closed.
It wasn’t only rock-ribbed Texas conservatives such as Congressman Martin Dies, chairman of the feared House Un-American Activities Committee, who stirred anti-immigrant sentiment. In San Antonio, liberal mayor Maury Maverick, who had served two terms in Congress as a loyal Roosevelt New Dealer, called on the chief of police to arm every officer with a submachine gun to defend against German spies who might cross the border from Mexico. Maverick’s edict alarmed San Antonio’s large German population.
At that time, one in every six
The women’s camp in Seagoville was built on eighty acres andwas surrounded by a six-foot, woven-wire-link fence topped by barbed wire. The guardhouse was manned at all times by agents of the Border Patrol. Guards also patrolled the perimeter of the camp, sometimes on horseback. The women and children lived in Victory Huts, prefabricated, small dwellings built during World War II, and six dormitories. Many of the women were Japanese, including fifty Japanese-language teachers from California. In addition, there were women and children from Latin American countries sick with flu, some with tuberculosis.
“We began admitting women and children from Central and South America. They were the families of male aliens, of enemy nationals—Germans, Japanese, and a few Italians who had been interned in other camps in the States. They had been caught up in a sort of dragnet because they were thought to be potentially dangerous to the security of the United States,” Stannard said. “It isn’t clear to me why the State Department came to work that out. Apparently it was the result of some fear that Japanese, Germans, and Italians in Central and South America might rise up in some way to endanger the United States. I know of no episodes where that happened, however.”
It was November and the temperature was about eighty degrees as Harrison, Stannard, and Kelly walked around a 240-acre Crystal City site that was used as a migrant-worker camp for Mexican laborers. Later, an additional 50 acres was acquired to the south of the existing camp, enlarging it to 290 acres. Due to the mild winter climate, landowners in Crystal City had four growing seasons a year, much of it devoted to spinach. In March 1937, a statue of Popeye, built of shiny fiberglass, was erected in front of the tiny, one-story city hall in Crystal City. It was dedicated to “the children of the world.” City leaders, all Anglo, proclaimed Crystal City the Spinach Capital of the World. Spinach was referred to as green gold. In 1945, the Del Monte Corporation bought the town’s cannery and produced 2.5 million cases of spinach a year. Popeye became the city’s iconic symbol, a totem with mixed messages. On the Angloside of town Popeye meant prosperity, a tribute to the thriving spinach industry. But on the Mexican side of town, where a majority of the citizens of Crystal City lived, the statue symbolized poverty.“We hated that statue,” said Jose Angel Gutierrez, who grew up in Crystal City and later became a civil rights leader in Texas. “The statue symbolized our servitude to the spinach and the Anglo owners of the company.”
On this day, only a few Mexican workers still lived on the migrant-worker site, which was owned by the Farm Security Administration. When war broke out, many Mexican migrant workers who came to Crystal City from the Northwest and Midwest each winter stopped coming for fear of being arrested. The federal government had doubled the number of agents patrolling the Mexican border, which was in effect closed.
It wasn’t only rock-ribbed Texas conservatives such as Congressman Martin Dies, chairman of the feared House Un-American Activities Committee, who stirred anti-immigrant sentiment. In San Antonio, liberal mayor Maury Maverick, who had served two terms in Congress as a loyal Roosevelt New Dealer, called on the chief of police to arm every officer with a submachine gun to defend against German spies who might cross the border from Mexico. Maverick’s edict alarmed San Antonio’s large German population.
At that time, one in every six
Similar Books
