Read Online The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange by Jan Jarboe Russell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jan Jarboe Russell
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twenty-four-hour surveillance. The Farm Security Administration had offered to donate the land, but Harrison realized it would take a million dollars or more to build and maintain the family internment camp.
A precedent existed for converting a government-owned facility to an internment camp. Earlier in 1942, the INS established the camp for single men in Kenedy, Texas, on land owned by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of FDR’s New Deal programs. On the day Harrison visited Crystal City, the camp in Kenedy was overcrowded with more than a thousand German and Japanese men, and conditions were harsh. Swiss inspectors, acting under the terms of the Geneva Convention rules, found the German internees “in an uproar.” Upon their arrival, seven hundred German internees were lassoed by Texas Rangers on horseback and herded into a stockade. Their living quarters were primitive as well, with internees sleeping in four-men Victory Huts that offered little shelter from the weather. Snakes slithered through the cracks in the walls. Following the protocolsof the Geneva Convention, which required that nationalities be segregated in prisoner-of-war camps, Ivan Williams, the officer in charge in Kenedy, packed the Japanese internees en masse into dormitories notorious for the stench of the communal toilet.
In Crystal City, at least the Victory Huts were secure and the site dotted with a few existing buildings. Still, much of the family camp would have to be built from the ground up. Utilities wouldn’t be a problem. Electrical service could be purchased from the Crystal City Power and Light Co. Natural gas was plentiful and cheap in oil-rich Texas. Telephone service might be a challenge in such a remote location, but there was a local carrier.
From Harrison’s point of view, the isolated location of the camp was also a positive. Crystal City, situated fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred miles from the East and West Coasts, areas that were considered vital to the war effort, was not a likely target for sabotage. It was geographically close to Latin America, from which many families would be transported. By the next day when Harrison boarded the train to make his journey back home to Rose Valley, he’d made his decision. Crystal City would be the location of the family camp.
• • •
Harrison’s trip to Crystal City had been a long time coming.He was born on April 27, 1899, in the Frankford section of Philadelphia, to Joseph Layland Harrison and his wife, Anna. His formal name was Earl Grant Harrison. Grant because he shared his birthday with Ulysses S. Grant.
Both of his parents were foreign-born. The immigrant experience was the primary lens through which Harrison viewed the world. His father, Joseph, was born in England and was brought to the United States as a child by his parents. He settled in Philadelphia and became a moderately successful wholesale grocer. Harrison’s mother, Anna, came from Northern Ireland with her three sisters, all of whom worked in the textile mills in Philadelphia, and died before the age of thirty-five.
Physically, Harrison resembled his father, a robust man whothought nothing of riding a bicycle from Philadelphia to Atlantic City, a round-trip of 130 miles, on Sundays, his only day off. But Harrison’s strongest memories were of his mother, an amateur actress who performed in stock companies around Philadelphia. In temperament, he shared Anna’s Irish charm and good nature. Like his mother, Earl made a point of rising each day with a smile. The idea of wasting time was anathema.
He grew up solidly middle class and attended Frankford High School, where he was president of his freshman, sophomore, and senior classes. He played all sports in high school, except cricket. Anna died before Earl graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as valedictorian of his class in 1920. After college, Harrison went to law school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1923.
A precedent existed for converting a government-owned facility to an internment camp. Earlier in 1942, the INS established the camp for single men in Kenedy, Texas, on land owned by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of FDR’s New Deal programs. On the day Harrison visited Crystal City, the camp in Kenedy was overcrowded with more than a thousand German and Japanese men, and conditions were harsh. Swiss inspectors, acting under the terms of the Geneva Convention rules, found the German internees “in an uproar.” Upon their arrival, seven hundred German internees were lassoed by Texas Rangers on horseback and herded into a stockade. Their living quarters were primitive as well, with internees sleeping in four-men Victory Huts that offered little shelter from the weather. Snakes slithered through the cracks in the walls. Following the protocolsof the Geneva Convention, which required that nationalities be segregated in prisoner-of-war camps, Ivan Williams, the officer in charge in Kenedy, packed the Japanese internees en masse into dormitories notorious for the stench of the communal toilet.
In Crystal City, at least the Victory Huts were secure and the site dotted with a few existing buildings. Still, much of the family camp would have to be built from the ground up. Utilities wouldn’t be a problem. Electrical service could be purchased from the Crystal City Power and Light Co. Natural gas was plentiful and cheap in oil-rich Texas. Telephone service might be a challenge in such a remote location, but there was a local carrier.
From Harrison’s point of view, the isolated location of the camp was also a positive. Crystal City, situated fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred miles from the East and West Coasts, areas that were considered vital to the war effort, was not a likely target for sabotage. It was geographically close to Latin America, from which many families would be transported. By the next day when Harrison boarded the train to make his journey back home to Rose Valley, he’d made his decision. Crystal City would be the location of the family camp.
• • •
Harrison’s trip to Crystal City had been a long time coming.He was born on April 27, 1899, in the Frankford section of Philadelphia, to Joseph Layland Harrison and his wife, Anna. His formal name was Earl Grant Harrison. Grant because he shared his birthday with Ulysses S. Grant.
Both of his parents were foreign-born. The immigrant experience was the primary lens through which Harrison viewed the world. His father, Joseph, was born in England and was brought to the United States as a child by his parents. He settled in Philadelphia and became a moderately successful wholesale grocer. Harrison’s mother, Anna, came from Northern Ireland with her three sisters, all of whom worked in the textile mills in Philadelphia, and died before the age of thirty-five.
Physically, Harrison resembled his father, a robust man whothought nothing of riding a bicycle from Philadelphia to Atlantic City, a round-trip of 130 miles, on Sundays, his only day off. But Harrison’s strongest memories were of his mother, an amateur actress who performed in stock companies around Philadelphia. In temperament, he shared Anna’s Irish charm and good nature. Like his mother, Earl made a point of rising each day with a smile. The idea of wasting time was anathema.
He grew up solidly middle class and attended Frankford High School, where he was president of his freshman, sophomore, and senior classes. He played all sports in high school, except cricket. Anna died before Earl graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as valedictorian of his class in 1920. After college, Harrison went to law school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1923.
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