Issue XXII - Italic Institute of America

coast and their freedom fwther restricted by curfews andtravel limits. In San Francisco, just to cite a conspicuousexample, the parents of baseball legend Joe DiMaggio wereforbidden to travel more than five miles from home without apermit (DiMaggio Sr. was a fisherman). Even noted physicistEnrico Fermi, who contributed enormously to America's developmentof the atomic bomb, had his travel restricted on theEast Coast and around Chicago. Others were penned up inQuonset huts and treated like prisoners of war. Noted teachers,actors and journalists in Italian settlements throughoutAmerica were branded "under suspicion," "subversive" or"disloyal."Joe Dl Maggio's parentswere subjected to curfewand travel restrictiondespite their son's fame.OVer 500,000 Italian-Americansserved In WW II whiletheir ethnic kin were consideredInternal enemies. Sgt.Anthony Basllone was amedal of honor winner wholater lost his life In combatA QUESTION OF LOGISTICSWhy did this happen? And why do we know so little aboutit?In the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan andthe subsequent declaration of war by the United States onJapan and its allies,ltaly and Germany, America went througha frenzy of bigotry in the guise of patriotism.People with links to Italy, Germany or Japan, no matterhow many years they had lived peacefully in the United States,suddenly were viewed in a hostile light.While it is widely known that Japanese Americans on theWest Coast were rounded up and interned in camps-in whattoday is rightly seen as an obscene trouncing of their Constitutionalrights-it is virtually a secret story that Italian Ameri·cans and Gennan Americans were victims of the same hysteria.The original intention of the military was to intern ~people of Italian, German or Japanese heritage, whether'--iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiixxn.iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii1994~iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil;;;;;;American citizens or not T t tv-c~~e obvious that such a roundup was impossible. Moreover, nanonal politicians, includingPresident Roosevelt, thought better of antagonizing ItalianAmerican voters in the East and Mid-WestSigniftcantly, Japanese Americans living in Hawaii, themost vulnerable U.S. territory, were left untouched simplybecause there were too many of them (one-third of the population)and they were too much involved in the island's economy.But in the Western states their number, about 100,000,and concentration were just right for internmentItalians, on the other hand. presented a logistical nightmare.They were dispersed throughout the country andwere not as racially distinctive as Japanese Americans.Moreover, Italian Americans had some political clout andpopularity. These were the days of New York City'sFiorello LaGuardia and baseball's Joe Di Maggio (MammaDiMaggio went so far as to take to the radio in a plea forcalm). And men like business tycoon A.P. Giannini (Bankof America) was himself a son of immigrants. But despitethe exemplary role-models and the disarming stereotypes ofChico Marx and Heney Armetta in American cinema at thattime, Italians had been objects of fear and suspicionthroughout the 1930's. Unlike the Japanese Americans, theItalic community expressed much enthusiasm for Mussoliniand the Fascist regime. In 1942, their ethnic pridewould return to haunt them.HURT&SHAMEThe reason we know so liuie of what happened to Italiansand Germans is twofold. On the one hand, the federal, state,and local governments were not proud of what they did.Many records were destroyed, actions were covered up ordenied and later generations of bureaucrats pleaded ignorance,often quite legitimately since little documentationDON'T SPEAK THEENEMY'S LANGUAGE!Just as the German-American Image suffered In theHun scare of the First World War, the Italian languageand culture was dealt a mortal blow with World War IIposters such as this.3iiiiiiiiiiii;;;;;;;;;;;;;iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii= The 1 talic Way;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;