Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Texas

FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families--many US citizens--were incarcerated.

From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas, a small desert town at the southern tip of Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The only family internment camp during World War II, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called "quiet passage." During the course of the war, hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City, including their American-born children, were exchanged for other more important Americans--diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries--behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany.

Focusing her story on two American-born teenage girls who were interned, author Jan Jarboe Russell uncovers the details of their years spent in the camp; the struggles of their fathers; their families' subsequent journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan; and their years-long attempt to survive and return to the United States, transformed from incarcerated enemies to American loyalists. Their stories of day-to-day life at the camp, from the ten-foot high security fence to the armed guards, daily roll call, and censored mail, have never been told.

Combining big-picture World War II history with a little-known event in American history that has long been kept quiet, The Train to Crystal City reveals the war-time hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, the secrets of FDR's tactics to rescue high-profile POWs in Germany and Japan, and how the definition of American citizenship changed under the pressure of war.

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Jan Jarboe Russell

"The ... story of a secret FDR-approved prisoner exchange program run during World War II from Crystal City, Texas, an American internment camp where thousands of families were incarcerated"--Jacket flap.

Category - Non Fiction / Biography & Autobiography

Format - Hardcover

Condition - Good

Listed - A year ago

Views - 8

Ships From - Texas

Est. Publication Date - Feb 2015

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