UNITED STATE’S CONGRESS APOLOGIZES FOR MISTREATMENT OF ITALIAN RESIDENTS DURING WWII

 

On the seventh of December, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a wake-up call to the realization that the two large oceans between the United States, Europe and Asia, were not insurmountable walls of defense. Shortly after the attack against Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy on the eleventh of that December, declared war on the United States. The United States went into a state of fear, as we did after the attack on The World Trade Center on the eleventh September, 2001. There was a scramble to protect the nation and it took many forms, some rightly so and some not.

Out of fear and concern for the safety of our country, the U.S. Government made decisions that were quite questionable regarding aliens and natural born citizens (Japanese Americans) residing in the United States. To protect our country the United States government interned many Italians as well as others in camps or placed them under significant restriction. Some even had their property confiscated, with never receiving reparations.

 Most Italian Americans are only aware of the internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese aliens and of the restrictions placed on their movement and location of residence. The same occurred to Italian and German Americans and aliens. At the beginning of World War II, there were 600,000 Italian aliens in the United States. All of them at the time of the declaration of war, by Benito Mussolini, became enemy aliens. Unlike the Japanese, the population of Italians was overwhelming. Government officials were in a dilemma asking; what are we going to do? We can’t intern them all. That was out of the question, so they developed a criterion of elimination to seek out those who were a threat to the U.S. and intern them. This was an awesome task, and injustices were going to occur.

All Italian aliens had to register within four months of the declaration of war at identified registration locations. Thousands of Italians came under various restrictions, if their livelihood involved using a boat they had to leave it, sell it or have it impounded by the government. If they lived near any oceanic coast, they were required to move inland.  They had to hand over to the local police such things as radios, telephones and flashlights, and were subject to surprise house visits and searches by federal agents. These usually occurred at night after 11:00 p.m. Many had lived in the United States for thirty or more years and had children that were born in America, who were fighting against our enemies on both fronts. Yet, the government interned or restricted their parents in their movements. One individual account tells of an Italian women having to relocate on the same day she received news of her son’s death while fighting in the war, (see: http://www.amazon.com/Internment-History-Relocation-Italian-Americans/ by Stephen C. Fox,).

In their unannounced searches of residences, if they found anything they thought were prohibited items, they confiscated them, along with any reading material that was suspect. The violator then faced a hearing before a civilian tribunal. These tribunals had the power to intern. Many brought before the panels had curfews imposed on them and had to be at home by 8:00 p.m. These things were done even if their children were Americans and/or a spouse was American. The parents of the baseball fame DiMaggio brothers could no longer work their fishing boat and had to move five miles inland from the coast. The government officials seized and impounded their father’s boat for the duration of the war. Mr. and Mrs. DiMaggio could not visit one of their sons’ restaurants on one of the San Francisco wharves.

The amount of Italian aliens interned was 228.  On the East coast they sent them to Ellis Island for processing and then every three or four months moved them from military base to military base throughout the U.S. They most often ended at Fort Missoula, Montana.  Here the government maintained one thousand Italian citizens and six hundred and fifty Japanese citizens. For complete procedures of moving and interning the Italians see: (http://www.amazon.com/Road-Missoula-Laurence-Amuso-ebook/)

On the Monday the twelfth of October, 1942, Attorney General Biddle during a Columbus Day speech at Carnegie Hall issued a proclamation ending wartime restrictions against Italians. He stated, “Italians will not be considered enemy aliens after October 19, 1942. We have carefully checked the 600,000 Italian aliens and there has been cause to intern only 228 of them.” He further announced on the radio, “I will recommend a bill to Congress that will grant to any alien, who is eligible for citizenship without taking the literacy test, provided he or she is fifty years old or older and came to the United States before July 1, 1942, and has been living in the country continuously since then.”  The Germans and the Japanese did not fare so well for those two countries remained at war with the U.S. until conquered in 1945.

The mistakes that occurred during the war, have not been forgotten, they may have lain in secret for many years and finally came to light such that from 1980 to 2000, attempts have been made to rectify those errors of judgment through compensation and/or apology. As a result in 1999, under the strong leadership of Congressman Eliot Engel along with Congressman Rick Lazio, House Rule.2442, The War Time Violation of Italian Civil Liberty the House passed the act and on the seventh of November, 2000, Congress passed Public Law 106-451. Please see https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/106/hr2442. The act begins with the findings, “The freedom of more than 600,000Italian born immigrants in the United States and their families were restricted during WWII, by government measures that branded them enemy aliens, and included carrying an identifications, travel restrictions, and seizure of personal property. It continues, reporting the removal of people from their homes, prohibitions of where they could live, imposition of curfews, arrests and internment, in military camps.”

In light of the above, Mike Maiorana a boy during WW II clearly remembered when officials came to his house in Monterey, Ca. and searched, more than once, for guns, flashlights, cameras, shortwave radios and anything else that could be used to signal the enemy.  His father was a naturalized citizen, and yet forced to move from Monterey to Salinas and lose his livelihood by having his fishing boat confiscated.

Chet Campanella, who experienced similar disenfranchisement, entered an annual, “There ought to be law,” contest and cited, “The treatment of Italians in California was horrible and there wasn’t one tiny bit of evidence to indicate that any Italians were responsible for any type of spying or sabotage.”

Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) sponsored bill.  Senate Resolution SCR95 2009-10 Apology to Italian Americans. Consequently, the California legislature passed the resolution expressing “deepest regret” for the wartime internment, curfews, confiscations and other indignities that thousands of Italian and Italian American families faced.  The Grand Council of Fascism deposed Benito Mussolini on July 25, 1943 and on September 3, 1943 Italy became an ally of the U.S.  For historical novel of these events please see http://www.amazon.com/Road-Missoula-Laurence-Amuso-ebook/.

Below are photographs of Italian internees at Ft. Missoula, Montana.

 

 

THE CITY OF MILANO

 

Milan, in English, is as of 2014, the largest city in population in Italy with Naples being the second, and is the capital of the region of Lombardy. The city has a long history as the other communities of the Peninsula.

Milan is the main industrial, commercial, and financial center of the country. It hosts the Borsa Italiana (the equivalent of Wall Street). It has the third largest economy after London and Paris. It is also a capital of fashion. Some of its land marks are: the Milan Cathedral—Il Duomo di Santa Maria Nascente, simply known as Il Duomo, which is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and the fifth largest cathedral worldwide. Its construction began in 1386, of which many say is yet incomplete.  The fifteenth century Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie containing the paintings of Da Vinci, such as the Last Supper; La Scala Opera House, the Sforza Castle, the famous glass roofed shopping arcade―The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio. These are only a few of the sites of the city which began as a community sometime in 400 BC. Two hundred years later the Romans conquered the area and gave it the name of Mediolanum, from which the name Milan derived.

When Caesar Augustus (Gaius Octavius), Julius Caesar’s grandnephew came into power, he made Milan a capital, and named the region Transpadana. In the third century AD it became the capital of the western empire. By this time Christianity had spread throughout the Mediterranean area and became imbedded in Milan. Many of the churches today trace their origins of beginning to this period. The city’s first bishop, by popular acclaim, was Aurelius Ambrosius, St. Ambrose, in 340 AD. He became one of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the fourth century. He is the patron saint of the city.

When the Roman Empire went into decline, a large Germanic tribe, the Lombards, invaded and took control of the city and much of Italy. Today, as mentioned, the region of which Milan is the capital is Lombardia, named after the Lombards. The Italians, called them  Longobardi, meaning, long beards. Below are pictures of exterior and interior of Il Duomo.
 

THE CITY OF PAESTUM

 

Eighty miles south of Pompeii is a place of which many tourists are unaware, and that is the ancient city of Paestum. The Greeks settled there in seventh century BC and many of the temples they built are still intact. It is an ancient town dating back to 700 BC.  It later became a part of Magna Graecia. The Greeks founded a community there around 600 BC.  The original inhabitants were the Oscans and archeology reveals that the two, the Greeks and Oscans, lived together harmoniously.  When the Greeks arrived they called it Poseidonia after their sea god Poseidon. The name is equal to the Roman god Neptune. Sometime around 400 BC, the Lucans, an Italic people, conquered and ruled until 273 BC, after which it became a Roman colony. They renamed it Paestum. In Italian Poseidnonia translates into Positano, which is a nearby famous resort town on the Amalfi Peninsula.

Since the Greeks mostly settled in southern Italy they gave the names to many communities. These names later became Italian. For example, Napoli was Neapolis, meaning new city, Siracusa, Sirako, (swamp), Brindisi, Brentension, (Deer head), Cefalú  cephalic or khefale meaning head…

When Hannibal was raising havoc in the peninsula the people of Paestum kept their allegiance to Rome. After the defeat of Hannibal, it received special recognition and was able to mint its own coinage. It stayed under the dominion of Rome until the end of the Empire in the West.

During the Middle Age, the town declined into complete abandon.  It wasn’t until 1840, when an interest in things ancient became popular, that the city was uncovered. To the amazement of everyone a number of temples the Greeks built were still standing. Unlike Pompeii and Herculaneum that the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius covered in volcanic debris; weeds, trees and vines overgrew whatever was in Paestum. It is because of that, much of the city remained intact.

 Paestum was originally a coastal city, but due to siltation it now sits one mile from the seashore. The temples yet standing have many different missing parts, mainly the roofs and the statues of the gods that sat in them. The base of the temples are huge, easily the size of a football field or larger. The main temples standing today are those of Hera, Apollo, and Athena. All these temples are in the Doric style of architecture. These gems of Greek construction, many consider second to those of Athens in architecture, in general, many historians ascribe them as the best-preserved Doric temples in the world.

When they were uncovered in the eighteenth century archeologist misidentified two of them as the temples of Neptune and Ceres, and that they were basilicas, which for the Romans, were administrative buildings, not temples. The city had a forty-nine foot in height wall around it, with a number of redoubts. A moat protected the wall. The area, in and immediately outside of the city proper, covers some twenty-five hectares―each being ten-thousand square feet. 

On the grounds is a museum with many artifacts. An imposing one is of Zeus, the chief of all gods.  He lived on Mount Olympus and played games with the people and the other gods. This statue portrays very clearly the view the Greeks had of their god. They considered their gods human like themselves, they had all the wants, weaknesses and strengths that they have, but the gods were one step above them. The statue of Zeus or Poseidon shows him with a smirk on his face and a twinkle in his eye as if to say, “Gotcha!”  Wall paintings show him wearing a hat that looks like the ten-gallon type worn in the American West. He appears to be quite the character.

Also see, https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Paestum+museum.