Refugees & Alien Internment
in World War II
HIS 206
Failure to Admit Jewish Refugees
No more than 250,000 refugees from Nazis
admitted to U.S. in 1930s-40s
Alien Registration Act (1940) required
registration & fingerprinting of all aliens
Also tightened definition of subversives to
include past affiliation
Approx. 5 million aliens registered
INS moved to Justice Dept.
Breckenridge Long
Wilbur Carr & Breckenridge Long in State
Dept. used LPC clause to block admission of
Jewish refugees
Travel visas renewed indefinitely for 15,000
following Kristallnacht
Quotas unblocked in fall 1940
The St. Louis in Havana, 1939
FDR invited 32 nations to Evian Conference
in 1938, but refused to change or relax
immigration laws
St. Louis turned back in 1939
The War Refugee Board
War Refugee Board
(1944) rescued 200,000
Jews
Worked with foreign gov’ts
Est. refugee camp at Ft.
Ontario, Oswego, NY
Hull, Morgenthau & Stimson, March 21, 1944
Registration at Ft. Ontario
U.S. military refused to
bomb Auschwitz, despite
bombing nearby factories
Race War in the Pacific
WWII Propaganda Posters
Internment of Japanese Americans
300,000 aliens (1/2 Japanese)
rounded up in week after Pearl
Harbor
FDR issued Executive Order
9066 Feb. 19, 1942
120,000 (2/3 U.S. citizens)
West coast, but not Hawaii
War Relocation Authority ran
internment camps
Upheld by Supreme Court in
Korematsu v. U.S. (1944)
Nisei 442nd Regiment one of the
most highly decorated units in
WW II
Challenging Internment
Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943)
Hirabayashi was U. of Washington student
Supreme Court unanimously upheld curfew as
reasonable wartime measure
Korematsu v. U.S. (1944)
Gordon Hirabayashi
Korematsu was U.S.-born welder
Court upheld internment 6-3
Roberts, Murphy & Jackson dissented:
• guilt must be individual, not collective
• no imminent threat existed
Case reopened in 1983 & conviction overturned
• Historian Peter Irons discovered gov’t has
suppressed its own finding that Japanese
Americans weren’t threat
Fred T. Korematsu
Pres. Clinton awarded him Medal of Freedom in
1998
Tule Lake Internment Camp
Going to School at Tule Lake
German & Italian Internment
11,000 German &
German Americans
interned
4,000 Germans shipped
to U.S. from Latin
America
2,000 exchanged for
American POWs in
Germany
1,800 Italians arrested
by FBI; 500 interned
German internees
Camp Kenedy, TX
Crystal City Internment Camp
Former FSA camp
for migrant farm
workers
Peak population was
3, 326 in May 1945
Separate sections
for German and
Japanese internees
Closed Nov. 1, 1947