Earlier this year I was engaged in a conversation about history regarding the Italian community and its extraordinary contribution to the North American experience. During the course of the discussion I casually alluded to a period (taking for granted that people would know about this) in Canadian history when Japanese, German, Ukranian, and Italian Canadians were interned in military camps and branded as enemy aliens during World War II. The person admitted that he knew of the Japanese experience, was not surprised of the German one, but was clueless that the Italians were also targeted.
It is also an odd fact that history books in Canada and commentators never mention the internment of Italian-Canadians. I had to find about the Germans in University and the Ukranians in a letter to the editor in a national newspaper. With this, I decided to write about this period in our history. It is unfortunate that some Canadians of Italian heritage are still not informed about this episode in Canadian, indeed, North American history.
The tragedy is that it did not just happen here in North America. It also took place in Great Britain (including Scotland) and Australia. In Britain, it was under the premise of Winston Churchill's fears of a "fifth column." Many Italians (about 200 in all) were arrested and sent to camps on the Isle of Man. Some were transported to Australia, and others found their way to Canada (as was the case with 2500 internees who came here on the Duchess of York,) about 600 of whom spent three years in a POW camp on St. Helene's Island under the Jacques Cartier bridge in Montreal. Many were sent to Petawawa, Ontario, and New Brunswick and treated as prisoners of war.
During this period, Italians were subjected to strict curfews, and in some places in the United States, travel was restricted to a five-mile radius from home. Regardless of the geographic location, lives and families were uprooted, and some even ended in tragedy. For example, when the Arandora Star was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Ireland at the cost of 682 lives, it was carrying 1571 German and Italian internees.
Among those who perished was Silvestro d'Ambrosio, a confectioner and restaurateur from Hamilton who had lived in Britain for 42 years. Ironically, he had a son in the Canadian army. It was not uncommon, for instance, for men in uniform to come back home only to find family members were interned.
Article comments
1 - Atul Sabharwal
This piece is so relevant. I am currently researching the story of plight of innocent Sikh immigrants on the ship Komagata Maru who were stopped from entering into Canada because in India at the same time some Sikh freedom fighters were running a freedom movement called Ghadr and were considered threat by British - so they were quarantined all over by British.
As I read the story the first thing that came to my mind was denial of Visas by U.S. Government to the members of certain communities after 9/11. And the sad fact that nothing has changed in all these years.
The governments play safe - never finding a long term solution - as you rightly said that over estimating the enemy is cheaper.
2 - Donnie Marler
Fine article. Well done.
3 - alessandro nicolo
Thanks Atul. If you can, keep me posted on that story.
4 - alessandro nicolo
Thanks.
5 - Atul Sabharwal
I will be able to talk more about it in some time as the work progresses.
6 - alessandro nicolo
In the meantime, might I suggest as a reading "The Lesser Evil" by Michael Ignatieff. It is relevant to our discussion here - even though it's written in the context of the terrorist threat.
7 - RJ Elliott
60+ years after the fact, American historians pretty much unanimously consider it a serious black mark of FDR's record that he interned tens of thousands of Japanese during WWII. FDR did this by Executive Order; he did not go to the Congress for this action. And the US Supreme Court upheld it.
However, what if FDR had not done this? Would some Japanese-Americans have engaged in Fifth-Column activity? If so, how many? And how damaging would their actions have been? We'll never know.
We do know that some people in Hawaii of Japanese descent gave crucial intelligence to Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Perhaps FDR was right? Maybe winning a global war requires such "reactionary" policies...
8 - STM
Can I just say this Alessandro: People were a bit jumpy and we were at war with these countries. The internment camps, while the whole thing was unfair, were at least fairly benign. People didn't have to work 'til they dropped and they received three square meals a day, in some cases eating better than the rest of the civilian population.
In Australia, many Italians, including POWs, were allowed out to work on local farms (a privelege not accorded the Japanese POWs) and many came back to live here after the war, setting up a huge wave of Italian migration.
I guess the fears were real at the time, although I'm baffled about the Ukrainians - however many were Nazi sympathisers and it was the Russian territory that contributed a large number of men to the SS.
9 - STM
"In World War I, Italians represented close to 10% (approximately 300,000) of war casualties even though they made up only 4% of the U.S. population."
Also, sorry old boy ... this figure is wrong. The US didn't enter the war until 1917 so total US casualties in WWI, while still dreadful, were very light compared to those of the other major combatants - 116,000 dead, approximately, about half the number of Americans who died in WWII, which might be where you've got mixed up.
I still think the internments, although unfair, were a neccessary evil. How do you tell who is a goodie and who is a baddie? In today's world, electronic and digital monitoring techniques would mean it wouldn't need to happen but back then it was a different story.
The only answer was to round up everyone and lock them up for the duration.
10 - alessandro nicolo
You're right STM. And I do mention this in the piece. However, many Italians (included other enemy aliens) born in North America did die, losing their families and their businesses. That's the tragic angle. Between you and me, there were strong whispers that the Liberal party was racist at the time and quite frankly this has never been denied. Memebers of the Liberal party of Canada were interned - this strikes me as excessive - and I'm not one to be lenient on people with criminal intent. Nor do I feel an offcial apology (acknowledgement is sufficient and more sincere) is necessary as long as we learn from it. I feel the U.S. government has a responsbility to its citizens to ensure its security and the reality is that many people are prepared to suspend part of their liberties temporarily to achieve the overall goal of defeating or quelling the terrorist threat - which is real. Back to Canada. Best to remember that the eugenics movement was not far removed from ths period so certain ideas of 'race classifications' still existed.
11 - alessandro nicolo
No arguement here about the 'necessary evil' thing. But there's a way to go about it. As for the figures, those are from the U.S. dep't of War. I forget what the 300 00 represents- I wrote this piece a while ago -but it's not casualties. I know they entered the war in 1917. The point is to show that Italians were already on their way to being firmly entrenched in American society by that time. Oddly, the same can't be said of Canada for some strange reason. Then again, this is a country that still only had English names until the 1990s on their pathetic soccer team. It simply did not reflect the realities of the country. Cripes, I can go to a Croatian or Portuguese or any other group soccer park and find better players than the lousy national team.
12 - alessandro nicolo
RJ, therein lies the debate. The questions you raise are exactly the ones being asked by scholars. It's not an easy thing. ESPECIALLY FOR A LIBERAL DEMOCRACY. It's easier for a totalitarian regime to close ranks and guard itself. It simply isn't the case with us. Bush can't go take a crap without someone blogger pouncing on him questioning how he sits on the bowl.
13 - alessandro nicolo
BTW, STM I will look into those figures as soon as I get back home. I'm away for the next two days.
14 - alessandro nicolo
STM, here are the figures.
10% of U.S. war casualties 'had Italian names' while they represented 4% of the overall U.S. pop. The 300 000 figure is the number of Italians who served in WWI. All from the U.S. Dep't of Waras I mentioned. I never talked about the number of casualties in numbers but the percentage of Italian casualties in relation to their population. So the figures were accuarate. Along the way, I discovered that it is estimated that 5 000 to 10 000 Italians fought in the American Civil War for both the North and South. The exact number is unkown since many Italians Anglacized their names and mixed marriages. A practice that persisted well into the 20th century - we see this with Hollywood actors a lot. During the American Revolution three Italian regiments totalling about 1 500 men assisted the revolutionaries.