The train to Crystal City : FDR's secret prisoner exchange program and America's only family internment camp during World War II / Jan Jarboe Russell.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781410477613
- ISBN: 1410477614
- Physical Description: 657 pages (large print), 8 unnumbered pages : illustrations, portraits ; 23 cm.
- Edition: Large print edition.
- Publisher: Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning, [2015]
Content descriptions
General Note: | "Thorndike Press large print nonfiction"--Title page verso. |
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references. |
Summary, etc.: | From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered more than 10,000 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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Genre: | Large type books. |
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The Train to Crystal City : FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
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Table of Contents
The Train to Crystal City : FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
Section | Section Description | Page Number |
---|---|---|
Preface | p. 15 | |
Part 1 | Without Trial | p. 25 |
1 | New Enemies | p. 27 |
2 | Eleanor vs. Franklin | p. 55 |
3 | Strangers in a Small Texas Town | p. 83 |
Part 2 | Destination: Crystal City | p. 125 |
4 | Internment Without Trial | p. 127 |
5 | A Family Reunion | p. 165 |
6 | The Hot Summer of '43 | p. 181 |
7 | "Be Patient" | p. 211 |
8 | To Be or Not to Be an American | p. 228 |
9 | Yes-Yes, No-No | p. 259 |
10 | A Test of Faith | p. 283 |
11 | The Birds Are Crying | p. 311 |
Part 3 | The Equation of Exchange | p. 331 |
12 | Trade Bait | p. 333 |
13 | The False Passports | p. 356 |
14 | Under Fire | p. 383 |
15 | Into Algeria | p. 399 |
16 | The All-American Camp | p. 416 |
17 | Shipped to Japan | p. 442 |
18 | Harrison's Second Act | p. 467 |
Part 4 | The Road Home | p. 487 |
19 | After the War | p. 489 |
20 | Beyond the Barbed Wire | p. 517 |
21 | The Train from Crystal City | p. 546 |
Acknowledgments | p. 579 | |
Sources and Notes | p. 583 | |
Bibliography | p. 639 | |
Photograph Credits | p. 653 |