German Americans Interned During WWII

Your Dec. 11 article on the Japanese American internment at Manzanar was of great interest to me because I was interned, along with my sister and parents, in a camp near Crystal City, Texas, during World War II. The location was an outpost exactly like Manzanar, fenced in with towers and armed guards. Both my sister and I were American citizens, born in Chicago. My mom and dad, though from Germany, had been in this country many years. Our situation was not unique. Many others of German ancestry were rounded up at the beginning of the war and interned.

I was 9 and my sister was 3 when we were sent to camp. My family and I were deported to Germany toward the end of the war, in time to be bombed and invaded by victorious American troops. I couldn’t speak a word of German. When I was 15, my mother was able to get back to the U.S. with my sister and me.

Most of the concentration camp adults have died, but a large number of us children are still around -- and held our first reunion at Crystal City last month. As with Manzanar, there wasn’t much left of the camp, just some of the old foundations and the excavated remnant of the old irrigation reservoir we had used as a swimming pool. We were able to commiserate with many Japanese internees who attended and with whom we’d lived those many years ago.

This reunion, along with exchanging many oral histories and testimonies, helped us to exorcise much of our past trauma. However, only two of those who were adults during the internment were able to attend, charming ladies now in their mid-90s. It would have been nice if my mom and dad had lived to share this experience and, better still, if there were public knowledge and government recognition of this past injustice.

Elizabeth

(Lechner) Kvammen

Newport Beach