Enemy Aliens: Italian-American Internment During WWII

Webinar presented by JOE GIORDANO, Saturday, April 8, 2023

Buona Pasqua.

Thanks for having me and asking me to speak about a troubling time: the internment of Italians by the United States government during World War II.

I’ll make a short introduction to the subject before supplying some historical perspective on Italian immigration to lay the groundwork for how the United States arrived at the decision to declare Italians as enemy aliens.

Imagine you’re an Italian child awoken in the middle of the night by pounding on your door. Agents of the FBI storm into your home and arrest your father “by order of President Roosevelt,” with no further explanation. Your mother’s face looks bewildered and panicked as you watch your father hustled out of his pajamas into street clothes. When your mother pleads with the agents to tell her where your father will be held, they refuse to disclose the location. No private conversations with family members are permitted. Goodbyes and final embraces are not allowed, and no personal effects can be taken.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, under the Alien Enemies Act, President Franklin Roosevelt issued proclamation 2527 and nearly 700,000 Italian-born immigrants in the United States were branded as “enemy aliens” and curfewed inside their homes from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Thousands were banned from “coastal zones,” and forced from their homes. East and West Coast Italian fishermen lost their livelihood and their boats. Thousands across the U.S. were arrested, and hundreds were interned in military camps. All Italian residents had the threat of arrest hanging over their heads as well as the possible confiscation of their homes, businesses, and property. Once a person was designated an enemy alien little more needed to be done to impose on them whatever the government wished.

Here are a few stories.

In New York, the FBI arrested Louis Berizzi on December 8, 1941. The Enemy Alien Custodian sealed his office at Rockefeller Plaza and froze the family’s financial accounts. His daughter worked at Saks Fifth Avenue. When FBI agents visited Saks, she was fired.

Filippo Fordelone, a radio broadcaster in Los Angeles, was arrested and interned. The Government froze the family’s bank account, and his wife struggled to care for their three young daughters.

Mario Valdastri, a naturalized citizen living in Hawaii, was interned and shipped to the mainland without cold-weather clothes. In the internment camp, he stuffed newspapers inside his garments for warmth.

Dr. Vincent Lapenta, Italian consul in Indiana received a Naples medical degree before immigrating to the U.S., where he obtained a second degree at Harvard Medical School. He practiced in Indianapolis and became surgeon-in-chief in St. Francis Hospital. As a researcher, he developed a serum to control bleeding. He was rounded up and incarcerated for eighteen months without a charge.

After Baltimore’s Frank DiCara and his three older brothers enlisted in the U.S. military and were stationed in Europe and the Pacific, Federal Agents confiscated their parents’ shortwave radio.

Baseball stars, Dom and Joe DiMaggio had enlisted. Their parents weren’t U.S. citizens, and their father narrowly avoided FBI arrest. He and his wife were required to carry photo IDs (as were all enemy aliens), and he was barred from the waterfront and had his boat confiscated by the government.

Married to an American and four months from receiving his citizenship, opera singer and international star Ezio Pinza was arrested and confined at Ellis Island. Only through the intervention of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia was he ultimately released.

At the time of these events, Italians were the largest ethnic community in the United States because of a massive turn-of-the-century immigration.

After Italy’s 1870 consolidation into a nation, il Risorgimento, the policies imposed by the north turned economic conditions in the already poor south dreadful and the great wave of Italian immigration began. The south of Italy, the Mezzogiorno, spoke different languages, had been dominated for centuries by foreign powers, and had distinct cultures. Many in the north of Italy held southern Italians in disdain. The lack of jobs and the threat of starvation compelled many to seek work in North and South America, and people became Italy’s most successful export.

From 1870 to 1920, 5 million Italians settled in the United States.

The United States was sparsely populated, and western migration facilitated by railroads plus enormous industrial growth drove the need for cheap labor. Italians worked the mines for the iron and coal demanded by new factories, built the skyscrapers, subways, canals, railroads and tunnels and worked in factories. Unskilled laborers constituted over ninety percent of Italy’s migrants.

If an Italian wasn’t a mason, a tailor, a barber, or a shoemaker, or couldn’t open a shop with his family, he was consigned to manual tasks. Southern Italians were eighty percent of the immigrants to New York, and often used as “human steam shovels,” constructing the skyscrapers and subways of New York. Women most often worked in the garment industry. Poor immigrants hadn’t the money for transportation and had to find work immediately upon arrival in the States, triggering the padroni system of employment. Padroni were labor agents and sub-contractors building railroads, tunnels, and canals with crews of migrant laborers obtained by recruiting Italians in Italy in exchange for a percentage of their pay. Despite the padroni cut of their wages, men earned far more money in the States than they could in Italy.

Early Italian immigrants were predominately males, evidence of their intention to return home. Migrant Italians were termed “Birds of Passage”- by the way, the title of my novel – because they made multiple trips to earn money in the States before returning to Italy. Italians were the first immigrants who returned to their home country.

After the Civil War, planters in southern states recruited Italians to replace freed blacks in agriculture and as laborers. Most of the Italian immigrants to New Orleans were farmers from Sicilian towns working sugarcane and other crops.

In 1890, Italians were accused of assassinating New Orleans police chief, David Hennessy. Nine Italians were tried, resulting in six acquittals and three mistrials. Nonetheless, the next day, a mob of twenty thousand stormed the prison and lynched the nine and two other Italians imprisoned on unrelated charges, the largest mass lynching in U.S. history. The police arrested hundreds of Italian immigrants, on the pretext that they were all criminals.

Teddy Roosevelt, ten years from becoming president, said the lynching was “a rather good thing.” The future governor of Louisiana, John Parker, who had helped organize the lynch mob said that Italians were “worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous.”

In 1911, the Dillingham Commission consisting of both Senate and House members decided that southern and eastern Europeans were an inferior race and large numbers of these immigrants threatened the American way of life. It should be noted that prejudice against Italians continued through the internment of World War II. As a result of the Dillingham Commission findings, immigration laws in the United States were tightened and the ability of Italian men to cycle between Italy and the U.S. was put in doubt. “Birds of Passage” Italians had to decide if they would stay in the U.S. and bring their families.

Italian living conditions in New York were squalid. Jacob Riis in his book, How the Other Half Lives, said, “Cleanliness is the characteristic of the Negro. In this respect he is immensely the superior of the lowest of the whites, the Italians.”

As you understand, Italians at the time were held in low regard, so much so that in the 1940s and 50s, some Italians changed their last name in an attempt not to be stigmatized. Parents often didn’t emphasize speaking Italian, instead pushing their children to assimilate as Americans. But despite the prejudice, many Italians remained in the United States. Why?

Italian immigrants were drawn to neighborhoods where kin and friends had settled before them, so they developed a network. Factories transformed Italians from agricultural peasants into wage-earners. The Italian work ethic and belief in family encountered a degree of economic mobility and city-life social interactions not available to most men or women in the agricultural-orientated villages they left. They found this new economic and social order attractive.

The legal foundation for FDR’s proclamation to declare Italians enemy aliens was laid in 1798.

Under the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act and subsection, the Alien Enemies Act, enemy aliens were defined as foreign nationals of a country at war with the United States. The law allowed enemy aliens to be detained.

By the way, the 1798 act also suppressed criticism of the US government. President John Adams didn’t like what newspapers favoring Thomas Jefferson said about him. Although not given the modern term of disinformation, there’s nothing new in recent calls for squashing news stories or alternative viewpoints to those pushed by the U.S. Government. Even the Founding Fathers did it.

In 1940, the Smith Act required non-citizens to register with the federal government and set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence (another attempt to suppress free speech). Registration of resident Italians set the stage for quick arrest when WW2 started.

Following Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war by Italy against the U.S., FDR issued the proclamation that classified Italian residents as enemy aliens. No political distinctions were made for these non-naturalized residents, for example those who’d fled Mussolini’s fascism.

Anticipating the war, FDR had asked the FBI to compile of list of those to be detained, and used his authority against Japanese, Germans, and Italians. Immediately following Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack, the FBI began arrests, placing about 1,800 Italians in custody, many kept for up to two years in camps in Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.

Most taken into custody were diplomats, businessmen and students, especially those living near “sensitive coasts.”

All enemy aliens were required to surrender hand cameras, short-wave radio receiving sets, and radio transmitters. They were subject to curfew and movement restrictions and later forced to move out of certain Exclusion Zones.

Further, enemy aliens were required to register at local post offices, be fingerprinted, photographed, and carry photo-bearing “enemy alien registration cards” at all times.

Fifty-mile Exclusion Zones on the West Coast were established adversely impacting longshoremen and fishermen, causing them to lose their livelihood. The East Coast avoided Exclusion Zones as Italians had more political clout to blunt removal actions. Fiorello La Guardia had been mayor of New York since 1934 and he threatened Washington with a retaliation march if New Yorkers were treated like the West Coast.

Nonetheless, 51-year-old mother Angela Puleo, stigmatized as an enemy alien, was questioned, fingerprinted, and photographed. Officials took her camera and she had to carry an ID booklet at all times, despite her having three sons on active military duty.

Pasquale DeCicco had served as acting vice consul of the New Haven Connecticut Italian consulate. In 1909, six years after his arrival in the United States, he became an American citizen. During World War I, he enlisted in the Italian Army. Although Italy had sided with America in that war, the U.S. government held his Italian service against him, disregarding the fact that forty-two members of his family who had immigrated to the United States were American citizens. The FBI arrested the 63-year-old in front of his wife and daughter. He sent letters pleading his loyalty to his adopted country. Nonetheless, the government confined him as an enemy alien in Hartford, in East Boston and then in Ft. McAlester in Oklahoma, where he lost 32 pounds. Unable to pay his mortgage, the family lost their home.

FBI agents in San Jose, California arrested Filippo Molinari, an Italian immigrant who sold subscriptions to L’Italia, a popular newspaper in his Italian American community, told only that he was being detained “by order of the President.”

A few days later, Molinari and approximately 500 other “enemy aliens”—including more Italian nationals as well as Japanese and German immigrants from California were herded onto a train bound for an internment center in Missoula, Montana. Later, Molinari recalled how cold his feet were when he stepped off of the train onto the freshly fallen snow still wearing his slippers and pajamas because he wasn’t allowed to grab a coat or any heavy winter clothes before his arrest.

Because Josie Patania’s parents were classified as enemy aliens, every year she filled out an alien card for them. She pushed her mother to apply for U.S. citizenship, teaching her how to write her name and say George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. She coached her that if authorities showed her a picture of Mussolini to say, “shoot him.” When authorities actually asked her mother about Mussolini, she responded, “Me boom boom.”

The U.S. government requisitioned fishing yawls from the fleet in Boston and Gloucester, Mass. to use as minesweepers and patrol boats. At least 200 fishermen were grounded as enemy aliens during the war. The government either bought the vessels outright or chartered them.

Josie’s father was taken off a fishing boat, so he went to work in the spinach plant, washing the spinach. Her brothers enlisted in the service although they weren’t citizens. They were sworn in before being shipped to Normandy and the Philippines.

Fishermen who were allowed to keep their boats, worked under severe restriction. They were given a password each day, received a clearance pass from a Customs House, then checked in at a Coast Guard barge to ensure they carried provisions only for the crew. At sea, radios could be used just for emergency.

Throughout this time, protests against Italian enemy alien treatment were lodged. A number of trade unions appealed to FDR to remove the stigma of being branded an enemy alien from those who’d started the naturalization process.

The Italian American Labor Council in New York voiced opposition to a blanket law that didn’t discriminate subversive Italians from those loyal to America.

All protests against Italians being stigmatized as enemy aliens came from Italian groups. The general American population raised no objection to the curtailing of individual rights and supported the action of Roosevelt against Italians, Germans, and Japanese.

I need to pause a moment to point out the particularly harsh treatment of Japanese by the United States Government. FDR’s Executive Order 9066, in February 1942 authorized the forced removal of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to inland relocation centers under the War Relocation Authority. Approximately two-thirds of the 119,000 Japanese incarcerated were actually U.S. citizens. In December 1944 the Executive Order was suspended and the detainees released, but it wasn’t until 1976 when the Executive Order was terminated.

Turning back to Italians, despite enemy alien treatment, and perhaps to prove their patriotism, during World War II, hundreds of thousands of Italian Americans enlisted in the military and thousands made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the United States. An estimated 1.5 million Italian Americans enlisted, approximately 10% of the soldiers. 13 Italians were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A small footnote of interest. At the start of WWII, the U.S. Navy commandeered the French ocean liner, Normandie, which had sought refuge in New York Harbor. Renamed the USS Lafayette, in February 1942, during work to repurpose the vessel as a troopship, the liner caught fire and sank at port. Despite a congressional investigation that concluded the fire was accidental, sabotage was suspected.

Fearing Nazi saboteurs, the Navy understood the mafia’s influence at the New York docks and approached boss Lucky Luciano for assistance. He was serving a 30–50-year prison sentence. In what was termed “Operation Underworld,” Luciano agreed to assist the government and ordered his capos to act as lookouts and report any suspicious activity. Strikes were forbidden and no other ships were sabotaged.

Luciano’s contacts even assisted in the Allies’ 1943 amphibious invasion of Sicily by providing maps of the island’s harbors, photographs of its coastline and names of trusted contacts inside the Sicilian Mafia, who also wished to see Mussolini toppled.

On May 8, 1945, the same day World War II ended in Europe, Luciano filed a petition for executive clemency. Ironically, the man who had prosecuted the mobster a decade earlier, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, pardoned Luciano in January 1946 due to his assistance in the war effort. However, much to Luciano’s displeasure, Dewey ordered him deported to his native Italy.

The ordeal for Italians finally ended on Columbus Day, 1942, when Attorney General Francis Biddle lifted restrictions against Italian nationals living as long-term residents. He had political reasons to do it. Congressional elections were coming up, and Italian Americans made up an enormous voting bloc. Plus, the United States anticipated the invasion of Italy (July1943) and as already indicated, Italian Americans made up a significant number of the U.S. fighting force and would be a critical part of the invasion. Removing the enemy alien stigma from family at home undoubtedly raised morale of the Italian American troops.

After restrictions were lifted, ID cards were eliminated, and 200,000 elderly Italians were offered citizenship waving the literacy requirement. However, those interned in camps remained until after Italy’s surrender in September 1943, having spent nearly two years as prisoners.

Italians have been extremely successful in assimilating and succeeding in U.S. society. Perhaps the stigmatization as “enemy aliens” prompted Italians to push their children to become Americans even harder. Ironically, the stain on our history might be a contributing factor to our success.

A critical lesson that I take from reflecting on the experience of U.S. Italian residents and those Germans and Japanese considered enemy aliens during World War II, is that when the Federal Government perceives a crisis, they too easily fall into a full totalitarian mode of operation.

Thanks for listening. Before taking questions, I’d like to thank Pamela for the images she organized for the talk. She also compiled a list of records for those who wish to do additional research.

Now, I’ll take questions.