There, 30 miles from the Mexican border, an estimated 6,000 men, women and children who were classified as enemy aliens were imprisoned for varying periods until 1948, when it was shut down. The author focuses on the only-and largely unknown-internment camp built expressly for families it was located outside Crystal City, Texas. In “The Train to Crystal City,” Jan Jarboe Russell tells the story of the Eiserloh family-and the great number of other German, Italian and Japanese immigrants whose lives were torn apart because of American policies enacted following the attack on Pearl Harbor. By the time Ingrid, then 11, returned from school that winter day, her father was gone. 8, 1942, he was arrested by FBI agents and placed in “custodial detention” (which meant he could be held in prison indefinitely) owing to whispers at work and among neighbors that he was a Nazi sympathizer. He had designed bridges, including the first iron drawbridge in Ohio, over a wide expanse of the Cuyahoga River. Her father, Mathias, was a German immigrant who worked as a structural engineer for the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. I was fascinated when I received word of a book by Jan Jarboe Russell entitled The Train to Crystal City: FDRs Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and. Ingrid Eiserloh was born in New York and grew up in Strongsville, Ohio.
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