In Australia during WWI and to a lesser extent WWII, police records where kept on those people who were of German descent and those from Italian or Japanese descent for WWII. In WWI, these people had to notify their local constabulary if they were descended from someone born in those countries by 2 generations ( or less ). i.e. grandchildren from a german couple were supposed to notify the local police of this descendency. Naturally most people kept quiet about their nationalities. People with german surnames were more or less automatically questioned by the police. For WWII, this did not occur, but the various police organisations did try and keep a close eye on the foreign communities. In most cases, nothing ever became of this information, but in others people were interned, property frozen or confiscated. In other situations, the Australian Security Service (like the FBI) kept dossiers on people and their activities during these periods of war. My question to the group, is this. Did any of these kinds of things happen to Germans, Italians and Japanese in the US during the wars (and especially in NJ)? If so, what was the criteria used to identify these people? Which Govt organisation collected this kind of information? What was the information used for? Is this information still available for research purposes? Regards, Steve Way