Hi Steve, Guess you've never heard the shameful story of how thousands of Japanese Americans were taken from their houses, their possessions seized, and put into internment camps during WWII. Olympic skater Kristi Yamaguchi's parents were in these camps. One of the camps, at least, is now a state park/monument, whatever, that I visited. They look pretty bleak. On the German side, I've read in history books how in WWI there were attacks on businesses, and some people, of German descent. In my own family, 4 of my great great grandparents went from Germany and settled in Newark. My grandmother was fluent in German as that's what they spoke at home. She didn't learn English till she went to school. She was 15 when we entered the war. She forgot German completely - I bet it was as a result of the prejudice at that time of her life. Regards, Lise >From: Steve Way <stepway@box.net.au> >To: NJESSEX-L@rootsweb.com >Subject: WWI and WWII records >Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 01:03:26 +1000 > >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 > > >==== NJESSEX Mailing List ==== >Visit the Essex County Genealogy Web Site at: ><http://www.rootsweb.com/~njessex/> > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com