Dorothea Lange photographs of Japanese internment camps

[3Hotdogs]

1. The internment was pushed by a group, "Native Sons of the Golden West." It is no coincidence that some of their members

began buying property of the displaced people.

Of course, there was war hysteria. People living on the U.S. coast reported seeing flashing signal lights off shore. This led to the speculation that it was Japanese submarines, signaling to supporters on shore. The lights were later determined to be those of fishing boats.

On the east coast, the hysteria was less pronounced but with a substantiated threat that came when German saboteurs were captured on the coast of Long Island. They were later executed. One of my students, of German ancestry, told me about her grandfather who was disappeared for about a week. Then released. She didn't know much more about it since her grandparents refused to talk about it.

Side bit of information. Years ago, I read a book about the sinking of U.S. Liberty boats by German submarines. Many of us are familiar with the request of U.S. authorities to turn off lights of U.S. cities on the coast because the lights were used by the German subs to outline targets. As I recall, no city cooperated with this request because it would cost businesses.

There was one sub that was targeted and captured. The captain had, in his pocket, ticket stubs for a performance in Boston the prior evening.

That is all I can think of.

3H