SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL

Mary McCaslin's Roundup

October 28, 2007

WE WERE NOT THE ENEMY

In the preface of Santa Cruz resident Heidi Gurcke Donald’s book, “We Were Not The Enemy,” she starts with a remembrance of a childhood game. She writes, “I am in nursery school, and we are playing a singing game. Sleeping Beauty lies in the center of our circle, giggling as she tries to keep still, and we crouch around her. Sometimes my little sister or I get to be Sleeping Beauty, but usually we are part of the circle. We sing the verses and gradually stand taller, until finally we are all on tiptoe, hands held high over our heads, shouting the last verse, ‘The hedge grows very high!,’ as we try to form an impenetrable barrier. A prince, chosen from the class, always gets through our hedge and frees our captive. Our nursery school is surrounded by a different sort of hedge; the thorns are barbed wire. There are watchtowers and armed guards. There is no prince.”

She goes on to say that when she began looking into her family’s World War II imprisonment at a camp in Crystal City, Texas her idea was to record what had happened for her children, Ian and Alexa. She soon realized that the experience did not represent an isolated injustice to one family, but is a pattern that occurs whenever a nation feels threatened. Families around the world are at risk whenever government policy-makers assume that ethnicity alone decides loyalty. She states, “I hope this look at an almost unknown chapter of United States history will be a reminder that there are lessons to be learned from our past.”

During the Second World War the United States implemented three programs to identify and imprison civilians considered a threat to the country. Under the War Relocation Authority (WRA), based on Executive Order 9066 (issued February 19, 1942), legal resident aliens and naturalized citizens of German, Italian and Japanese ethnicity and their families were asked to voluntarily relocate from zones that the U.S. Army felt were militarily sensitive. Soon the request became a command for all Japanese, while only selected German and Italian aliens were ordered to move.

More selectively, the Alien Enemy Control Unit, using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, attempted to evaluate and classify the potentially dangerous activities of individual Germans, Italians and Japanese legally residing in the United States. Evaluations were often inaccurate, based on reports gathered by the FBI from neighbors, business associates and even family members. Out of a population of approximately 300, 000 Germans around 1 percent were arrested and interned, many with wives and children, in camps run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Often, family members were U.S. citizens. Today the Alien Enemies Act is still in use, now for the current “war on terror.”

In a third program, the Special War Problems Division, run by the U.S. State Department, over 8,500 German and other Axis residents, and their families living in Latin America were swept into local detention centers. An unknown number were sent by the United States directly to Germany, Japan or Italy, while thousands of others were deported to the United States. Some of these prisoners and many of their families were citizens of the countries from which they were expelled. They were housed in INS camps like prisoners of war. Their arrests and illegal deportations are largely secret to this day.

The prime motive for these measures was hemispheric security, followed by commercial concerns. Germans had built up large businesses in Latin America and the destruction of these businesses by the removal of their owners allowed U.S. firms to gain footholds in these countries. Another motive emerged: Internees could be exchanged for U.S. civilians imprisoned in Germany or Japan.

Heidi’s family was one of many caught up in the net cast by U.S. authorities seeking the enemy in Latin America. Her parents, Werner Gurcke and Starr Pait, met in the 1930s in Germany. They married and moved to the Costa Rican capital of San Jose, where Werner had been living. Her father was a German national and her mother was an American, coincidentally from a pioneering family in San Jose, California. Heidi and her sister Ingrid were born in Costa Rica. In 1942 the family was removed from their home and transported to a detention camp outside of Crystal City, Texas. They spent 15 months behind barbed wire.

Because he was married to a U.S. citizen Werner was eventually granted “internment at large” status and the family was allowed to leave the Crystal City camp. They moved to the Seabright area of Santa Cruz, where the Pait family had a beach bungalow. He began working to supply Mexican labor camps with goods, later importing wine corks from Spain and Portugal. Each month he was required to report to a Salinas immigration office and had to receive permission to leave the Monterey Bay region.

The Gurcke family suffered many setbacks before they could settle into any kind of normal life. To say that this entire experience was traumatic is a vast understatement. It took years of gentle inquiry on Heidi’s part to record memories from her mother who spoke through tears whenever recalling the events of that awful time.

Heidi Gurcke Donald’s book, “We Were Not The Enemy,” is a fascinating look at a very little known piece of American history and stands with Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s “Farewell to Manzanar” as a testimony to how patriotism can very easily go awry. While both books deal with a difficult subject, they also capture the humor and the pathos of the lives of these families during that time.

In 2003 Heidi’s family’s story was part of an exhibit at the Santa Cruz County Main Library called “The Enemy Aliens File” In 2005 she co-founded the German American Internee Coalition (GAIC). The Coalition is currently working to have two bills passed by Congress, SB 621 and HR 1185, which would set up two committees: one to address U.S. policies for the treatment of resident aliens and citizens of German, Italian and Japanese descent during the Second World War, another to review the denial of asylum for European Jews during that time. The GAIC website, www.gaic.info, has information on the effort to pass the bills. Teachers are encouraged to go to the site for lesson plan ideas about this part of American history.

“We Were Not The Enemy,” is available at the Capitola Book Café and Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Contact Mary McCaslin at mary@marymccaslin.com.