The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange (47 page)

A number of people and institutions advanced my work. William Creech, archivist at the National Archives in Washington, DC, was a patient tutor as I made my way through the boxes of Record
Group 85 and gained access to the Special FBI files of key characters. Thanks as well to Vincent Slatt, archivist at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, for directing me to the critical list of exchange Jews from Bergen-Belsen and the papers of Earl Harrison. I am indebted to the Texas Historical Commission and specifically to William A. McWhorter, who shared his own research at National Archives 2 in College Park. At the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio, Tom Shelton helped me locate photographs of the camp and oral histories of the internees and staff. Thanks as well to the dedicated staff of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where Yae Aihara, one of the children from the camp, continues to volunteer as a docent. I am grateful to Chester Rosson, a former colleague at
Texas Monthly
, for fact-checking the sections on Germany, and to Cecily Fergeson, an intern who served as a reader and helped gather photographs. Special thanks to William and Cecil Scanlan for their friendship and patience throughout this process.

While interned at Crystal City, Sumi had what she called the Big Six, a trusted group that became her friends for life. While writing this book, I had a version of my own Big Six, friends whose cheerful company lightened what was often a formidable task. Mariana Aitches Davis, a retired history professor, read many versions of this book and made helpful suggestions and edits. Mimi Swartz, an executive editor at
Texas Monthly
, served as a sounding board for ideas through the entire process. Jan Braun helped with research and the organization of materials. Joanie Brooks solved technical problems, and Adelle Brewer provided encouragement and feedback.

In addition, there was also the Big Five. My agent, Amy Hughes, crusaded for this book from its earliest beginnings until its publication. I was fortunate to have Colin Harrison as my editor. At every stage of the project, Colin made excellent suggestions and a number of significant changes that greatly enhanced my work. By complete coincidence, I learned when I was well into the research that Earl Harrison, an important character in the book, was Colin’s grandfather. That bit of synchronicity—which could have driven us apart—only
served to deepen his passion for the project, and for that I am grateful. At Scribner, I also owe thanks to Katrina Diaz, Colin’s editorial assistant, for her own reading of the manuscript and her help in putting the pieces together. Thanks as well to Steve Boldt, copyeditor, and Laura Wise, production editor.

Finally, there is the Big One. My husband, Lucky Russell, supported my decision to do this project and was at my side through the four years that it took to accomplish. Even though this book is dedicated to my mentor, Maury Maverick Jr., a large part of the work, as is everything in my life, was made possible by Lucky.

ALSO BY JAN JARBOE RUSSELL

Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson

They Lived to Tell the Tale
(editor)

Rather than offer readers the standard bibliography, I believe an annotated description of my sources, broken down by chapter, provides the most comprehensive picture of the research and the reporting conducted for all of the sections and chapters of the book. While this approach results in some repetition among chapter summaries, it compensates for that in clarity and transparency.

This book is a work of both historical documentation and of memory—the memories of the main and secondary characters. Pertinent aspects of World War II were gleaned from numerous books, essays, and newspaper articles, and the documentation of internment came from a wealth of sources, including primary documents pulled from the National Archives and Records Administration and other institutions and organizations. While the documents formed the spine of the book—providing chronology and context—the heart of the research came from extensive interviews with survivors of the Crystal City Internment Camp and others affected by the camp.

Generally speaking, sources are cited in full only on their first appearance. The individual citations that follow each chapter summary are mostly limited to quotations, dates and figures, and unique facts.

My personal scenes—in Crystal City, Texas; Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Honolulu, Hawaii—took place during 2011 to 2014 on reporting trips to conduct first-person interviews. The scenes did not all take place in the order they appear.

The use of trains as the central symbol of the book and of the war is both literal, as trains were the main source of transport, and figurative, as the book describes the train of events that begins in Crystal City and continues well beyond the gates of the camp.

To clarify, some of the internees arrived at the small train station in Crystal City, while others arrived at the somewhat larger station in Uvalde and were taken by bus to the internment camp.

I have used the number six thousand as the approximate number of all internees who were incarcerated at Crystal City during its six-year operation. The precise number is not known. Records from the National Archives indicate that personnel in Crystal City stopped keeping precise counts of internees on June 30, 1945. On that date, the officer in charge at Crystal City had received 4,751 internees. The camp continued to exist until its official closing on February 27, 1948, and during that time new internees arrived. After consultation with William McWhorter, the coordinator of military sites at the Texas Historical Commission, who has done important research about the camp in Crystal City, I settled on the number six thousand, which I believe to be a conservative estimate. After the war ended, the traffic in and out of the camp continued.

And then there were the trains
: HNCC.

Sumi Utsushigawa
: Author interview, May 24, 2011, Los Angeles.

Paul Grayber
: Telephone interview, June 2011.

The popular history
: Arnold Krammer,
Undue Process: The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees
(Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 33–34.

Virtually unknown
: Carmen Higa Mochizuki, author interview, May 24, 2011, Los Angeles.

In Crystal City, Isamu
: Biographical notes and an essay by Isamu Taniguchi, “Essay on Atomic War and Peace,” generously provided by Evan Taniguchi.

Living now in Honolulu
: Ingrid Eiserloh, author interview, February 12, 2012, and multiple other interviews.

The stories of the arrests of the fathers of two primary characters—Ingrid Eiserloh and Sumi Utsushigawa—were drawn primarily from interviews with both women. At the time of the first interviews, Ingrid was eighty-one and Sumi was eighty-two. Both women had clear recollections of the events preceding the arrests of their fathers and what followed.

Documentation of the arrest of Mathias Eiserloh, including biographical information, time of arrest, case file number, and items taken from his home came directly from Eiserloh’s FBI file, supplied by Ensi Eiserloh, Ingrid’s sister. Ensi Eiserloh petitioned the FBI for her father’s file near the end of 2000 and obtained the file in January 2001.

The documentation of the case of Tokiji Utsushigawa, Sumi’s father, was more complicated. According to my correspondence on January 18, 2013, with the Records Management Division of the FBI, Utsushigawa’s FBI file was destroyed on December 28, 1979, thirty-seven years after his arrest, under the supervision of the archives.

With Sumi’s signed consent, I filed a request to NA1 for release of Utsushigawa’s Special File, kept by the War Relocation Authority, a division of the Department of Justice during World War II. With the signed consent of Ensi Eiserloh, I also filed a request for Mathias Eiserloh’s Special File. Both files were received and information from them is used in this chapter.

To get a sense of the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I toured Pearl Harbor in Honolulu and made two trips to the Japanese American National Museum, where I viewed photos of Japantown taken in the days after the attack. I drew heavily on images from
Only What We Could Carry
, a remarkable collection of photographs, poems, newspaper articles, and private diaries, edited by Lawson Fusao Inada, published in 2000 by Heyday Books. In addition, I reviewed the front pages of many American newspapers on December 8, 1941, including the
New York Times
, the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
, the
Los Angeles Times
, and the
Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Ingrid Eiserloh’s world
: Author interview and ME.

Even in tiny Strongsville
: Full Pearl Harbor Casualty List,
www.uswestvirginia.org
.

Cleveland Plain Dealer
:
Front page of the Monday, December 8, 1941, edition.

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
: Athan Theoharis,
The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition
(New York: Temple University Press, 1988), 183.

That year, 1941, Christmas
: Author interview, Lothar Eiserloh, February 17, 2011.

Two FBI agents
: ME.

Ingrid left the garage
: Author interview, Ingrid Eiserloh.

the morning of December 7
: Sumi Utsushigawa, author interview, May 2011 and many other subsequent interviews.

JAP HUNTING LICENSE
:
People’s World
, January 9, 1942. Other newspaper accounts: “Japanazis or Japaryans,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, January 7, 1942; “Alien Hysteria Mostly Imaginary,”
San Francisco Chronicle
, February 6, 1942. These newspaper stories were reprinted in
Only What We Could Carry
, 11–23.

Within two hours of the bombing
: Author interview and SF-U.

Sumi’s father’s first name
: SF-U.

In the three months
: Author interview and SF-U.

My account of the conflict between Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt over the internment of German, Japanese, and Italian immigrants drew from numerous biographies of the Roosevelts. Particularly helpful for an understanding of their disagreements during the war was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s renowned book
No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).

Kenneth S. Davis’s
FDR: The War President
(New York: Random House, 2000) helped provide context for larger events of the war through Roosevelt’s eyes.
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
, by H. W. Brands, a fellow Texan, was brilliantly readable, and offered further insight into how Roosevelt prosecuted the war.
FDR: A Centenary Remembrance
(New York: Viking Press, 1982), published on the hundredth anniversary of Roosevelt’s death, by Joseph Alsop, the celebrated journalist and columnist, offered personal details of both Eleanor and FDR.
Alsop’s prose was so evocative I could almost hear FDR’s voice as I read the famous line “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”