The Train to Crystal City

The Train to Crystal City
Author: Jan Jarboe Russell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2015-01-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1451693680

The New York Times bestselling dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II: “A must-read….The Train to Crystal City is compelling, thought-provoking, and impossible to put down” (Star-Tribune, Minneapolis). During World War II, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The only family internment camp during the war, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called “quiet passage.” Hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City were exchanged for other more ostensibly important Americans—diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and missionaries—behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. “In this quietly moving book” (The Boston Globe), Jan Jarboe Russell focuses on two American-born teenage girls, uncovering the details of their years spent in the camp; the struggles of their fathers; their families’ subsequent journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan; and their years-long attempt to survive and return to the United States, transformed from incarcerated enemies to American loyalists. Their stories of day-to-day life at the camp, from the ten-foot high security fence to the armed guards, daily roll call, and censored mail, have never been told. Combining big-picture World War II history with a little-known event in American history, The Train to Crystal City reveals the war-time hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, the secrets of FDR’s tactics to rescue high-profile POWs in Germany and Japan, and above all, “is about identity, allegiance, and home, and the difficulty of determining the loyalties that lie in individual human hearts” (Texas Observer).

The Crystal City Story

The Crystal City Story
Author: Tomo Izumi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2016-07-22
Genre:
ISBN: 9781535131629

Written by Tomoko Izumi, at age 79, The Crystal City Story describes her life as a young child in a Japanese Internment camp during World War II. Her story emerges from the perspective of an 8-year old who lived in the camps until age 12. The saga continues after the camps, exposing an arduous life for families who left the camps with nothing: no wages, no saved money, no property, and no home to return to. Seen through the unfiltered eyes of a child, her memories touch the heart.

The Crystal City

The Crystal City
Author: Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2004-10-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429964502

The Tales of Alvin Maker continue in The Crystal City, the sixth book in the historical fantasy series from the Hugo and Nebula award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Ender's Game. Using the lore and the folk-magic of the men and women who settled North America, Orson Scott Card has created an alternate world where magic works, and where that magic has colored the entire history of the colonies. Charms and beseechings, hexes and potions, all have a place in the lives of the people of this world. Dowsers find water, the second sight warns of dangers to come, and a torch can read a person's future--or their heart. In this world where "knacks" abound, Alvin, the seventh son of a seventh son, is a very special man indeed. He's a Maker; he has the knack of understanding how things are put together, how to create them, repair them, keep them whole, or tear them down. He can heal hearts as well as bones, he build a house, he can calm the waters or blow up a storm. And he can teach his knack to others, to the measure of their own talent. Alvin has been trying to avert the terrible war that his wife, Peggy, a torch of extraordinary power, has seen down the life-lines of every American. Now she has sent him down the Mizzippy to the city of New Orleans, or Nueva Barcelona as they call it under Spanish occupation. Alvin doesn't know exactly why he's there, but when he and his brother-in-law, Arthur Stuart, find lodgings with a family of abolitionists who know Peggy, he suspects he'll find out soon. But Nueva Barcelona is about to experience a plague, and Alvin's efforts to protect his friends by keeping them healthy will create more danger than he could ever have suspected. And in saving the poor people of the city, Alvin will be put to the greatest test of his life--a test that will draw on all his power. For the time has come for him to turn to his old friend Tenskwa-Tawa, the Red Prophet who controls the lands to the west of the Mizzippy. Now Alvin must take the first steps on the road to the Crystal City that was shown to him in a vision so long ago. The Tales of Alvin Maker series Seventh Son Red Prophet Prentice Alvin Alvin Journeyman Heartfire The Crystal City At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The War Outside

The War Outside
Author: Monica Hesse
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0316316709

An "important" (New York Times Book Review), "extraordinary" (Booklist, starred review) novel of conviction, friendship, and betrayal, from Monica Hesse, the bestselling and award-winning author of Girl in the Blue Coat "A must-read for fans of historical fiction." --Ruta Sepetys, #1 New York Times bestselling author It's 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado--until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan. Haruko and Margot meet at the high school in Crystal City, a "family internment camp" for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day and piece by piece. Haruko finds herself consumed by fear for her soldier brother and distrust of her father, who she knows is keeping something from her. And Margot is doing everything she can to keep her family whole as her mother's health deteriorates and her rational, patriotic father becomes a man who distrusts America and fraternizes with Nazis. With everything around them falling apart, Margot and Haruko find solace in their growing, secret friendship. But in a prison the government has deemed full of spies, can they trust anyone--even each other? *Don't miss Monica Hesse's New York Times bestselling historical mysteries, Girl in the Blue Coat and They Went Left*

Infamy

Infamy
Author: Richard Reeves
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2015-04-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0805099395

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE • Bestselling author Richard Reeves provides an authoritative account of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens during World War II Less than three months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and inflamed the nation, President Roosevelt signed an executive order declaring parts of four western states to be a war zone operating under military rule. The U.S. Army immediately began rounding up thousands of Japanese-Americans, sometimes giving them less than 24 hours to vacate their houses and farms. For the rest of the war, these victims of war hysteria were imprisoned in primitive camps. In Infamy, the story of this appalling chapter in American history is told more powerfully than ever before. Acclaimed historian Richard Reeves has interviewed survivors, read numerous private letters and memoirs, and combed through archives to deliver a sweeping narrative of this atrocity. Men we usually consider heroes-FDR, Earl Warren, Edward R. Murrow-were in this case villains, but we also learn of many Americans who took great risks to defend the rights of the internees. Most especially, we hear the poignant stories of those who spent years in "war relocation camps," many of whom suffered this terrible injustice with remarkable grace. Racism, greed, xenophobia, and a thirst for revenge: a dark strand in the American character underlies this story of one of the most shameful episodes in our history. But by recovering the past, Infamy has given voice to those who ultimately helped the nation better understand the true meaning of patriotism.

The Last Year of the War

The Last Year of the War
Author: Susan Meissner
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0451492161

From the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and As Bright as Heaven comes a novel about a German American teenager whose life changes forever when her immigrant family is sent to an internment camp during World War II. In 1943, Elise Sontag is a typical American teenager from Iowa—aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity. The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences. But when the Sontag family is exchanged for American prisoners behind enemy lines in Germany, Elise will face head-on the person the war desires to make of her. In that devastating crucible she must discover if she has the will to rise above prejudice and hatred and re-claim her own destiny, or disappear into the image others have cast upon her. The Last Year of the War tells a little-known story of World War II with great resonance for our own times and challenges the very notion of who we are when who we’ve always been is called into question.

Schools Behind Barbed Wire

Schools Behind Barbed Wire
Author: Karen Lea Riley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2002
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780742501713

Often overlooked in the infamous history of U.S. internment during World War II is the plight of internee children. Drawn from personal interviews and multiple primary source materials, Schools behind Barbed Wire is the story of the boys and girls who grew up in the Crystal City, TX internment camp and spent the war years attending one of its three internment camp schools. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Adios to Tears

Adios to Tears
Author: Seiichi Higashide
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2011-07-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0295800585

Adios to Tears is the very personal story of Seiichi Higashide (1909–97), whose life in three countries was shaped by a bizarre and little-known episode in the history of World War II. Born in Hokkaido, Higashide emigrated to Peru in 1931. By the late 1930s he was a shopkeeper and community leader in the provincial town of Ica, but following the outbreak of World War II, he—along with other Latin American Japanese—was seized by police and forcibly deported to the United States. He was interned behind barbed wire at the Immigration and Naturalization Service facility in Crystal City, Texas, for more than two years. After his release, Higashide elected to stay in the U.S. and eventually became a citizen. For years, he was a leader in the effort to obtain redress from the American government for the violation of the human rights of the Peruvian Japanese internees. Higashide’s moving memoir was translated from Japanese into English and Spanish through the efforts of his eight children, and was first published in 1993. This second edition includes a new Foreword by C. Harvey Gardiner, professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University and author of Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States; a new Epilogue by Julie Small, cochair of Campaign for Justice–Redress Now for Japanese Latin Americans; and a new Preface by Elsa H. Kudo, eldest daughter of Seiichi Higashide.

The Diplomat's Daughter

The Diplomat's Daughter
Author: Karin Tanabe
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2017-07-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501110470

"During the turbulent months following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, twenty-one-year-old Emi Kato, the daughter of a Japanese diplomat, is locked behind barbed wire in a Texas internment camp ... Plagued by fence sickness, her world changes when she meets Christian Lange, whose German-born parents were wrongfully arrested for un-American activities. Together, they live as prisoners with thousands of other German and Japanese families, but discover that young love can triumph over even the most unjust circumstances. When Emi and her mother are abruptly sent back to Japan, Christian enlists in the US Army, with his sights set on the Pacific front--and a reunion with Emi"--

The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2007-01-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1416544666

A triumphant tale of a young woman and her difficult childhood, The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience, redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and wonderfully vibrant. Jeannette Walls was the second of four children raised by anti-institutional parents in a household of extremes.