[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 93 (Friday, June 27, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1350-E1351]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       WARTIME VIOLATION OF ITALIAN-AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ELIOT L. ENGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 26, 1997

  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with my colleague from New York, 
Congressman Lazio, to introduce a bill that calls on the President, on 
behalf of the United States Government, to formally acknowledge that 
the civil liberties of Italian-Americans were violated during World War 
II.
  In 1994, the American Italian Historical Association released a 
historical document entitled ``Una Storia Segreta,'' (A Secret History) 
that recounts the lives of Italian-Americans from 1939 to 1945. Many of 
its findings are disturbing. For example, on December 7, 1941, Federal 
agents, without regard for the basic constitutional right of due 
process, detained hundreds of Italian-Americans, classified them as 
``dangerous aliens'' and shipped them to internment camps. By 1942, all 
Italian-Americans were forbidden to travel beyond a 5-mile radius of 
home and required to carry a photo ID. What was their crime? Suspicion 
that they might be dangerous in time of war because they were of 
Italian ancestry.
  Our Government owes it to the Italian-American community to heighten 
public awareness of this unfortunate chapter in our Nation's history. 
This story needs to be told in order to acknowledge that these events 
happened, to remember those whose lives were unjustly disrupted and 
whose freedoms were violated, and to help repair the damage to the 
Italian-American community. This legislation calls for the formation of 
an advisory committee to assist in the compilation of relevant 
information and urges the President and Congress to provide direct 
financial support for the education of the American public through such 
initiatives as the production of a film documentary.
  Most importantly, this bill requests the Department of Justice to 
prepare and publish a report detailing the United States Government's 
role in this tragic episode. The purpose of this report would be to 
compile facts and figures associated with the Italian-American 
community during the early 1940's including names of all Italian-
Americans who were forced into custodial detention, prevented from 
working or arrested for curfew or other minor violations, and those 
prevented from working. Furthermore, the report would illustrate our 
Government's unfortunate policies and practices during this period, 
including an examination of the Government's apparent denial and 
disregard of due process and adequate legal protection to a large 
segment of its citizenry.
  Mr. Speaker, our legislation calls upon the President to formally 
acknowledge our Government's systemic denial of basic human rights and 
freedoms to Italian-Americans. By bringing to light this unfortunate 
episode we help to ensure that similar injustices and violations of 
civil liberties do not occur in the future.
  Mr. Speaker, I have attached the opening remarks by Hon. Dominic R. 
Massaro, Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, during the opening 
ceremony of the Storia Segreta exhibit in New York. His remarks 
accurately portray the injustices done to the Italian-Americans during 
World War II. I ask you to read the Honorable Massaro's statement and 
urge you to cosponsor this important piece of legislation.

 November 6, 1995: Opening Remarks by Hon. Dominic R. Massaro, Justice 
   of the Supreme Court of New York, Opening Ceremony, ``Una Storia 
Segreta: When Italian Americans Were `Enemy Aliens,' '' Graduate School 
 and University Center, City University of New York [CUNY], New York, 
                                  N.Y.

       Dr. Scelsa, director of the Calandra Institute, our 
     distinguished Consul General in New York, Minister Mistretta, 
     the Governor's representative, Ms. Massimo-Berns, President 
     Horowitz and Provost Zadorian of CUNY, our Curator Ms. 
     Scherini, friends.
       We are gathered to pay tribute to those who have suffered 
     injustice, and to recognize

[[Page E1351]]

     that our community, in many ways, continues to suffer because 
     of their plight. To Martini Battistessa, age 65, who threw 
     himself in front of a passing railroad train. To Giuseppe 
     Micheli, age 57, who cut his throat with a butcher knife. To 
     Giovanni Sanguenetti, age 62, who hanged himself. To Stefano 
     Terranova, age 65, who leaped to his death from a three story 
     building. Terranova left a chilling note: ``I believe myself 
     to be good, but find myself deceived. I don't know why.'' The 
     ``why?'' reverberates even today. Each man, by Executive 
     Order of the President of the United States, had been 
     declared an ``enemy alien''; and directed by the Department 
     of Justice to evacuate his California home.
       Few readers of morning newspapers that February in 1942 
     probably paid much attention to the scant reportage of these 
     last desperate acts, dwarfed as they were by news of global 
     warfare. But these four deaths--in Richmond, Vallejo, 
     Stockton and San Francisco--incidental as they might have 
     seemed in the rush of momentous events in the early months of 
     World War II, were nonetheless important pieces in a larger 
     mosaic of an American tragedy.
       ``Una Storia Segreta: When Italian Americans Were `Enemy 
     Aliens' '' memorializes that tragedy. I first viewed this 
     exhibit in Sacramento with the lawyer, Bill Cerruti, who has 
     done so much to make these long-buried events find their 
     rightful place as historical reality. It is a bold exhibit, 
     as well as a strong refusal by Americans of Italian descent 
     to keep silent about a largely unknown story of arrest, 
     relocation and internment during World War II. It is a story 
     that has remained hidden for a half century because of the 
     silence first imposed by Government, then adopted as a 
     protective cover of shame by those scarred. The exhibit 
     documents and records a painful episode of the Italian 
     experience in America. It is a moving portrayal of the 
     enormity of human deprivation and suffering brought about by 
     Government efforts that violated basic civil rights, efforts 
     motivated largely by ethnic bias, wartime hysteria and a 
     failure of political leadership.
       Most Americans know about the internment of Japanese 
     Americans during the Second World War, but few, even in our 
     community, are aware that the Federal Government, also 
     without adequate security reasons, restricted the freedom of 
     600,000 Italians, legal residents of the United States for 
     decades, many of whom had lived here since the turn of the 
     century and, in fact, were also American citizens.
       At the time World War II broke out in 1941, Americans of 
     Italian descent were the largest immigrant group residing in 
     the United States. In addition to the 600,000 foreign-born, 
     millions more were American born. They resided thoughout the 
     country. That more Italian Americans were affected by wartime 
     restrictions than Japanese Americans is not of the moment, 
     for injustice can never be quantified; each instance is 
     absolute.
       I am pleased to see that the Order Sons of Italy in 
     America's Commission for Social Justice is a co-sponsor of 
     this noteworthy effort. For it was late in the night of 
     December 7, 1941, a day that will indeed live in infamy, and 
     only hours after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, that Filippo 
     Molinari, a founding member of the Order in San Francisco, 
     was confronted at home by three policemen. He was arrested on 
     unspecified charges, detained at the Santa Clara County jail, 
     and thereafter shipped to a detention center in far off Fort 
     Missoula, Montana.
       And while it was the Order that later was to galvanize 
     Italian American opposition and political clout, first on the 
     East Coast and then throughout the nation that eventually 
     would end the hateful ``enemy alien'' status on Columbus Day, 
     1942, Molinari was not alone on that fateful night. Within 72 
     hours of war, thousands of community leaders, newspaper 
     editors and teachers of the language were similarly arrested; 
     and during the course of the year, Government edicts would be 
     directed nationwide at all those of Italian ancestry. Italian 
     language schools were closed; Italian American organizations 
     were harrassed; Italian American meetings became suspect. 
     Curfews, residence restrictions and travel curtailments were 
     put in place; searches and seizures of personal property were 
     conducted without the color of law--not to speak of the 
     paranoia, bigotry and military policy that conspired on the 
     West Coast to arrest, relocate and intern some 10,000 of our 
     people. And in community after community across the nation, 
     Italian immigrants were required to register and carry 
     identification cards.
       Archibald McLeisch, the poet, tells us that ``America was 
     promise.'' ``America'' is imprecise as a descriptive 
     geographical term, standing neither for a particular country 
     nor a clearly defined land mass. But it perfectly defines a 
     state of expectation. And this expectation, this promise has 
     always equated with fundamental rights. We were the first 
     people to found a nation on the basis of rights, and 
     individual rights are the foundation of the American 
     identity. No society recognizes a greater range of individual 
     rights entitled to fulfillment under its laws than the United 
     States. Even our failures as a nation are measured in terms 
     of rights. The Declaration of Independence offered the 
     promise of a Government based on rights, and the Constitution 
     not only enumerated them, but guaranteed them as 
     ``inalienable,'' pre-existing rights anterior to and superior 
     to the state.
       Yet these inalienable rights were violated with impunity in 
     the early days of World War II, on the flimsiest of 
     accusation, without any finding of wrongdoing or basis in 
     fact. It would be correct to say that the crime was merely 
     being of Italian ancestry. This on the heels of a 
     zenophobic, then existing national origins quota system 
     that had discriminatorily sought to exclude our 
     grandparents as immigrants for two previous decades.
       A powerful message was sent and received in Italian 
     American communities nationwide: Italian language and 
     culture, and those who prompted either or both, were not 
     desirable, and represented an inimical danger to the American 
     way. The language was silenced; the culture was suppressed. 
     And the effects remain: the decimation of great national 
     organizations, the loss of Italian language facility by 
     succeeding generations, the cultural amnesia of many Italian 
     Americans, the super-patriotism of many others.
       Thousands were forced from their homes, denied the 
     opportunity to pursue their livelihoods, their businesses 
     closed, their assets dissipated, their lives disrupted. And 
     the arrests, the relocations, the internments--these were 
     accomplished without due process of law, notwithstanding the 
     fact that not a single instance was ever documented of an 
     individual of Italian ancestry aiding the enemy, committing 
     an act of espionage, sabotage or fifth column activity. On 
     the contrary, upwards of one half million Italian American 
     men-at-arms, the greatest number of any American ethnic 
     group, were at that moment battling on two war fronts to 
     preserve liberty and justice for all. Clearly, Government 
     claims of military necessity at the time have since been 
     demolished by a generation of scholars; indeed, by the 
     graphic illustrations presented by this exhibit.
       The conduct of the Federal Government toward persons who 
     had done no wrong is unquestionably one of the most shameful 
     in the history of our Republic. This grave and fundamental 
     injustice of treatment of those of Italian ancestry has yet 
     to be acknowledged; in point of fact, it is truly unknown or 
     purposely ignored, or even worse, flatly denied. The exhibit 
     informs the public about this wartime tragedy. Not only does 
     it pay tribute to those who were victimized and stigmatized, 
     but it testifies in significant respects to the contemporary 
     state of Italian Americana. Most important, perhaps, it 
     contributes to a better understanding of how the venom of 
     intolerance can give rise to the maelstrom of persecution to 
     make for such events; and how respect for the rule of law can 
     prevent such occurrences vis-a-vis any minority group, 
     regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.
       The American Italian Historical Society is to be commended 
     for organizing a presentation that sheds new light on an 
     historically and socially relevant experience, as is the 
     Calandra Institute of this great University for bringing it 
     to the spiritual capital of the Italian in America--the City 
     of New York. I thank both these distinguished academic 
     entities for having invited me to open it here today.

     

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