The shameful treatment of Italian immigrants during WWII shows America’s propensity for xenophobic hysteria
Their movements were restricted, their homes raided; in some cases, they were interned
The men in suits were at the Maiorana family’s Monterey, California, home again. Mike, the family’s young son, watched as the agents rummaged through their belongings in search of guns, cameras, and shortwave radios. And again, they found nothing. This was during World War II, and the FBI had declared Mike’s mother an “enemy alien.” The sole source of evidence for this allegation was that she was Italian. Elsewhere in California, an Italian poet’s work was scrutinized for treachery, and a father was hauled off by the FBI, leaving his wife and ten children without a breadwinner for four months. In New York, an Italian opera singer was thrown in prison without charge and just as unceremoniously released. Hundreds of Italian mariners who had been stranded in U.S. waters by the start of the war were loaded into Army trucks and hauled to an internment camp in Missoula, Montana, where some would remain for years.
It was a distinctly American story, revealing the immigration system’s xenophobic through line. Poverty-stricken immigrants who were hated one day were approved of the next, only to be replaced by another allegedly dangerous immigrant group, all under the guise of national security. As beloved as Italian cuisine, sports cars, and fashion are on our shores today, things were different during the first half of the 20th century, especially during WWII. Swept up in xenophobic hysteria, Italians’ movements were restricted, their homes raided; in some cases, they were interned. Six hundred thousand Italian immigrants were forced to carry “enemy alien” identity papers — a requirement similar to the dehumanizing registration system used by Nazis to track Jews, and eerily close to present-day U.S. immigration enforcement practices — where failing to swiftly provide proof of residency can put you on the next plane to danger in your home country.
Between 1876 and 1930, a wave of Slavs, Jews, and Italians arrived on American shores. Vociferous arguments were made against these “undesirable immigrants.” Italians during this period were the targets of mass lynchings and subject to slurs like “guinea” (a person of mixed-race ancestry), “dago”(because Italians were paid as a “day goes” rather than salaried), and wop (as in “without papers”). In 1924, the same year the U.S.’s immigration quota system was implemented (allowing disproportionate numbers of immigrants from “desirable,” a.k.a. white, nations), a widely read article in Literary Digest declared, “The recent immigrants, as a whole, present a higher percentage of inborn socially inadequate qualities than do the older stocks.” According to the article, these recent arrivals suffered from “feeblemindedness,” “deformities,” and “criminality.” (In the coming years, the idea of Italian criminality would be baked into public perception by the media’s fixation on real-life Italian mobsters like Al Capone and Vito Genovese and their Hollywood equivalents, portrayed in movies like The Godfather and Mean Streets. Xenophobic ideas were peddled to the public as “Protestant morality.” In what looks a lot like an early version of a MAGA campaign, lawmakers, intent on making America white Anglo-Saxon Protestant again, maintained that dark-featured Catholics weren’t welcome.
The Italian immigrants who arrived in the United States were mostly poor laborers fleeing poverty in southern Italy. As they left behind low-wage jobs in mining, textiles, and other areas of manufacturing, their arrival clashed with the burgeoning American labor movement. When American workers went on strike demanding better pay and conditions, business owners replaced them with Italians, who were so desperate that they’d take whatever work they could get. Rather than direct their rage at the true sources of their disenfranchisement — the wealthy factory owners, the government, the very system of American capital itself — the American workers caved to xenophobic impulses and landed on a much easier target: “the other.”
When Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants with anarchist ties, were convicted of murder in 1920, despite the widely held belief that the men were innocent, prejudice against Italian Americans and their political ideologies swelled. However, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, anti-Italian sentiment reached a new level. The attack brought the United States into the war, and Japanese allies like Italy officially became enemies of the United States. Four days after Pearl Harbor, the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini emerged onto the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia and declared war on the United States. “Italian men and women,” he said, “I tell you once again in this great hour: We shall be victorious.”
For Italians living in America, the hour was not so great. As news of Mussolini’s announcement was broadcast over American radios that morning, Italian Americans watched their new country transform before their eyes. Neighbors eyed them with suspicion and fear. People refused to patronize their businesses. Everyday Italians like members of the Maiorana family became “enemy aliens.” Mike’s father, a fisherman by trade, had his boat confiscated during the war and never recovered from the prolonged loss of income. “He was on the skids for the rest of his life,” Mike said.
Roughly two months after Italy’s declaration of war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the infamous Executive Order 9066, which enabled the government to claim land for military use, a.k.a. internment camps. The internment of the Japanese is widely known, but less well known is the fact that 10,000 Italians were forced out of their homes, and hundreds interned in camps as well.
The executive order also enabled the government to seize the homes and belongings of Japanese, Italian, and German immigrants. According to Lawrence DiStasi, the author of Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II, all unnaturalized Italians were required to head to the post office to be fingerprinted, photographed, and furnished with an “enemy alien registration card,” which they were expected to carry at all times. Others’ homes were raided in search of so-called contraband, such as guns, shortwave radios, and flashlights, which the government said could be used as “signaling devices.” As the L.A. Times pointed out, many “enemy aliens” were elderly Italians who’d never bothered to pursue citizenship; suspected as spies by virtue of their country of origin, they were yanked from their homes and forced into a byzantine bureaucracy that couldn’t have cared less about their basic rights.
Enemy aliens who weren’t hauled away couldn’t travel farther than five miles from their homes. “Because of the travel restrictions,” DiStasi writes, “mothers could not visit their children in hospitals if they were more than five miles away. Families could not attend a relative’s funeral. No alien could make a trip to visit distant friends or relatives, nor even visit their own sons in uniform at military installations.” They were also subjected to curfews. Violation of any of these terms meant arrest and indefinite detention.
The press seemed to bend over backwards to describe the humanity of the internment camps. When Time magazine journalists traveled to the camp, they reported that the detainees were never referred to as prisoners, and “govern themselves, spend their time reading, listening to the radio, playing games, doing chores for pin money. They are not forced to work.” The account failed to mention that these men were prisoners who were unable to see or provide for their families.
It was an obvious violation of civil rights; just as notable, as historians would later point out, the United States had scant cause for concern about Italian spies on their shores. Mussolini had minimal support in the Italian American community.
The travel restrictions and curfews were lifted a year after they had begun, but many remained imprisoned until the Italian surrender in 1943. But as DiStasi explains, the psychic toll of being labeled an enemy alien and treated like a criminal endured. “Many were humiliated by the treatment of spouses or relatives, and are still angry about it.”
In 1999, Rep. Rick Lazio (R-NY) introduced a bill to formally acknowledge the Italians’ treatment with an investigation into the violation of their civil liberties. It passed, and just a couple of months after the September 11 attacks, as anti-Arab sentiment swept the nation, a report was issued detailing some — but by no means all — of the offenses against Italians. In response to the report, Joanne Chiedi, a Department of Justice official, said, “What happened to the Italians was based on wartime hysteria. We’re trying to educate people so it won’t happen again.”
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