Good evening, 919 Gang. Don’t you appreciate people who can
take life with a sense of humor without getting judgmental and mean about
things? Today I was reading an obituary a woman wrote of her mother. Naturally,
there came a point in the obit where she listed the deceased’s brothers and
sisters. Then she wrote, “Her father (a romantic sort) had several other
children whom she was never allowed to meet.”
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PAUL OMUNDSON writes:
Thanks to Terri Spilecki for the Mike McLane update. I
talked to him this afternoon and while he seemed a bit halting, we both enjoyed
a short conversation. He had that same deep, growly voice he did in the 1960s
and 1970s when I was a copy clerk and he was the man at the end of the U on the
Trib rim. Really interesting guy. He had worked at the Trib earlier on, served
in Vietnam, then came back a changed man, to his old position. Although he
proceeded to reinvent himself as a hard-nosed, bitter individual, we who worked
around him knew better. He was underneath that a very gentle, caring man with a
wealth of intelligence, wit and ideas.
That snarling Mike McLane you'd see around the10:30 a.m.
Trib peach edition deadline, as he furiously shot pneumatic tubes with last
second stories down to the composing room, turned into a warm, astute observer
of life after work. It was my pleasure to occasionally enjoy his wit and
stories. As I recall this was usually at the Press Room across the street but
other spots too. What's seared in my memory are his compelling, sometimes
troubling observations about the ravages of war from his first-hand experience
in Vietnam. As far as I know he never did write any bylined pieces about this
stuff. Would have been powerful.
REBER: Mike is in Veterans Hospital in La Jolla.
Here are Terri’s directions: “The number is (619) 383-4546. When you do call,
please keep the conversations short. If you'd like to visit, he's on the
3rd floor, "C" Pod, Room 3367, Bed #7.”
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KEN WILLIAMS
writes:
Whoa! There were indeed internment camps for Germans in the
U.S. during WWII, and I have visited one historical site in Seagoville - one of
three such camps in Texas.
I will agree that German-Americans and Italian-Americans
were treated much differently than Japanese-Americans and that race was likely
one of the factors. Also, there were millions of Americans of German and
Italian descent, so in the government's mind, it wasn't feasible or practical
to round all of them up.
From the Texas State Historical Association:
"The Seagoville internment camp, built by the Bureau
of Prisons as a minimum-security women's reformatory in 1941, held prisoners
from Central and South America, married couples without children from the
United States, and about fifty Japanese language teachers from California.
The facilities at Seagoville made it the most unusual camp operated by the INS.
Twelve colonial-style, red-brick buildings with cream limestone trim were
surrounded by spacious lawns. Paved sidewalks and roads connected the buildings,
and visitors remarked that the camp resembled a college campus. Nevertheless, a
high, woven-wire fence surrounded the camp, which had a single guarded
entrance. A white line painted down the middle of the paved road that encircled
the camp marked a boundary that internees could not pass. The six dormitories
had single or double rooms and were furnished with chests of drawers, desks,
chairs, and beds. Communal laundry, bathing, and toilet facilities were located
on all floors. Each dormitory had a kitchen with refrigerators, gas stove, and
dishwasher, as well as a dining room with four-person maple tables, linen table
coverings, cloth napkins, and china. Internees prepared their own food under
supervision. Other facilities at the Seagoville camp included a hospital and a
large recreation building. A female doctor directed the hospital and supervised
a staff of six physicians, ten registered nurses, a dentist, and a laboratory
technician. The recreation building provided a variety of activities, such as
ballet and stage productions performed by internees in the auditorium. In
addition, the recreation building had orchestral instruments, twelve classrooms
for English and music instruction, a multilanguage library, and sewing and
weaving rooms. Outside activities included gardening, farming, tennis,
baseball, badminton, and walking around the prison grounds. Although conditions
at the Seagoville camp were unusually comfortable for a prison environment, the
internees did have some complaints. Many resented being held at a penal
institution, which was still administered by a warden, Amy N. Stannard. The
prisoners also disliked the censorship of their letters and the limit on their
outgoing correspondence. In late summer of 1942, the INS planned to reunite Japanese
men from other internment camps with their families already at Seagoville.
Anticipating this transfer, Seagoville received fifty one-room plywood
enclosures known as "Victory Huts" from the INS detention camp at
Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a large building was constructed as a kitchen and
mess hall. Laundry rooms and separate male and female communal toilet and bath
facilities were built. The largest population interned at Seagoville was 647.
In June 1945 the Seagoville alien enemy internment camp was closed and
detainees were repatriated, paroled, or moved to other INS internment
camps."
To read more, visit:
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/quwby
or http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Seagoville_(detention_facility)/.
Here is another source I found:
According to Arthur D. Jacobs, author of the autobiographic
book "The Prison Called Hohenasperg: An American boy betrayed by his
Government during World War II," by the end of the war, 11,000
persons of German ancestry were interned, both immigrants and visitors.
Also, under the pressure of US Government, Latin American countries arrested
more than 4,000 German Latin Americans, from which most were shipped to US for
internment. At least 2,000 from both groups were exchanged for Americans that
were held in Germany.
REBER: Thank you, Ken,
you helped my education. Of the 11,507 internees of German descent, the great
majority were German nationals, not German-Americans. I was surprised to find
that some were interred at Ellis Island, and many were still being held there
three years after the war ended.
I
was aware that German prisoners of war also were held in this country, but I
was surprised to read there were 425,000 of them. They worked on farms,
canneries, etc., and they needed minimal supervision. Many Germans met their
future wives while POWs in the U.S. Interesting point: German POWs (all white,
of course) could go in some restaurants and bars that black American soldiers
could not enter.
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KENT FREELAND
writes:
The Times has found a new way to deal with early sports
deadlines and missing scores. The one delivered to my place today had no sports
section at all.
REBER: Maybe your carrier is a Padre
fan?
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REBER: We kick off July by wishing
Happy Birthday, July 1, to Henry Joseph and Gordon Murray.
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GENE CIECHANOWSKI
forwards:
We drive a 3D-printed utility vehicle that can power a home | Translogic 203
JULIE PENDRAY
forwards:
My latest in my series "Heart of the PCT Towns"
features interviews with several Pacific Crest Trail hikers I met at Mammoth
Lakes who described their trek from Idyllwild, over the hill, staying with
trail angels at Cabazon, pigging out at the Morongo Casino and finding rides to
Big Bear. http://wp.me/P7vTbQ-p
P.O. Box 2239
Ramona, CA 92065
U.S.A.
