The book The Train to Crystal City

Jan Jarboe Rusell wrote The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Last Family Internment Camp During WWII, which was first published in January 2015. It's the thrilling, bestselling, and never-before-told story of an FDR detention camp, as told in The New York Times. Rusell's masterpiece is literally a must-read because it is captivating, provocative, and difficult to put down. Jan Jarboe Rusell is a former Neiman Fellow who has reported for the San Antonio Express-News, Slate, and other publications in addition to Texas Monthly. Also, she authored Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson and compiled and revised a colorful collection of adventure stories called They Lived to Tell the Tale. In The Train to Crystal City, Rusell conveys the story of a secretive Second World War confinement camp situated at Crystal City, Texas. In the camp's existence, 1942-1948, thousands of Germans, Italians and Japanese immigrants along with their children, a majority born in America, were forced to live behind barbed wire in a 290-acre camp. The camp was located at the southern tip of Texas and was about thirty-five miles from the Mexican border.

In a quietly moving way, the book centers on two American-born teenage girls, revealing the particulars of the time expended in the internment camp, the scuffles of their families and the ensuing expeditions to war-torn native lands. It also reveals the years spent in attempting to subsist and get back to the United States following their transformation from the confined adversaries to American partisans. Rusell reveals their untold everyday predicament at the camp encompassing the security fence, armed guards, day-to-day roll call and expurgated mail. She paints a bigger picture of the World War II history that was little known to many. A revelation of the war-time hysterics against the Italians, Germans and the Japanese in America together with the mysteries of FDR’s strategies to save high profile individuals from Japan and Germany. The more ostensibly important Americans included soldiers, diplomats, missionaries, and businessmen who were trapped behind enemy lines in Germany and Japan (Rusell, 28).

The Crystal City internment camp was unique in its way because it was the lone family confinement camp during the Second World War. Also, as noted by Rusell, it was part of FDR’s secretive tactic in a government captive give-and-take program that was called “quiet passage” (29). While the book depicts people of Asian descent on its cover who seem to be transported somewhere, the author unveils more complex, thornier and terrible facts. Nonetheless, Rusell tells a tale that is more than her mind-boggling although in a meticulously organized book.

The author uses various sources in her research, much of which are primary sources. Most of the information was obtained from 50 surviving Crystal City prisoners whose memories she tapped. Whereas the primary detainees were men, their wives and children willingly went with them, but once they were in, they were considered internees too. A majority of the interviewees, now-adult survivors, provide child-eye descriptions of their predicament in the camp and journey to the unknown new home. Among them were Japanese-American girls, Sumi Utsushigawa and German-American one called Ingrid Eiserloh who was born in New York. They tell their side of the story where the blanket policy of post-war repatriation meant they had to be shipped to their respective countries. The book also gives credit to Earl Harrison who was a one-time commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service meaning he was in charge of overseeing Crystal City (Rusell, 35). His diary and the personal file of Joseph O’Rourke, an officer in Crystal City, provided a vital contribution to the book.

As a young reporter, Rusell also interviewed Alan Taniguchi, a Japanese-American professor, whose father Isamu Taniguchi had been incarcerated as a treacherous adversary foreign in Crystal City, Texas. The book is a work of both memory and documentation. Pertinent issues of the World War II were gleaned from numerous newspapers articles, essays, books, and documentation of the internment came from a wealth of sources that included retrieving from the National Archives, records administration and other institutions (Rusell, 341). Overall, Rusell is overly depended on the primary sources which entailed interviewing some characters who were at the Crystal City internment camp. Among Ms. Rusell’s best sources were the diary from Mr. Harrison and the personal file of Joseph O’Rourke who worked at the internment camp. Taking consideration of the officiousness of which both men distanced themselves from the issues, their documents are surprisingly honest and pained regarding the injustices committed to the internees. With the addition to the documentation of archives and diaries among other sources, it makes the book a fact-based story worth considering as truthful accounts.

The book notes that President Franklin Roosevelt covertly ordered Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to investigate anyone suspected to be a member of the Nazi movement (Rusell, 26). Additionally, the FBI was to investigate anyone that could have posed a security risk in the event of war. Of course, the prime targets were the immigrants especially from Germany, Japan, and Italy, American adversaries in the war. The agents relied on the neighbor's accounts regarding the German's whereabouts. For instance, Helen and Ernie who were neighbors to Ingrid’s family were among those who smeared Mathias as a potential German spy (Rusell, 64). Furthermore, as revealed by the author, the FBI agents based their investigations on possession of cameras, radios in addition to the unproven gossip from the neighbors.

In chapters four to thirteen, Rusell highlights a myriad of conflicts. In this chapters, focus is placed on Crystal City where the difficult living conditions at the camp were part of the cause of conflicts. They include culture conflicts and family struggles between foreign-born parents and their children born in America. The book reveals that the Germans and the Japanese did not mingle very much and were in various occasions in conflict. Even taking note of the standard American parameters, the conflict between cultures, often caused difficulties within the camp. For instance, the author cites the ‘prom’ for high school seniors as a potential cause of conflicts. She notes that Maruko Okazaki who was a student penned about the prom controversy to a friend outside the camp saying, “The atmosphere here hasn’t been any too good. Last night they had a prom (I didn’t go) and bang! Trouble after trouble has come up already” (Rusell, 174). Still, with worsening predicament, the Japanese Americans and Germans Americans parents started to perceive themselves as belonging to their original nationality while their children saw themselves primarily as Americans. By and large, the conflicts were more mental than spiritual although they got physical in multiple occasions.

Thus, the book The Train to Crystal City is all about identity, loyalty, and home as well as the trouble of defining the allegiances lying in individual human souls. It focusses on two major goals. First is to reveal a story concerning the secretive internment camp in Crystal City, Texas that is unknown to many. The second goal seeks to provide a lesser known story of the secretive exchange of the prisoners. Rusell threads through the stories of Sumi Utsushigawa and Ingrid Eiserloh both of whom were born in America and repatriated. Men such as Mathias Eiserloh were arrested by the FBI while their wives and children struggled at home (Rusell, 68). Just as many books related to this topic have been organized, Rusell opens with the initial arrests along with the climate of the time and chronologically details the predicaments of the internees until some make their way back to the United States.

I believe in the arguments presented by Rusell since it is possible that during times of war America could go to such extent to ensure the safety of its citizens. Also, given that Germany, Italy, and Japan were the main adversaries to the United States, it makes sense that immigrants from these countries could be suspected of subversive activities and possessions of items such as cameras and radios. Even so, the author is not overly critical of the government’s concern about foreign spies. Rusell notes that not all internees were total innocents, which adds, even more credibility to her arguments. It is revealed that some of the internees at the Crystal City demonstrated allegiance to the Nazi Germany as well as Imperial Japan. This can also be connected, although for many reasons, to the volunteering of some internees to be deported to their native lands in the course of the warfare.

Overall, the book by Rusell is enthralling, provocative and hard to put down. I found it interesting particularly on her ability to explore little known historical events, which deserve more attention. I also think the book is a worthy addition to the literature of the Second World War. Even though Rusell is a journalist, The Train to Crystal City is a well-researched piece. She explored a variety of sources such as in-person interviews to get to the finer details. In fact, the book is more of a narrative story that makes use of stories and quotes. I believe the book fills a scholarly gap and provides useful insights around the topic of immigrant’s incarceration and the war. Besides, Rusell shows the readers her artistic prowess concerning the style of writing. For instance, she notes that Ingrid’s father, Mathias, had openly conveyed anti-Semitic observations (Rusell, 69). While this may not have made him a threat, the readers are made to understand without a benefit of the doubt that it raised suspicion.

However, it appears as if Rusell included the life histories of so many people in the book. It gives the impression that her central narrative is cluttered. At some point, it seems that Sumi and Ingrid are forgotten as readers tend to be distracted by details concerning political characters in Washington or other internees. However, despite the flaw, Rusell makes an attempt to balance the weakness by reconstructing vivid scenes from interviews, documents, and correspondence. Even so, she manages to show the complexity of the moral dilemma faced by characters such as Ingrid and officers like O’Rourke who were tasked with deciding whose rights should be restricted.

Lastly, the book, The Train to Crystal City has slightly changed my views on the United States during the Second World War. This is partly because Rusell makes revelations concerning secretive prisoners exchange programs involving the U.S government that I was not aware of. I have full confidence that the U.S government acted the way it did out of the intention to protect Americans and to win the war. Times of war call for strict measures to curtail chances of the enemy fighting you from within. However, I feel the United States went too far in unfairly repatriating innocent American-born children. Some were innocently detained and repatriated, which could be avoided. The U.S government through the FBI ought to have handled the Germans, Japanese and Italian immigrants with fairness and regard for humanity since not all of them were guilty of colluding with the enemies. Most of the immigrants who were legally in the country painfully felt betrayed by the very country they had pledge loyalty and allegiance to. The book is an interesting read.



Work Cited

City, Crystal et al. "Jan Jarboe Russell, The Author Of The Train To Crystal City." Jan Jarboe Russell, 2016, http://www.janjarboerussell.com/.

Russell, Jan Jarboe. The Train To The Crystal City. Farmington Hills, Michigan, Thorndike Press, A Part Of Gale, Cengage Learning, 2015,