Search Results

Chapter 2 provides a social profile of the 343 Italian civilian internees. Persons who held leadership roles in their communities or possessed special knowledge that could be used against the United States were most feared by the government. This chapter traces the debate among President Roosevelt and his advisors, the War Department, the Justice Department, and legislative committees about whether to evacuate the entire population of Italian aliens from military areas. Italian American politicians and prominent members of the Italian community testified to the loyalty of their community toward the United States. Finally, this chapter shows the distinct variation in the military defense commands’ interpretation of Executive Order 9066 regarding the protection of military areas and policies of individual exclusion and restrictions upon enemy aliens, and explains the factors that resulted in stricter restrictions in the Western Defense Command as compared to those in the Eastern Defense Command.

This chapter explores the practice of “footnoting” of joint NATO documents by states such as Denmark and Greece as an expression of disagreement with nuclear policies within the Western defense community. Both Denmark and Greece had experienced a profound decline of trust in NATO's ability and willingness to protect their national interests. In addition, sociocultural and economic change, animosity toward the increasingly bellicose tone of the Reagan administration, and a politically convenient anti-Americanism both forced and allowed the Danish and Greek governments to issue dissenting footnotes to NATO communiqués, criticizing alliance policies. These footnotes therefore can be seen as manifestations of distrust that challenged the operation and harmony of NATO as an effective alliance, even if they could not thwart particular NATO decisions.

This chapter illustrates the attempts by the administration in London and on the ground in Germany to influence the BAOR and use it as a tool to tie the Federal Republic into the Western system of defense. These include the use of the BAOR to strengthen the Konrad Adenauer government, to promote British values, and to control Germany at a time of increasing independence of the young Federal Republic. To a larger extent, it also involves mitigating problems created by the presence of the BAOR. The chapter also explores the crucial period of the mid-1950s, when German sovereignty fundamentally changed both Anglo-German relations in general along with the position of the BAOR in Germany.

This chapter examines the forced removal and incarceration of the Nikkei. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. With a stroke of his pen, and without regard for the U.S. Constitution, the president set in motion the process of forced removal and incarceration of an entire people charged with no crime. This episode was “a historical moment when the cultural, racial, and national Otherness of the Asian was most lucidly articulated, most undisputed, and most resolutely dealt with by the American citizenry and state.” The executive order gave the Western Defense Commander, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, the power to exclude from designated “military areas” “any or all persons.” As such, Nikkei living within DeWitt's exclusion zone were then herded into temporary detention centers, officially called “Assembly Centers,” managed by the Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA), an agency of the army's Western Defense Command (WDC).