Italian Americans In World War Ii

Discover the first-hand accounts and stories of Italian World War II Veterans who answered the call to serve their country, despite being deemed Enemy Aliens by their own government. At the beginning of World War II, Italian citizens living in the United States were referred to as Enemy Aliens. Yet hundreds of young Italian Americans flocked to recruiting stations, and over 500,000-perhaps as many as 1.5 million-served in the military during the war. Despite the difficulties they faced, including the possibility of having to fight against Italians, countless Italian Americans received decorations for bravery, fourteen of whom received the Medal of Honor. Italian Americans in World War II offers their stories, which, for the most part, have yet to be told. Belmonte interviewed almost 50 Italian-American veterans of World War II, from all branches and types of service. Stories of daily life, food, equipment, and training from soldiers, sailors, and airmen are captured. You'll read personal tales about how survivors of D-Day, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Okinawa, and The Battle of the Bulge felt about entering combat. This fitting tribute also includes photographs from this period in history, bringing the men's stories to life.

Una Storia Segreta brings a new perspective to the history of wartime violations of civilian populations. The essays in this volume bring together the voices of the Italian American community and experts in the field, including personal stories by survivors and their children, letters from internment camps, news clips, photographs, and cartoons.

This resource explores many facets of the dynamic period of the 1940s and the consequences of war and peace specifically within the context of World War II, now recognized as a seminal event in Italian-American life and culture.

The Routledge History of Italian Americans weaves a narrative of the trials and triumphs of one of the nation’s largest ethnic groups. This history, comprising original essays by leading scholars and critics, addresses themes that include the Columbian legacy, immigration, the labor movement, discrimination, anarchism, Fascism, World War II patriotism, assimilation, gender identity and popular culture. This landmark volume offers a clear and accessible overview of work in the growing academic field of Italian American Studies. Rich illustrations bring the story to life, drawing out the aspects of Italian American history and culture that make this ethnic group essential to the American experience.

During World War II 51,000 Italian prisoners of war were detained in the United States. When Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, most of these soldiers agreed to swear allegiance to the United States and to collaborate in the fight against Germany. At the Letterkenny Army Depot, located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, more than 1,200 Italian soldiers were detained as co-operators. They arrived in May 1944 to form the 321st Italian Quartermaster Battalion and remained until October 1945. As detainees, the soldiers helped to order, stock, repair, and ship military goods, munitions and equipment to the Pacific and European Theaters of war. Through such labor, they lent their collective energy to the massive home front endeavor to defeat the Axis Powers. The prisoners also helped to construct the depot itself, building roads, sidewalks, and fences, along with individual buildings such as an assembly hall, amphitheater, swimming pool, and a chapel and bell tower. The latter of these two constructions still exist, and together with the assembly hall, bear eloquent testimony to the Italian POW experience. For their work the Italian co-operators received a very modest, regular salary, and they experienced more freedom than regular POWs. In their spare time, they often had liberty to leave the post in groups that American soldiers chaperoned. Additionally, they frequently received or visited large entourages of Italian Americans from the Mid-Atlantic region who were eager to comfort their erstwhile countrymen. The story of these Italian soldiers detained at Letterkenny has never before been told. Now, however, oral histories from surviving POWs, memoirs generously donated by family members of ex-prisoners, and the rich information newly available from archival material in Italy, aided by material found in the U.S., have made it possible to reconstruct this experience in full. All of this historical documentation has also allowed the authors to tell fascinating individual stories from the moment when many POWs were captured to their return to Italy and beyond. More than seventy years since the end of World War II, family members of ex-POWs in both the United States and Italy still enjoy the positive legacy of this encounter.

A history of the Italians who came to the United States after World War II, and how American immigration policy was transformed. Whom We Shall Welcome examines post-World War II immigration of Italians to the United States, an under-studied period in Italian immigration history. Danielle Battisti looks at efforts by Italian American organizations to foster Italian immigration along with the lobbying efforts of Italian Americans to change the quota laws. While Italian Americans (and other white ethnics) had attained virtual political and social equality with many other groups of older-stock Americans by the end of the war, Italians continued to be classified as undesirable immigrants. Battisti’s work is an important contribution toward understanding the construction of Italian American racial/ethnic identity in this period, the role of ethnic groups in US foreign policy in the Cold War era, and the history of the liberal immigration reform movement that led to the 1965 Immigration Act. Whom We Shall Welcome makes significant contributions to histories of migration and ethnicity, post-World War II liberalism, and immigration policy.

The New York Times bestselling dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II: “A must-read….The Train to Crystal City is compelling, thought-provoking, and impossible to put down” (Star-Tribune, Minneapolis). During World War II, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The only family internment camp during the war, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called “quiet passage.” Hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City were exchanged for other more ostensibly important Americans—diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and missionaries—behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. “In this quietly moving book” (The Boston Globe), Jan Jarboe Russell focuses on two American-born teenage girls, uncovering the details of their years spent in the camp; the struggles of their fathers; their families’ subsequent journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan; and their years-long attempt to survive and return to the United States, transformed from incarcerated enemies to American loyalists. Their stories of day-to-day life at the camp, from the ten-foot high security fence to the armed guards, daily roll call, and censored mail, have never been told. Combining big-picture World War II history with a little-known event in American history, The Train to Crystal City reveals the war-time hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, the secrets of FDR’s tactics to rescue high-profile POWs in Germany and Japan, and above all, “is about identity, allegiance, and home, and the difficulty of determining the loyalties that lie in individual human hearts” (Texas Observer).

This book explores the contributions of Italian Americans employed by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. Italian Americans fluent in Italian language and customs became integral parts of intelligence operations working behind enemy lines. These units obtained priceless military information that significantly helped defeat the Axis. They parachuted into frozen mountains tops to link up with Italian guerilla units in northern Italy or hovered in small patrol torpedo boats and row boats across the Mediterranean Sea in pitch black darkness to destroy railroad junctions.