Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans during the Second World War by John E. Schmitz (review)

John E. Schmitz’s Enemies Among Us: The Relocation, Internment & Repatriation of German, Italian & Japanese Americans during the Second World War is an ambitious work that sets out to expand and complicate the story of wartime detention in the United States. Using a variety of records on the forced removal of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans, Schmitz “examines the causes, conditions, and consequences of America’s selective relocation and internment of its own citizens and enemy aliens” (2). Schmitz argues that historians have largely focused on the “relocation and internment” of Japanese Americans and suggests that broadening this approach to include German and Italian Americans also globalizes this moment by connecting it to the repatriation of enemy aliens in exchange for American civilian internees abroad. Enemies Among Us also posits that scholars should question the argument that race fueled Japanese American internment. Schmitz provides the first full-length monograph on the policies behind and experiences of detention for all three groups while also highlighting challenges in comparing their internment.

Schmitz organizes the book into nine chapters. Chapter 1 provides a useful discussion of the precedent World War I set for World War II internment, while chapters 2 through 4 explain how fears of fifth-column threats from Germans, Italians, and Japanese Americans from the late 1930s through 1940 set the stage for another round of wartime internment. Long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as Immigration and Naturalization Services, conducted investigations on potentially subversive Germans, Italians, and Japanese Americans. But, as Schmitz explains in chapter 5, Pearl Harbor appeared to validate the fears of political leaders and military officials that fifth columnists were responsible for the attack. Chapters 6 and 7 detail how rumors and propaganda contributed to relocation and internment policies nationwide and on both the East and West Coasts. Chapter 8 provides a fascinating discussion of the connections between the internment and repatriation of enemy aliens in exchange for American civilian internees abroad, and chapter 9 concludes the book with a disappointingly short yet useful description of internment experiences, particularly the psychological impact of detention in the Crystal City family internment camp in Texas.

Schmitz’s in-depth study is a useful and much-needed beginning for a new direction in this period of America’s wartime history: taking a broad view of detention across ethnic and racial groups. His linkage to repatriation and internment policies in the Western Hemisphere will be valuable to many scholars, but his decision to include Japanese American incarceration in his study detracts from his overall goals and undermines his argument in key places. His introduction could provide a more thorough discussion of his choice of terminology for the forced removal and imprisonment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans (most of them second-generation, American-born Nisei) to clarify for the reader when he is discussing foreign-born Issei and Nisei. This muddies his argument that including Japanese American incarceration within the study of enemy alien internment is useful. Schmitz explains that key figures found it difficult to differentiate between loyal and disloyal Japanese Americans regardless of their citizenship status, which supports other historians’ claims that racism—while perhaps not as key for the internment of enemy aliens—was in fact a crucial factor in the unique set of circumstances faced by Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Schmitz does, however, provide food for thought in interrogating how detention and surveillance across ethnic and racial minority groups created a policy with broad implications. His work will be important for shaping future studies about wartime internment.