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Crystal City Internment Camp
The Crystal City Internment Camp was a detention facility in Texas that held enemy aliens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent during World War II. The camp opened in December 1943 and was officially closed on February 11th, 1948. The camp was originally designed to house Japanese families, but later allowed German families. The strategy of the camp was to allow the internee families to live as close to a normal family life as possible in order to prevent discontent and espionage. The camp provided various facilities for the education of the young internees. A large number of Latin American Germans and Japanese were deported from their countries to Crystal City. The Crystal City Internment camp was the primary internment facility in the United States for interned families during World War II.

Wartime Internment
During World War II the United States government created detention camps for mainly German and Japanese Americans, as well as German and Japanese Latin Americans, in order to protect the country from any suspected attacks and harm. A power conflict arose between the Department of Justice and the War Department regarding internal security and the internment of enemy aliens in the fall of 1941. A subcommittee of the two departments pushed for the U.S Army to control internment procedures during the war, but the majority of the committee thought otherwise. The Department of Justice was then granted the power to authorize internment procedures. The Department of Justice authorized the INS to transfer to the Department of Justice from the Department of Labor giving the INS the legislation to run and maintain interment camps.

Internment Camps in Texas
The Crystal City Internment Camp was not the first internment camp in the United States or even in Texas. Crystal City was one of the largest camps in Texas along with Camp Kenedy and Camp Seagoville. Camp Kenedy, a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp located near San Antonio, was the largest internment camp for male aliens from Latin America. Camp Seagoville, located south of Dallas, was a former women’s prison designed as a college campus that later formed into a detention facility. In January 1943, the Crystal City internment camp was opened because Camp Seagoville was too small and could not hold families brought from Latin America as well as the domestic internees. Before the War, Crystal City was a migrant labor work camp that was surrounded by fields of the area’s most profitable crop, spinach. All of the families from Camp Seagoville were moved to Crystal City except for couples without children, a few couples with toddlers, and unmarried females who remained at Camp Seagoville. The camp is named after the city where it is located, Crystal City, which is located 110 miles south of San Antonio. The Crystal City internment camp was created and controlled by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

The Internees
Latin Americans

The United States government interned Latin American Germans and Japanese because of suspicion that they were untrustworthy enemies. Once the foreign enemies were interned in the United States they could then be repatriated to Germany or Japan where they could not pose as a threat to the United States. The INS internment stations located in various regions near New Orleans prosecuted more than 2,000 Latin American Germans and Japanese before relocating them to camps in Texas. The majority and almost 1,500 of the Latin American Japanese were moved to the Crystal City Internment Camp. Out of the 800 Germans interned at Crystal City in 1944, 234 of them were Latin American Germans from Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Haiti.

Germans and Japanese Americans

The Crystal City internment camp held Japanese and German Americans that previously lived in many different parts of the United States. American born Japanese and Germans were not excluded from internment because INS officials were paranoid they might participate in subversive activities. The first German American internees arrived in December 1943 from Ellis Island and Camp Forrest. The Germans agreed and instructed by the INS to build new detention facilities for the numerous Japanese internees that would later arrive. The first Germans to arrive protested against the INS to not be transferred out of Crystal City after their work. The German protest was successful and the INS then allowed both German and Japanese internees to stay at Crystal City. Many of the Japanese Americans were attained from the West Coast while the German Americans were attained from numerous locations throughout the United States. The first Japanese arrived at Crystal City in March 1943. Most of the Japanese American internees traveled by train to get to Crystal City from other detention facilities located in Western regions.

Internment Life
The idea of family internment was a new concept proposed with regards to the detention of German and Japanese aliens in World War II. In the Crystal City internment camp German and Japanese internees lived separately from one another and were placed into two different sections or locations in the Camp. Crystal City INS officials justified the segregation as a successful way to monitor each from German and Japanese groups. The German and Japanese agreed with the segregation and thought it was necessary. The Crystal City Internment Camp received large amounts of detainees from other internment facilities in the United States and the camp was overpopulated. The camp's German section provided its internees with a German bakery, mess hall, community hall, and cottages. Large German families were given their own cottages that included showers, kitchens, bathrooms, and hot water. The Japanese section was provided with the Japanese School, the Federal High School, the Federal Elementary School, a citrus orchard, and several recreational facilities such as tennis courts, basketball courts, a football field, and a swimming pool. The Japanese internees of the camp lived in housing huts with running water and iceboxes.

Children

Almost all of the children held at the Crystal City internment camp were native-born American citizens whose parents were born aliens to the United States. Each child at the Crystal City Internment Camp received a liter of milk each day. The INS committed to the education of the children by establishing three schools. The German School, The Japanese School, and the American Schools of Federal Elementary and Federal High School. The schools provided the interned students with all of the necessary procedures any school in Texas was required to have. Established in January 1943, the American School at the Crystal City Internment Camp educated over one thousand students before being closed in June 1946. The majority of the American School's students at Crystal City were Japanese American internees and a large amount of the students were later accepted into various universities in the United States. The parents of German American students refused to send their children to the American School and they sent their children to the German School were they received a separate education. The German American that transferred into the German School from the American School often struggled in the classroom because they were unable to speak German fluently. The German School and the American Schools had a similar enrollment and each school educated about 350 students. The Japanese School educated about 300 Latin American Japanese and Japanese American students. The Japanese School's curriculum resembled the curriculum students in Japan received that focused on Japanese morals and ethics and physical education.

Closing
On January 24, 1946 Crystal City Internment Camp official J. L. O'Rourke closed the German and Japanese schools and issued that all remaining students enroll in the American schools. The American schools were then closed on June 28, 1946 and nearly 16 Japanese students still remained in Crystal City with their parents. The population of the camp was already low because numerous internees were sent back to their native countries as repatriates after the war was over. The INS rejected the proposed idea of transferring the Japanese students into public schools near Crystal City. Due to the INS decision and the lack of resources to move elsewhere the remaining Japanese internees reinstalled the Japanese School. On February 11, 1948 the Crystal City Internment Camp was officially closed.