The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange

by Jan Jarboe Russell

  A guard on horseback patrols the fence line of the 290-acre camp, a physical reminder to the internees of their twenty-four-hour surveillance and crippling confinement.

  In 1942, the president and the first lady used this photograph of themselves seated together on a porch at the White House on their Christmas cards. By then, FDR’s focus had shifted from the policies of the New Deal to the prosecution of the war. While Eleanor disagreed with his policies on internment, she reluctantly accepted them.

  On November 6, 1942, Earl Harrison, the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, traveled to Crystal City to consider the former migrant-labor camp as the site for the INS family internment camp. After World War II came to a close in Europe, he toured the Nazi concentration camps on President Truman’s orders.

  Behind the fence line and the guard tower was the Federal High School. Here, facing east, is the American School, which offered an accredited education. There were also Japanese and German Schools.

  This is an aerial view of the camp, from the north. The swimming pool is visible in the upper lefthand quadrant.

  In the summer of 1943, German internees dredged and leveled an existing reservoir and built a combination swimming pool for the internees and reservoir for irrigating the camp’s vegetable gardens and citrus orchard.

  In the summer of 1943, Harrison named a career Border Patrol agent, Joseph O’Rourke, shown here, as officer in charge of the camp in Crystal City. When O’Rourke arrived, he was a lonely bachelor, but as head of the camp he became popular with many of the children and teenagers.

  Beauticians and barbers, all internees, at work in the German section. Internees labored in nearly every aspect of the building and running of the camp.

  Johanna and Mathias Eiserloh were married on Christmas Eve 1923 and settled in Cleveland, Ohio.

  When the Eiserloh family was reunited in the Crystal City Internment Camp in November 1943, camp officials took this family photograph. Six-year-old Lothar is on the left, Johanna next to him, then two-year-old Ensi, Ingrid standing behind, and Mathias on the right. A few months earlier, Ingrid, twelve years old, had permed her long red hair. “We were all trying to be brave and smile for the camera,” she said of this photo. “In fact, we were devastated.”

  These German internees are seated at a table in the beer garden. They built the garden and were allowed to purchase one beer a day with camp scrip. The beer was made at the camp, and the one-beer-a-day rule was often violated.

  Students of the German School lined up with their teacher in front of the school, located just inside the front gate.

  This portrait of Sumi’s family—the Utsushigawas—was taken in Los Angeles prior to her father’s arrest at their apartment building in Little Tokyo. Her father, Tokiji, a photographer, and her mother, Nobu, seated to the right. Sumi, in the white dress with a white bow in her hair, stands between her two older sisters, Haruko and Yoshiko.

  The Federal High School in Crystal City operated like most American schools. It had regular classrooms, a spacious auditorium, athletic fields, and cheering squads. In 1944, Sumi, shown here with her friends, was one of the yell and song leaders.

  Japanese women—issei, or first-generation American immigrants—at work in the Sewing Project, a building that had seven power and foot-pedal sewing machines in operation from eight o’clock in the morning until ten o’clock at night. The women made clothes, mattress covers, curtains, uniforms for nurses and doctors, and unlikely items, such as typewriter covers.

  Here is Sumi as “A Good Scout!” in February 1944, standing on the grounds of the Japanese school. Both boys and girls participated in Japanese scouting programs at Crystal City.

  In the summer of 1945, Earl Harrison (the tall man, sixth from the left) arrived in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as President Truman’s special envoy. Harrison appears with members of his delegation: Maurice Elgin of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Center (extreme left) and Dr. Joseph Schwartz (fourth from left), European director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Center. On Harrison’s right is Dr. Hadassah Bimko, survivor of Bergen-Belsen.

  On December 8, 1945, a large group of Japanese and Japanese Americans from Crystal City boarded the SS Matsonia at the port of Seattle and sailed on rough waters to Japan, arriving on Christmas Day to a country devastated by war. “All of us teenagers from Crystal City experienced shock and disappointment,” recalled Sumi Utsushigawa, who was among the American-born internees sent to Japan.

  Alan Taniguchi, with his father, Isamu Taniguchi, an internee in Crystal City, in November 1985 at the dedication in Crystal City of a stone monument that memorialized the Japanese experience in what was described on the marker as a “World War II Concentration Camp.” The monument was designed by Alan Taniguchi, a renowned Texas architect, and paid for largely by donations from former internees.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the generosity of many people, especially the many survivors of the Crystal City Internment Camp who gave of their time and memories and whose names are listed in the bibliography. Their passion for sharing their stories—and the stories of their parents—motivated me every step along the way.

  In particular, I am grateful for Ingrid, Ensi, and Lothar Eiserloh and deeply regret that Ingrid died near the end of the research. She wanted so much for the story to be told. I owe an enormous debt to Irene Hasenberg Butter, who shared her experience as a survivor of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as well as her own memories of the January 1945 exchange. Grateful appreciation as well to Sumi Utsushigawa Shimatsu not only for her family’s story, but for introducing me to many of her friends who are former internees in Crystal City.

  Although the seeds for this book were planted years ago, I want to acknowledge that the inspiration in 2011 for pursuing it came from Evan Taniguchi, the son of Alan Taniguchi; Richard Santos, a historian who died in February 2013; the persistence of two friends, Sherry Kafka Wagner and Therese McDevitt, who shared initial research; and the ongoing counsel of Dr. Kay Schanzer.

  A number of people and institutions advanced my work. William Creech, archivist at the National Archives in Washington, DC, was a patient tutor as I made my way through the boxes of Record Group 85 and gained access to the Special FBI files of key characters. Thanks as well to Vincent Slatt, archivist at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, for directing me to the critical list of exchange Jews from Bergen-Belsen and the papers of Earl Harrison. I am indebted to the Texas Historical Commission and specifically to William A. McWhorter, who shared his own research at National Archives 2 in College Park. At the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio, Tom Shelton helped me locate photographs of the camp and oral histories of the internees and staff. Thanks as well to the dedicated staff of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where Yae Aihara, one of the children from the camp, continues to volunteer as a docent. I am grateful to Chester Rosson, a former colleague at Texas Monthly, for fact-checking the sections on Germany, and to Cecily Fergeson, an intern who served as a reader and helped gather photographs. Special thanks to William and Cecil Scanlan for their friendship and patience throughout this process.

  While interned at Crystal City, Sumi had what she called the Big Six, a trusted group that became her friends for life. While writing this book, I had a version of my own Big Six, friends whose cheerful company lightened what was often a formidable task. Mariana Aitches Davis, a retired history professor, read many versions of this book and made helpful suggestions and edits. Mimi Swartz, an executive editor at Texas Monthly, served as a sounding board for ideas through the entire process. Jan Braun helped with research and the organization of materials. Joanie Brooks solved technical problems, and Adelle Brewer provided encouragement and feedback.

  In addition, there was also the Big Five. My agent, Amy Hughes, crusaded for this book from its earliest beginnings until its publication. I was fortunate to have Colin Harrison as my editor. At every
stage of the project, Colin made excellent suggestions and a number of significant changes that greatly enhanced my work. By complete coincidence, I learned when I was well into the research that Earl Harrison, an important character in the book, was Colin’s grandfather. That bit of synchronicity—which could have driven us apart—only served to deepen his passion for the project, and for that I am grateful. At Scribner, I also owe thanks to Katrina Diaz, Colin’s editorial assistant, for her own reading of the manuscript and her help in putting the pieces together. Thanks as well to Steve Boldt, copyeditor, and Laura Wise, production editor.

  Finally, there is the Big One. My husband, Lucky Russell, supported my decision to do this project and was at my side through the four years that it took to accomplish. Even though this book is dedicated to my mentor, Maury Maverick Jr., a large part of the work, as is everything in my life, was made possible by Lucky.

  © TRISH SIMONITE

  JAN JARBOE RUSSELL, a former Nieman fellow, is a contributing editor for Texas Monthly and has written for the New York Times, the San Antonio Express-News, Slate, and other publications. She is the author of Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson and has also compiled and edited They Lived to Tell the Tale. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Dr. Lewis F. Russell Jr.

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  Sources and Notes

  Rather than offer readers the standard bibliography, I believe an annotated description of my sources, broken down by chapter, provides the most comprehensive picture of the research and the reporting conducted for all of the sections and chapters of the book. While this approach results in some repetition among chapter summaries, it compensates for that in clarity and transparency.

  This book is a work of both historical documentation and of memory—the memories of the main and secondary characters. Pertinent aspects of World War II were gleaned from numerous books, essays, and newspaper articles, and the documentation of internment came from a wealth of sources, including primary documents pulled from the National Archives and Records Administration and other institutions and organizations. While the documents formed the spine of the book—providing chronology and context—the heart of the research came from extensive interviews with survivors of the Crystal City Internment Camp and others affected by the camp.

  Generally speaking, sources are cited in full only on their first appearance. The individual citations that follow each chapter summary are mostly limited to quotations, dates and figures, and unique facts.

  My personal scenes—in Crystal City, Texas; Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Honolulu, Hawaii—took place during 2011 to 2014 on reporting trips to conduct first-person interviews. The scenes did not all take place in the order they appear.

  Abbreviations

  CC50

  Crystal City 50th Anniversary Reunion Album

  ER

  FBI file of Eleanor Roosevelt

  FK

  FBI file of Fritz Kuhn

  HNCC

  Historical Narrative of the Crystal City Internment Camp, National Archives 1, Record Group 85, Box 1

  ME

  FBI file of Mathias Eiserloh

  NA1

  National Archives in Washington, DC

  NA2

  National Archives in College Park, MD

  SF-E

  Special File of Mathias Eiserloh

  SF-F

  Special File of Yoshiaki Fukuda

  SF-U

  Special File of Tokiji Utsushigawa

  SWPD

  Special War Problems Division

  YF

  FBI file of Yoshiaki Fukuda

  Preface

  The use of trains as the central symbol of the book and of the war is both literal, as trains were the main source of transport, and figurative, as the book describes the train of events that begins in Crystal City and continues well beyond the gates of the camp.

  To clarify, some of the internees arrived at the small train station in Crystal City, while others arrived at the somewhat larger station in Uvalde and were taken by bus to the internment camp.

  I have used the number six thousand as the approximate number of all internees who were incarcerated at Crystal City during its six-year operation. The precise number is not known. Records from the National Archives indicate that personnel in Crystal City stopped keeping precise counts of internees on June 30, 1945. On that date, the officer in charge at Crystal City had received 4,751 internees. The camp continued to exist until its official closing on February 27, 1948, and during that time new internees arrived. After consultation with William McWhorter, the coordinator of military sites at the Texas Historical Commission, who has done important research about the camp in Crystal City, I settled on the number six thousand, which I believe to be a conservative estimate. After the war ended, the traffic in and out of the camp continued.

  And then there were the trains: HNCC.

  Sumi Utsushigawa: Author interview, May 24, 2011, Los Angeles.

  Paul Grayber: Telephone interview, June 2011.

  The popular history: Arnold Krammer, Undue Process: The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 33–34.

  Virtually unknown: Carmen Higa Mochizuki, author interview, May 24, 2011, Los Angeles.

  In Crystal City, Isamu: Biographical notes and an essay by Isamu Taniguchi, “Essay on Atomic War and Peace,” generously provided by Evan Taniguchi.

  Living now in Honolulu: Ingrid Eiserloh, author interview, February 12, 2012, and multiple other interviews.

  Chapter One: New Enemies

  The stories of the arrests of the fathers of two primary characters—Ingrid Eiserloh and Sumi Utsushigawa—were drawn primarily from interviews with both women. At the time of the first interviews, Ingrid was eighty-one and Sumi was eighty-two. Both women had clear recollections of the events preceding the arrests of their fathers and what followed.

  Documentation of the arrest of Mathias Eiserloh, including biographical information, time of arrest, case file number, and items taken from his home came directly from Eiserloh’s FBI file, supplied by Ensi Eiserloh, Ingrid’s sister. Ensi Eiserloh petitioned the FBI for her father’s file near the end of 2000 and obtained the file in January 2001.

  The documentation of the case of Tokiji Utsushigawa, Sumi’s father, was more complicated. According to my correspondence on January 18, 2013, with the Records Management Division of the FBI, Utsushigawa’s FBI file was destroyed on December 28, 1979, thirty-seven years after his arrest, under the supervision of the archives.

  With Sumi’s signed consent, I filed a request to NA1 for release of Utsushigawa’s Special File, kept by the War Relocation Authority, a division of the Department of Justice during World War II. With the signed consent of Ensi Eiserloh, I also filed a request for Mathias Eiserloh’s Special File. Both files were received and information from them is used in this chapter.

  To get a sense of the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I toured Pearl Harbor in Honolulu and made two trips to the Japanese American National Museum, where I viewed photos of Japantown taken in the days after the attack. I drew heavily on images from Only What We Could Carry, a remarkable collection of photographs, poems, newspaper articles, and private diaries, edited by Lawson Fusao Inada, published in 2000 by Heyday Books. In addition, I reviewed the front pag
es of many American newspapers on December 8, 1941, including the New York Times, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the Los Angeles Times, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

  Ingrid Eiserloh’s world: Author interview and ME.

  Even in tiny Strongsville: Full Pearl Harbor Casualty List, www.uswestvirginia.org.

  Cleveland Plain Dealer: Front page of the Monday, December 8, 1941, edition.

  In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt: Athan Theoharis, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (New York: Temple University Press, 1988), 183.

  That year, 1941, Christmas: Author interview, Lothar Eiserloh, February 17, 2011.

  Two FBI agents: ME.

  Ingrid left the garage: Author interview, Ingrid Eiserloh.

  the morning of December 7: Sumi Utsushigawa, author interview, May 2011 and many other subsequent interviews.

  JAP HUNTING LICENSE: People’s World, January 9, 1942. Other newspaper accounts: “Japanazis or Japaryans,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 1942; “Alien Hysteria Mostly Imaginary,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 6, 1942. These newspaper stories were reprinted in Only What We Could Carry, 11–23.