Saturday, December 12, 2015
FDR Was Trump on Steroids | The American Spectator
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued proclamations regarding Germans, Italians, and Japanese residing in the U.S...
At Spectator.org, Jeffrey Lord writes about the history and what it meant to those people:
"Nationwide, approximately 600,000 Italian-born residents of the United States were declared enemy aliens. The term 'enemy alien' was not unique to World War II. The classification traces its roots to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which stated that if the United States was at war with a country then any 'natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation' residing in the United States who were not naturalized citizens were considered 'enemy aliens.' In the weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, enemy aliens were ordered to surrender cameras, short-wave radios and radio transmitters. Other contraband items were flashlights, boats, binoculars and weapons, including hunting rifles. Enemy aliens were prohibited from traveling outside of a five-mile radius of their homes, even for employment, and were banned from entering 'strategic areas' such as power stations and airports. In San Francisco, Giuseppe DiMaggio, father of baseball great Joe DiMaggio, could not visit his son’s restaurant because it was located in a prohibited zone."
