The Train to Crystal CityThe Train to Crystal City

From 1942 to 1945, secret government trains delivered United States civilians regularly to Crystal City, a small desert town at the southern tip of Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The vast majority were loyal to the United States deeply, were never charged with any crime, and did not understand why they had been forced to leave their homes. Crystal City, the only family internment camp during World War II, was the center of a secret government prisoner exchange program. During the war, hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City, including their children, were exchanged for other, ostensibly more important Americans ---- diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries ---- behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. Haunted by the story for decades, Jan Jarboe Russell interviewed more than fifty living internees from the camp and gained access to private journals, diaries, FBI files, camp administration records, and other documents. Focusing her story on two American-born teenage girls, Russell assembles a vivid reconstruction of their years spent in the camp, their families' subsequent respective journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan, and their years-long attempt to survive and return to The United States. 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. The Train To Crystal City reveals the wartime hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, FDR's secret tactics to rescue prisoners of war in Germany and Japan, how the definition of American citizenship changed under the pressure of war, and, above all, a tale of resilience and patriotism against overwhelming odds. -- Provided by publisher, taken from cover.