When the United States entered World War II, Italian nationals
living in this country were declared enemy aliens and faced with
legal restrictions. Several thousand aliens and a few U.S. citizens
were arrested and underwent flawed hearings, and hundreds were
interned. Shedding new light on an injustice often overshadowed by
the mass confinement of Japanese Americans, Mary Elizabeth Basile
Chopas traces how government and military leaders constructed
wartime policies affecting Italian residents. Based on new archival
research into the alien enemy hearings, this in-depth legal
analysis illuminates a process not widely understood. From
presumptive guilt in the arrest and internment based on membership
in social and political organizations, to hurdles in attaining
American citizenship, Chopas uncovers many layers of repression not
heretofore revealed in scholarship about the World War II home
front.
In telling the stories of former internees and persons excluded
from military zones as they attempted to resume their lives after
the war, Chopas demonstrates the lasting social and cultural
effects of government policies on the Italian American community,
and addresses the modern problem of identifying threats in a
largely loyal and peaceful population.