The FBI Doesn't Like Wise Guys

Eberhard Fuhr was locked up for four years during World War II. His crime? Being German in America.

FBI agents arrested and handcuffed the high school senior six weeks before graduation in front of classmates and teachers. [His brother] Julius was picked up later that day.

"I never returned to school," Fuhr wrote in a 2006 online memoir. "I lost not only belongings in my school locker, but my dignity."

"What would you say to your German cousin if he came to you for sanctuary after coming up the Ohio River in his German U-boat?" he remembers being asked by one of his interrogators.

"I said a sub couldn't come up the Ohio River — it only drafts 4 feet," Fuhr recalls. "I guess I was being a smart guy. It went downhill from there." [Link]

Innocent Until Proven German

Old FBI files reveal the shocking truth about nefarious individuals like WWI-era farmer Albert Deitz.

Deitz, a German, had claimed to be from Pennsylvania when he purchased his farm. But he aroused suspicion by paying for the land in $100 bills from a Los Angeles bank. According to [FBI Agent Roy] McHenry's investigation, Dietz didn't fraternize with his neighbors and "discourages their attempts to be neighborly."

Furthermore, his neighbors believed his behavior indicated he wasn't really a farmer. He mowed only a small portion of his hay crop and didn't market his dairy products.

When McHenry went to the Dietz farm, he noted the "plowing was not the work of a good farmer." He described Deitz as probably about 55 years old, 5-foot-10, quite bald, weighing 150 pounds and having a strong German accent. His wife, about 44, was "not at all comely with a very sour expression." [Link]

This investigation occurred several years before the Patriot Act was passed, so Deitz could not be arrested for being a lousy farmer with a suspicious accent and an ugly wife.

Nebraska's Nisei War Hero

Edward Weir tells how Ben Kuroki—a second-generation Japanese-American, or Nisei, from Hershey, Nebraska—came to be a member of his B-24 Liberator crew during World War II:

"He had been trying for months to get on a crew, and nobody else would take him because of the prejudice at that time," said Mr. Weir, now 86 and living in Denton. "He knew we needed a replacement. He came to our pilot begging for a chance."

The pilot, Jake Epting of Tupelo, Miss., wanted the blessing of his crew, so he called for a vote, Mr. Weir said.

"He asked the other crew members, 'Do you want him?'" Mr. Weir said, recalling that day in 1942. "And we held up our hands and said yes." [Link]

Kuroki went on to fly 58 combat missions in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific, was featured in Time magazine in 1944, and received three Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Air Medal. In 2005, he was awarded the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal based on Weir's eyewitness testimony. A documentary about Kuroki, Most Honorable Son, airs on PBS in September.

The 'First Come, First Served' Theory of Democracy

Bob Cuddy reports that the situation is the same in San Luis Obispo County, California, as it is up here in Maine: if you're a newcomer, be wary of speaking at local public meetings.

“I don’t know that that makes you a native,” Supervisor Jerry Lenthall tut-tutted a speaker who, at a recent meeting, proudly said she had lived here for 40 years and felt like a native.

Lenthall did allow that 40 years is a long time.

But Lenthall, who has lived here four decades himself, can be forgiven. Week after week, he has to listen to people preface their remarks with “I am a fourth-generation resident” or “my ancestors came here at the beginning of the last century.” [Link]

In my hometown, anyone whose ancestors didn't sign the petition for incorporation in 1815 is said to be "from away."

Census Bureau's Sins Enumerated

Margo Anderson and William Seltzer have found evidence that the U.S. Census Bureau handed over the names and addresses of Japanese-Americans living in and around Washington, D.C., to the Secret Service during World War II. The release occurred after Congress suspended the Bureau's legally mandated protection of confidentiality in 1942.

Anderson and Seltzer discovered in 2000 that the Census Bureau released block-by-block data during WW II that alerted officials to neighborhoods in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Arkansas where Japanese-Americans were living. "We had suggestive but not very conclusive evidence that they had also provided microdata for surveillance," Anderson says.

Anderson says that microdata would have been useful for what officials called the "mopping up" of potential Japanese-Americans who had eluded internment. [Link]

Her Ancestors Made War, Not Love

Australian xenophobe Pauline Hanson underwent DNA testing to prove that her ancestors came from England and Ireland. The results showed that she is 9 percent Middle Eastern, and that another 32 percent of her genetic blueprint was drawn in Italy, Greece, or Turkey.

When told of the results, the former fish and chip shop owner appeared flustered, making references to "rape and pillage" in ancient times, adding: "All I can think of is that probably down the track it eventuated from some war.

"But I'm not going to knock it. It has made me who I am." [Link]