U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY
PUBLIC AFFAIRS, USAF ACADEMY, CO 80840
www.usafa.af.mil (719) 333-7731
Release #223, June 21, 2002
WORLD WAR II INTERNMENT
COLLECTION AT ACADEMY
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. - While many Americans know about
the thousands of Japanese Americans interned during World War II, many are
unaware that German and Italian Americans were also detained. Now a
collection of research material gathered for a book about the internment of
German Americans in detention camps in the United States is in the Academy’s
Special Collections Branch at the Cadet Library.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Arthur D. Jacobs was a young
boy growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y. By the end of April 1945, having
already been detained at Ellis Island, NY, Jacobs, his younger brother and
parents were on a train, escorted by Immigration and Naturalization officials,
to an internment camp at Crystal City, Texas. For seven months
he and his family were detained there with hundreds of other German American
internees. In December 1945, Jacobs and his family, along with 97
others, were transported back to Ellis Island, N. Y., and then to
Germany. In Germany, the family was detained in two American
Army camps—Hohenasperg and Ludwigsburg.
Eventually, after proving their American citizenship, Jacobs and
his brother, with the help of an American couple, eventually returned to the
United States in November 1947. They lived with a family in
southwestern Kansas until graduating from high school. The boys
didn’t see their parents again until 1958. Jacobs later spent 22
years in the Air Force, retired as a major, and now lives in Tempe, Ariz.
Col. Peter Heinz, director of International Programs here, invited
Jacobs to speak to his class, and during the visit, Heinz and his staff learned
that a Canadian university was interested in Jacobs’ collection about his life
and internment. Heinz thought the collection should be at the Academy.
Military POW collections are at the library, so it made sense that civilian
internment records should also be included. Duane Reed, Archivist
and Chief of Special Collections at the Cadet Library, agreed.
Jacobs’ collection, said Reed, “is the most comprehensive
collection of documentation that relates to the internment of German Americans
and alien residents by the U.S. Government during World War II. Due
to its significance, it will be made available to cadets and scholarly
researchers.”
For more information about the
collection, call Art Jacobs at (480) 968-0572.
To view the collection, call the Academy Public Affairs office at (719)
333-7731.
The Arthur D. Jacobs’ collection housed at the Special Collections
Department of the McDermott Library at the US Air Force Academy. An abstract of this collection follows: Arthur D. Jacobs Collection, OCLC Number
435654413, 11 linear feet.
Abstract:
This collection
contains materials that pertain to Arthur D. Jacobs' personal experiences as a
civilian internee during and after World War II, along with documentation of
legislation instituted by Major Jacobs seeking restitution from the American government
for German-American internment camps during World War II. Included are original
newspapers published in various internment camps along with correspondence,
legal pleadings, and legislative documents used by Major Jacobs in his research
on the history of the internment of German Nationals and German-Americans.
Other documents include official records, memoranda, photographs, manuscripts
and printed matter gathered by Jacobs in conjunction with the publication in
1999 of his book entitled "The Prison Called Hohenasperg:
An American Boy Betrayed by his Government during World War II".
The
Academy’s listing of the Arthur D. Jacobs Collection is as follows: JACOBS, ARTHUR MS 52
Contact information for the McDermott
Library:
Mailing Address:
HQ USAFA/DFLIB
2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 3A10
USAF Academy CO 80840-6214
Telephone:
Commercial: (719) 333-2590