Casa Emigranti Italiani 

While much is known about the treatment of Japanese Americans during the second world war, not as much has been written about the many Italian Americans who also received the somewhat same treatment.

Quoted below are several pages from a  thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in History by Emma Caccamo in April 2013.

Italians in America

Italian immigrants constituted a large portion of the wave of ‘new immigration’ from Southern and Eastern Europe that began to flood the United States at the end of the 19th and beginning of the twentieth century.

In 1900, there were 484,027 Italian immigrants residing in the United States, but by 1910 the Italian born population had jumped to 1,343,125. By 1920, the end of the peak of Italian immigration, immigrants, largely considered to be more foreign and removed from the prevailing Protestant Anglo-Saxon American culture, became the targets of a corresponding new wave of nativist sentiment, embodied by the Dillingham Commission and ultimately culminating in the immigration restriction acts of the early 1920s. Italian immigrants were grouped into “an immigrant throng that displayed few common traits except the indubitable fact that it was not Anglo-Saxon,” thus making them susceptible to a vast array of suspicions and stereotypes.

Furthermore, as Catholics, Italians were also implicated by the existing anti-Catholic nativist tradition. However, as the era progressed and racial categorizations became more prominent than religious ones, it was Italians’ imprecise racial identity that most impacted their degree of foreignness.

As Europeans, but not Anglo-Saxons, Italians’ whiteness was considered contentious and problematic.

As more and more Italians poured into the United States at the turn of the century, Italians in America, both newcomers and existing inhabitants, were broadly characterized by a criminal, mafia-esque stereotype linked to conceptions of Italianness. This image “conditioned every major outburst of anti-Italian sentiment in the 1890s,” and in some cases provoked retaliatory violence, notably lynching.

Minor, solitary incidents were commonly embedded within a larger narrative of the violent, erratic, passionate, and irrational character of the Italian race, with the emphasis on the perpetrator’s nationality and the implicit connection to a web of  1,610,113 Italian immigrants were in the United States and by 1930, after immigration restriction had been implemented, the population of Italian-born immigrants was 1,790,429.

However by the beginning of the twentieth century, abject fear of Italians began to subside as it became clear that violent incidents were primarily contained within the Italian American community. And yet, even as nativist outbursts diminished and actual mafia- related activity also declined, “the image of a mysterious Black Hand Society, extending from Italy into every large American city, was fixed in the public imagination.” This cemented the idea in the American psyche that these immigrants, though removed, were not detached from their homelands.

As the century progressed and immigration increased, this image translated into expressions and outbursts of nativism targeted at Italian Americans. Not only were Italians beleaguered for their criminal behavior, but they were also held  “responsible for urban slums,” and depreciated living conditions were attributed to their presence.61 By the early 1920s, nativist opposition to Italian immigrants was raging; claims were  circulating that  immigration restriction was “the best way to safeguard American democratic and capitalistic traditions,” and that, due to inadequate assimilation, Italians, along with other new immigrants, “were becoming an increasingly divisive force in the country.”

This argument against Italian Americans, which ultimately contributed to the 1924 restriction legislation,deliberately and consciously engaged America’s Anglo-Saxon tradition, asserting that Italian Americans were directly compromising the strength of American traditions and institutions. Yet, restriction and anti-Italianism, while drastically reducing the overall number of new immigrants, did not forcefully assimilate Italians in America in the way that anti-German hysteria during World War I forced Germans to reposition their role in American society. For example, in contrast to the German foreign language press after World War I, the Italian language press did not disappear after restriction, but rather its coverage shifted from an emphasis on Italy as the homeland to more immediate American issues.63 In contrast to the experience of German Americans in World War I, Italians retained a high degree of foreignness despite nativist pressure.

Despite a reprieve following the 1924 Restriction Act, Italians again became a focus of national attention as fascism spread  throughout Europe and a possible conduit between Italians in America and their fascist homeland sparked concern.

Fascist organizations emerged throughout the 1920s and attempted to tether a fascist ideology to American soil through Italian Americans.

 However, because fascism was originally accepted by mainstream American society, largely because of its anticommunist doctrine, Italian American support for fascism or admiration for Mussolini was not initially considered suspect or threatening. However, as Italy’s war aims become more apparent, fascism in general was discounted not only by the American public, but also largely by Italians in America. While support among  Italians diminished in conjunction with the general public’s disillusionment, “by the late 1930s Americans conveniently forgot that the disease has been a national phenomenon rather than an ethnic importation.”

Invoking a selective memory of sorts, “the American public and its government needed the Italian-American as scapegoat to cleanse itself of an unbecoming sin—its flirtation with the undemocratic Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini.” Any further expression of support for Mussolini, or expression of overt Italianness, would become the basis of  suspicion and later investigation.

Overview of  Enemy Alien Investigations

Although investigations were carried out on an individual basis and each case represents a very personalized and localized perception of the individual’s foreignness and the threat they presented, the commonalities in the investigative procedures, recorded in FBI reports, demonstrate the criteria used to evaluate the status of enemy aliens. The consistent patterns that emerge testify to the types of interactions and perceptions that contributed to the disposition of each individual enemy alien’s case.

In stark contrast to the Japanese on the West Coast, both German and Italian aliens had to have been charged with or suspected of some potentially disloyal or dangerous statement or activity to trigger, or at least justify, an investigation.

Though various and specific to each case, the charges that precipitated an investigation largely fell into some key categories. As would be expected, any potentially subversive activity or possible affiliation with a suspected dissident organization was grounds for investigation.

Un-American remarks, whether spoken publicly or privately and largely regardless of actual intent or surrounding circumstances, qualified as potentially subversive activities requiring official examination. Military service, “as the most of all symbols of loyalty,” was also used as a criterion for investigation, either in the form of past military service for an enemy nation, such as in World WarI, or a refusal or expressed unwillingness to serve in the United States’ military.

 Finally, failure to comply with alien registration regulations, such as travelling without proper authorization or possession of contraband items, were considered viable charges against German and Italian immigrants. Once identified as possibly complicit in any of these, or other subversive schemes, individual subjects were generally described in a manner that either presented them as familiar or inexcusably foreign. Positive character evaluations often included signs of a strong work ethic and warm relations with children, all attributes commonly associated with being a good American.

A bad temper and proclivity for drunkenness were often marked as indicators of a corrupt character. Command of English was also used as a standard of evaluation, with the presence of a persistent foreign accent commonly used as an easily identifiable manifestation of inherent foreignness. These descriptions created an image of the subject that cast them as either foreign or familiar or both, depending on the combination of evidence and personal observations provided by various informants.

These portrayals, as well as accounts of any potentially subversive remarks or activities, were provided by a variety of informants whose observations and analyses formed the basis of most investigations. Informants ranged across cases from individuals intimately associated with the subject to peripheral acquaintances with severely limited knowledge about the subject and no substantial interactions with them, such as a passenger who rode in subject’s taxi a single time. Along this spectrum of familiarity, informants could be anyone from a family member to a landlord.

Neighbors, employers, and co-workers were commonly contacted as part of ‘neighborhood’ and ‘employment’ investigations, presumably because of their proximity to the subject, regardless of their actual experiences with them.

Therefore, reports privileged general impressions, rather than actual relationships or factual knowledge. Evidence used in investigations and hearings was chiefly based on the personal opinions of people with whom the subject may or may not have had consistent or ample contact.

 Once the presumably factual outlines of the arguments either for or against a subject were established, the cases of enemy aliens were further colored by an array of additional information and peripheral details that served to define and evaluate the persona, statements, and activities of each subject.

The examination of these reports, then, reveals the role that perception and often brief encounters played in determining the presumed loyalty of each subject. The patterns of repeated pertinent questions and recorded details used to establish this determination of allegiance suggest a fundamental need on the part of  both investigators and informants to ascertain how familiar or how alien a subject was.



Headlines from the Hartford Courant dealing with WWII and Italian American organizations and individuals.