In wartime US, aliens arrested, properties seized

DURING BOTH World War I and World War II, the United States spied upon, arrested and interned in camps several thousand “enemy aliens” — immigrants from countries with which it was at war. It also confiscated private property belonging to these “enemy alien” civilians, note several reports, including ones published in Smithsonian, the journal of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and the US News and World Report.

Several World War I internment camps were active during 1917-18; during World War II, the arrests and seizures of properties began on the evening of December 7, 1941, the day Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbour. German-, Japanese- and Italian-speaking immigrants were among those who were targeted and had their properties seized during the wars.

In October 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed, under the Trading with the Enemy Act passed by Congress that same month, A Mitchell Palmer as Alien Property Custodian to take over property that might, through use to financially support America’s enemies, “hinder the war effort”. Palmer declared that all interned aliens were “regarded as enemies, and their property is treated accordingly”. The Office of the Alien Property Custodian employed hundreds of officials and, by use of its sweeping powers of seizure, soon became what Palmer called “the biggest general store in the country”.

By the time the war ended in November 1918, the Alien Property Custodian had taken over private property worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a report by Boston-based journalist Daniel A Gross published in the Smithsonian in July 2014. Palmer announced they would be all “Americanised” — and in one example, the German-owned chemicals firm Bayer was auctioned on the steps of its New York factory, and the company lost its American patent for the ‘magic drug’ aspirin.

The value of properties seized in similar action during World War II has been estimated at $ 5 billion or more, US News and World Report reported in an December 2016 article, adding that the real total had never been tabulated.

Other participating nations in the wars acted similarly. England interned some 30,000 enemy aliens from 1915 on; Germany sent thousands of English, French and Russian speakers to camps, said the article in the Smithsonian.

United States Library of Congress (above)

(Left) A sketch by political cartoonist William Allen Rogers published in the now-dead The New York Herald on March 28, 1918 shows the “enemy alien menace” over New York City; Alien Property Custodian A Mitchell Palmer with members of his staff.