An Act of Bastardry

[Rising Sun*]

So the Japanese interned in America during WWII think they were badly treated?

Just heard a radio interview with the author of this book
http://www.cdu.edu.au/cdupress/books/EmptyNorth.htm who said that not only did Australia intern its Japanese when war began (including one non-naturalised Japanese who held a commissioned rank in the intelligence section of the Royal Australian Navy!), but after the war it classified many of them as merchant seamen (which they weren't) so it could send them and their families back to Japan penniless, after confiscating their assets.

Many of the children couldn't speak Japanese to any useful extent.

Many families had no way to accommodate or support themselves in post war Japan, isolated and without community support.

It reflects the generally remorseless attitude Australia had towards Japan and Japanese during and after the war, typified by running war crimes trials against the Japanese much longer than Britain and America.

Doesn't alter the fact that it was an act of bastardry.

[overlord644]

i think the americans did what they had to to try to keep their country safe, it may look like an act of bastardry now, but when compared to other internment camps it is not so bad, also wee must look at what trying to get by as a japanese american on the outside would have been like during the war

[royal744]

HEY Rising Sun. Strange but true - the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were never interned during WW2.

[Nickdfresh]

i think the americans did what they had to to try to keep their country safe, it may look like an act of bastardry now, but when compared to other internment camps it is not so bad, also wee must look at what trying to get by as a japanese american on the outside would have been like during the war


No, we really didn't. It was racism combined with a land grab - pure and simple...

The internment camp was one thing, the fact that most of these people lost all of their property and livelihood is another...

[Rising Sun*]

HEY Rising Sun. Strange but true - the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were never interned during WW2.

Astonishing!

I thought there were serious concerns in Hawaii about Japanese spies etc, before and after Pearl Harbor.

Was it to do with the proportion of Japanese in the community, being needed to keep things going?

[Egorka]

Astonishing!

I thought there were serious concerns in Hawaii about Japanese spies etc, before and after Pearl Harbor.

Was it to do with the proportion of Japanese in the community, being needed to keep things going?

Common, thery were alreqady in Hawaii! How much further away can you send them? :D

[Chevan]

Common, thery were alreqady in Hawaii! How much further away can you send them? :D

May be to the Alaska, or Syberia;)

[Rising Sun*]

May be to ... Syberia;)

IIRC, there was a certain amount of Soviet resistance to Japan moving into Siberia. ;)

[Rising Sun*]

Common, thery were alreqady in Hawaii! How much further away can you send them? :D

More seriously, the Japanese and other Asians were brought to Hawaii as labourers, seen by some as modern slaves in some respects, late in the 19th and early in the 20th century.

Australia was doing the same thing with Pacific Islanders, commonly called Kanakas (not to be confused with PanzerKanakas :D), at the same time, for much the same reason.

The sugar industry.

[overlord644]

No, we really didn't. It was racism combined with a land grab - pure and simple...

The internment camp was one thing, the fact that most of these people lost all of their property and livelihood is another...

i don know about that, i heard that japanese were allowed to sell their homes, although i could be wong

[overlord644]

HEY Rising Sun. Strange but true - the Japanese Americans in Hawaii were never interned during WW2.

this is because there was such a massive japanese population, that the islands would have been emptied

[Nickdfresh]

i don know about that, i heard that japanese were allowed to sell their homes, although i could be wong

I'm pretty sure they were sold well below market value. Pretty clearly, things were a buyers market...

[Rising Sun*]

I'm pretty sure they were sold well below market value. Pretty clearly, things were a buyers market...

You're right, at least on vegetable farms in California where there had long been tensions between Caucasian American vegetable growers and Japanese immigrant / American born Japanese growers.

The history of it is one of the things that contributed to negative sentiments towards America in Japan. There's a good but relatively short history of it in the link from which the following quote is taken.

The fact that Japanese farmers were not welcomed back after the war contradicts the security arguments given for the evacuation. Security concerns certainly did not exist after the war. It is quite clear that some viewed the situation in California immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor as a unique opportunity to get rid of competitors. In May 1942, O. L. Scott, another member of the Grower-Shipper Vegetable Association wrote to Congressman Anderson:


If it were not for the "white-skinned Japs" in this country there wouldn't be any Japanese question. What can you suggest I do and thousands of Californians be led to do, that may make it possible to get rid of all Japs, sending them back to Japan either before or after the war is won. I am convinced that if it is not done or at least the action completed before the war is over, it will be impossible to get rid of them.... The Japanese cannot be assimilated as the white race [and] we must do everything we can to stop them now as we have a golden opportunity now and may never have it again.[9]


As a consequence of the evacuation, farms owned by Japanese-Americans were sold for a few cents on the dollar to Caucasian farmers. One estimate of the value of Japanese farmland in 1940 was over $72 million. After the war, internees were paid only a small fraction of the value of their losses. Attempting to remedy this situation, the government passed a bill in 1988 that did two things. First, the government apologized to Japanese-Americans for the internment, also admitting that the relocation was not justified for security reasons. Second, the bill provided that each of the 60,000 internees or their descendants be paid a lump sum of $20,000. Perhaps these funds should have come not from the taxpayers of this country at large, but from the farmers who benefited directly from the land and crops taken from the Japanese-Americans in 1942. My bold.
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=4220

[1000ydstare]

What is still unbeleivable about this shameful episode, is that many Japanese-Americans fought bravely and loyally; even when they knew their families were being treated so.

For those who have watched the Karate Kid. Mr Miyagi was a brave Japanese-American Soldier, whose family were interned in a camp.

Specifically this one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzanar_Japanese_internment_camp

If you read to the bottom you will even see a PFC who won the Congressional Medal of Honour, and was recruited direct from the camp.

Perhaps those that gained the most from the deals, should pay more, but the whole country of America owes a great debt to many of its own citizens that it treated so shabbily.

[Rising Sun*]

What is still unbeleivable about this shameful episode, is that many Japanese-Americans fought bravely and loyally; even when they knew their families were being treated so.

It shows a greater nobility and more courage in people who were discriminated against than those who discriminated against them.

Due to their outstanding bravery and the heavy combat duty they faced, the 100/442nd RCT became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service. There were over 18,000 individual decorations for bravery, 9,500 Purple Hearts, and seven Presidential Distinguished Unit Citations. http://www.njahs.org/research/442.html

(Not that those of us in some countries are impressed by Purple Hearts where the best we'd get for the same wound was a few stitches and a swab of gentian violet in an RAP and no entry in the victim's paybook or RAP records. This ensured that the the victim could have fun spending the next forty or fifty years trying to convince the Repatriation Department that the wound with visible bits of shell splinter under the skin hadn't been acquired during a drunken civilian party convened for the sole purpose of ripping off the government for medical treatment under the Repat Scheme. :rolleyes:)

We're seeing pretty much the same bullshit from governments today with a lot of their anti-Muslim hysteria, although provoked by quite different circumstances. Sixty years on it'll be seen that we treated a lot of people very badly because of fear rather than fact and reason; drove some people to the other side; and that we should be ashamed of not treating the rest as we found them rather than as we feared they might be.

[Librarian]

Excellent debate, honorable ladies and gentlemen! Completely sincere, unrestrained, and utterly fair one. My sincerest congratulations to all participants of this thread! Indeed, this one represents an example of enlightened discussion about some highly problematical historical issues like socially embedded prejudice, and subsequent irrational hatred – those main enemies of every proper and decent democracy.

TAs we all do know, the war had produced different kinds of hatred and subsequent socially transposed vindictiveness since time immemorial, but the most appealing manifestation of the WW2 was the verity that energy that had gone into crude vigilantism in the earlier wars went in the Second World War into different manifestations of organized accomplishments. Additional curiosity is connected with the fact that racial prejudice and racial myths were able to produce almost similar results in completely different parts of the world. Although American people continued to eat hamburgers and sauerkraut and listen to Wagner, thus demonstrating little animosity toward Americans of German background and practically none toward Italians, Japanese Americans - alas! - have had a completely different status.

Although few Nazi agents and genuine American fascists were jailed, the most ambitious effort to punish them, a so called Sedition trial of 28, ended in a mistrial, after the defendants lawyers had engaged in long but successful delaying tactics. A few papers like Father Coughlin’s "Social Justice" were barred from the mails. But American religious conscientious objectors who were willing to register went to Civilian Public Service Camps rather than prison.

In sad contrast to this moderation, the frenzy of public fury turned on Japanese. Initially unsuccessful campaign in the Pacific developed a fierce and numerous forms of public savagery, especially on the Pacific Coast, where hatred of Americans of Japanese background became extreme. Wild stories, strengthened with sensationalist newspaper articles, circulated about sabotage at Pearl Harbor – later proven 100 % untrue. Devastations of property, public humiliation of Japanese-Americans, even some fortunately prevented attempts of physical violence actually occurred. Under public pressure, Roosevelt in February of 1942 authorized the army to to remove all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a137/Langnasen/DemocracyTotalitarianism-1.jpg

Result of racial prejudice – public outcry of a Japanese-American Citizen due to crowd proscription

As stated by the ex - Secretary of State, Mr. Cordel Hull, a man of great ethical integrity and indeed high moral principle "Americans… have held up to scorn the crudities of the Fascist regimes. Yet the history of the evacuation policy could be an episode from the totalitarian handbook. The resident Japanese minority became the scapegoat of military defeat at Hawaii. Racial prejudices, economic cupidity, and political fortune-hunting became intertwined with patriotic endeavor. In the face of exact knowledge to the contrary, military officials propounded the theory that race determined allegiance. Civil administrators and the national legislature were content to rubber-stamp the military fiat."

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a137/Langnasen/Democracytotalitarianism-2.jpg

Japanese-Americans being evacuated from the Pacific Coast

Some 117.000 people, two thirds of them US citizens, without any guilt were abruptly hoarded behind barbed wire, and latter shipped into ten reallocation centers in wild and disagreeable areas. They suffered the financial loss of at least 40 % of their possessions and for several years were barred from lucrative employment. Yet there were 17.600 Japanese-Americans in the armed forces. Their units, especially in Italy, established outstanding records for bravery under fire. Alas, that fact was insufficient guarantee for the others.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a137/Langnasen/DemocracyTotalitarianism-3.jpg

Japanese relocation center at Heart Mountain, Wyoming – arrival of the Japanese-Americans

The American Civil Liberties Union has called the Japanese evacuation 'the worst single wholesale violation of civil liberties of American citizens in our history'. Although persecution of Japanese –Americans was the only major blemish in the wartime civil liberties record, essentially it represented a serious erosion of civilian rights, since the Supreme Court in 1944 validated the compulsory evacuation, and in other decisions upheld military control over civilians. Practically, aforesaid decision offered a possibility in time of war or national emergency for abolishment of court guaranteed constitutional protection of United States citizens from military or executive authority. In this way the very act of war had led to a threat to the civil rights of all Americans.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a137/Langnasen/DemocracyTotalitarism-6.jpg

Fumiko Hayashida and her one-year-old daughter, Natalie, are being coercively relocated

"The resettlement center is actually a penitentiary – armed guards in towers with spotlights and deadly tommy guns, 15 feet of barbed-wire fences, everyone confined to quarters at nine, lights out at 10 o’clock. The guards are ordered to shoot anyone who approaches within 20 feet of the fences. No one is allowed to take the two-block-long hike to the lantrines after nine, under any circumstances…

The food and sanitation problems are the worst. We have had absolutely no fresh meat, vegetables or butter since we came here… Stinking mud and slops everywhere. Can this be the same America we left a few weeks ago?"

Ted Nakashima, The New Republic, June 15, 1942

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a137/Langnasen/DemocracyTotalitarism-5.jpg

Internees at a Japanese relocation center at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, saluting the flag in -18 weather

This sad occurrence is a good reminder that the beast dwells within all societies and in all of us - Americans, Germans, Japanese, Serbian, Russian and all other nationalities. The urge to participate in injustice is not unique to any nation – alas, it is a universal affliction.

And If we forget that fact, honorable ladies and gentlemen, the beast may prevail.

Once again, thank you for this indeed enlightened and balanced conversation.

May God bless you all!

[Rising Sun*]

It shouldn't be forgotten that it wasn't all sweetness and light in the camps, with loyal Americans unfairly locked up.

Groups like the Black Dragon Society bullied and beat other Japanese they suspected of disloyalty to Japan and were openly supportive of Japan.

This put others in a doubly difficult position.

Personal responses to the [loyalty] questionnaire inescapably became public acts open to community debate and scrutiny within the closed world of the camps. This made difficult choices excruciating.

After I volunteered for the service, some people that I knew refused to speak to me. Some older people later questioned my father for letting me volunteer, but he told them that I was old enough to make up my own mind. [70]

[T]he resulting infighting, beatings, and verbal abuses left families torn apart, parents against children, brothers against sisters, relatives against relatives, and friends against friends. So bitter was all this that even to this day, there are many amongst us who do not speak about that period for fear that the same harsh feelings might arise up again to the surface. [71]
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/personal_justice_denied/chap7.htm

The latter link has a comprehensive survey of the whole issue.

See also http://books.google.com/books?id=nvsIQNwYvSwC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=black+dragon+society+internment&source=web&ots=W0YPqXcLFS&sig=4DphI5ZDOl_1BLwXLW8_BPoMtAQ

And for the document which more or less started the paper trail.

http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/jap%20intern.htm

[Rising Sun*]

As we all do know, the war had produced different kinds of hatred and subsequent socially transposed vindictiveness since time immemorial, but the most appealing manifestation of the WW2 was the verity that energy that had gone into crude vigilantism in the earlier wars went in the Second World War into different manifestations of organized accomplishments. Additional curiosity is connected with the fact that racial prejudice and racial myths were able to produce almost similar results in completely different parts of the world. Although American people continued to eat hamburgers and sauerkraut and listen to Wagner, thus demonstrating little animosity toward Americans of German background and practically none toward Italians, Japanese Americans - alas! - have had a completely different status.

I think there were two major sources of the English speaking Allies' conduct towards the Japanese.

First, there was a long history in America and Australia of fear and animosity towards the Japanese, and for that matter the Chinese and others, based on fears of cheap labour and various racist notions, not that those notions were seen as remarkable in the West at the time. I don't know that this aspect influenced the British much.

Second, the experience of war with the Japanese, both vicariously through their conduct in China with the Rape of Nanking well publicised in the West and in reality in battle and elsewhere from December 1941, confirmed in some and created in others the opinion that the Japanese were primitive savages. This created a fear and a desire for vengeance that encouraged ruthless responses. It also permitted them because the Japanese were seen as less human.

These and other aspects are expanded upon in this paper.

http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/pages/NT0000269A

[Nickdfresh]

Just to add to this - I think it must be stated that there was a large Chinese lobby in the the US that had long publicized the events transpiring in China, which were so acidic, that it was not hard to stir up pubic outcry against the well publicized Japanese atrocities at the time. And of course, it was no secret that a clash between the US and Japan over who would dominate the Pacific rim led to speculative war plans as early as 1922 (Gen. Billy Mitchell predicted war with Japan in an early treatise on air power), and was also entrenched into the popular culture with several incidents such as the Japanese attack on a US Navy patrol boat in China prior to hostilities. The internment of Nisei Americans saw the combination of unbridled racism and greed with what were some valid concerns - the Japanese did in fact conduct significant espionage operations prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although I suspect there was little material nor moral support from the Japanese Americans residing in Hawaii.

To be fair, there were significant internal security operations waged by the FBI and other services against Italian-Americans that were seen as potentially keen of fascism and Mussolini and Germans-Americans of the "Bund," which were seen as a potential fifth columnists and were heavily infiltrated by the FBI in the late 1930s. They were in fact interned as well during the War, although the key difference was that the Bund members actively supported Nazi Germany and their members professed an allegiance to to Hitler and were easily quashed. The numbers were few and their professed actions and allegiances made their internment just. The Nisei Americans, in sharp contrast, had little overall political ties to Japan, and were effectively perilously close to being stateless persons since they were neither truly Japanese anymore, and Japan would have been as alien to many of them as the Moon. Of the Japanese that did return to Japan on the eve of WWII, most would have found themselves under suspicion, or in an intelligence function in the Japanese military. The Japanese, as some of the more recent ethnic arrivals, were seen as far too culturally distinct to be trusted, which led to one of the largest land grabs in US history as their California farms were gobbled up, adding a particularly unseemly dimension to what was the persecution of honest, law-abiding citizens. As far as comparing those of German and Italian descent, those groups were largely, with the above exceptions, fully integrated in American society and saw themselves as Americans of particular and distinct regional eccentricities as opposed to 'displaced' Sicilians or Bavarians as a whole. So a direct comparison is bit difficult...

[Carl Schwamberger]

To be fair, there were significant internal security operations waged by the FBI and other services against Italian-Americans that were seen as potentially keen of fascism and Mussolini and Germans-Americans of the "Bund," which were seen as a potential fifth columnists and were heavily infiltrated by the FBI in the late 1930s. They were in fact interned as well during the War, although the key difference was that the Bund members actively supported Nazi Germany and their members professed an allegiance to to Hitler and were easily quashed. The numbers were few and their professed actions and allegiances made their internment just..

... As far as comparing those of German and Italian descent, those groups were largely, with the above exceptions, fully integrated in American society and saw themselves as Americans of particular and distinct regional eccentricities as opposed to 'displaced' Sicilians or Bavarians as a whole. So a direct comparison is bit difficult...

To get a larger feel for this issue research further back to WWI, particularly 1917. Feelings ran high against 'Germans'. Before 1917 there were large German ethnic enclaves in the US cities where German was commonly spoken and a German or European culture was visable. All that rapidly vanished with the Great war. Locally my great grandfather and some other farmers of German ancestory had barns & other buildings burned & other expressions of hatred directed at them.

The Nisei Americans, in sharp contrast, had little overall political ties to Japan, and were effectively perilously close to being stateless persons since they were neither truly Japanese anymore, and Japan would have been as alien to many of them as the Moon. Of the Japanese that did return to Japan on the eve of WWII, most would have found themselves under suspicion, or in an intelligence function in the Japanese military.

My limited experince of two years in Japan suggests returning immigrants & their decendants would have been seen as barbarians & not true Japanese.

The Japanese, as some of the more recent ethnic arrivals, were seen as far too culturally distinct to be trusted, which led to one of the largest land grabs in US history as their California farms were gobbled up, adding a particularly unseemly dimension to what was the persecution of honest, law-abiding citizens

The land grab is at the core of the problem. It would be facinating to research just who was accquiring the Niesi homes, farms, and businesses at the loan forclosure and tax auctions.

[Rising Sun*]

The land grab is at the core of the problem. It would be facinating to research just who was accquiring the Niesi homes, farms, and businesses at the loan forclosure and tax auctions.

I'd suggest that the land grab was more a by-product of, or a step in solving, the real core problem, which was the fear of cheap labour and an inability to compete.

The ultimate Caucasian aim was to eliminate cheap labour competition.

It was the fear of cheap labour, and the concomitant fear of a consequent reduction in Caucasian profitability and living standards, that was at the heart of American, and contemporaneous Australian, policies that discriminated against Japanese and other Asian migration.

While there are clearly significant racist elements involved in the Western attitudes to Asians, the significance of the cheap labour aspect as an issue by itself, and how it wasn't confined to Asians (albeit not free of racism directed at another group), is illustrated by the conflict in Australia during WWI when a shipload of Maltese men became symbolic of the debate about cheap labour.

It's a bit more complicated than the quote below, but the link gives a fuller account.

Victims of White Australia

The timing of the Gange's arrival at Melbourne could not have been less opportune. The vessel was scheduled to berth at Melbourne on 28 October, the very date on which Australians were to vote in a national referendum on the conscription issue.

The opponents of conscription, especially those in the labour movement, had argued all along that, if conscription was introduced, 'white' Australian workers who served overseas as soldiers would be replaced by imported, 'cheap', 'coloured' labour: 'coloured job jumpers'. Living standards and wage rates would be reduced to the benefit of the capitalist class, and the vision of a White Australia would be lost. (The Brisbane Worker, 12 October 1916)

Those who supported conscription were no less dedicated to a White Australia. They argued that unless the Empire won the war, the Kaiser would dictate eventual peace terms, and the White Australia policy would remain only if it were suitable to Germany.

It was against this backdrop, often marked by bitter and sometimes violent debate, that the Gange had arrived off the coast of Western Australia in mid-October. The anti-conscriptionists were delighted by the arrival of such 'evidence' of their 'cheap labour' claims. Indeed, many years later, the Labor tyro Jack Lang would recall in his memoirs, 'It was just the evidence we needed'.

Despite Prime Minister Hughes' attempts to have the Chief Censor impose a 'prohibited publication' ruling concerning the Gange's arrival, the anti-conscriptionists were kept well posted by leaks from within the telegraphic service.

Frank Anstey's column in Labour Call was embarrassingly accurate in exposing the movements of the vessel and its human cargo. Thus, the Gange posed a threat to Hughes' referendum.

The Prime Minister, a staunch advocate of conscription, had given several guarantees against the importation of so-called cheap foreign labour after earlier arrivals of unskilled migrants from Southern Europe, including Maltese.

In light of the Gange's imminent arrival, carrying the largest single group of Maltese migrants ever to come to Australia, Prime Minister Hughes became desperate. The boat simply had to be stopped, and the dictation test was the most effective way, within the immigration law, of stopping these men from disembarking.

If you can get any of the links after this to work, which in order were direct to the page and then no more successful attempts to get you there, you're a better man than me, Gunga Din. The only way to get into it seems to be: Copy this "national centre for history education barry york maltese ship" into Google and click on the first result.

http://www.hyperhistory.org/index.php?option=displaypage&Itemid=731&op=page

If the link above, which is direct to the paper, doesn't work (it didn't when I checked it), go here http://www.hyperhistory.org/ and type in 'Maltese ship' in search panel on left. The first link on the search should be to Barry York's paper entitled 'The Maltese Ship'

Bugger me dead! That doesn't seem to work either. Assuming you're still interested after trying the above two links to no effect, click on the first item in the search here. http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=national+centre+for+history+education+barry+york +maltese+ship&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

[Carl Schwamberger]

RS...I'm not a expert on California politics, or economics. Still I'm confident that eliminating the sucessfull business compitition & accquiring cheap assets was a significant motivation. Similar actions had been taken against African/American or Negro business comunities on a smaller scale in many cities in the 19th and early 20th Century.

The history of the powerfull familys and business groups in Califonia has been a ugly one & I'd want to see more research on the subject before excluding them as supects in the Japanese relocation.

If cheap labor were the primary motive then its was misdirected as the Japanese community was rapidly leaving that social group. While the unions, laborers and trademens still saw the Japanese as labor compition the large scal business owners did not have that issue. In any case the other Asian immigrants and the mexican immigrants were a vastly larger pool of labr compition for the white laborers and tradesmen.

[Nickdfresh]

To get a larger feel for this issue research further back to WWI, particularly 1917. Feelings ran high against 'Germans'. Before 1917 there were large German ethnic enclaves in the US cities where German was commonly spoken and a German or European culture was visable. All that rapidly vanished with the Great war. Locally my great grandfather and some other farmers of German ancestory had barns & other buildings burned & other expressions of hatred directed at them.


I know. I'm from one, my Great Grandmother was from Germany...Up until about 15-years ago, there was still a German butcher/grocer in my home town which is highly unusual for suburban America...

I miss the authentic German sausage and kraut.:(

My limited experince of two years in Japan suggests returning immigrants & their decendants would have been seen as barbarians & not true Japanese.


This is what I've read and gathered. However, there were a small number of Americans of Japanese decent that were unfortunate enough to have had their parents heed the call and return to Germany. One such man, for instance, served in Japanese Naval Intelligence as an unwilling translator. He befriended a downed US airman (who was impressed into service as his assistant) on the sister island of Iwo Jima, Chi Chi Jima, and was later forced to symbolically (pretend to) consume the downed flyer's liver in order to recapture his warrior spirit after he was executed. Most of the Japanese sailors and soldiers were appalled at this. I'm not sure, but I think he testified at the war crimes trial...

The land grab is at the core of the problem. It would be facinating to research just who was accquiring the Niesi homes, farms, and businesses at the loan forclosure and tax auctions.

Mostly their fellow white farmers...

[Carl Schwamberger]

I know. I'm from one, my Great Grandmother was from Germany...Up until about 15-years ago, there was still a German butcher/grocer in my home town which is highly unusual for suburban America...

I miss the authentic German sausage and kraut.:(


Theres a local resturant run by the son of a Swiss immigrant. He still uses his fathers old recipies from the 1940s & 1950s. You can find a lot of European university students and old men there getting a nostagia fix on the bratwurst, veal, & pasta... Amoung my family the 'German' style cooking faded in the 1960s as my grandmothers generation died off.