Crystal City, Texas

Crystal City, Texas

 

The following piece was written by a friend of mine, Fred Miller, retired naval aviator, executive of Rohr Aviation and Boeing Corp, and presently a docent at the San Diego Aerospace Museum.  Fred was born and grew up in South Texas. He has given me permission to reproduce his letter in my blog. It’s evident that what goes around comes around.

“At the start of World War II, thousands of Japanese and German residents of the U.S., including both U.S. citizens and resident aliens, were arrested and separated from their families during their initial detention. The Crystal City Migrant Worker Camp, (built by the Farm Security Administration before the war) was turned over to the INS in order to allow these so-called "enemy aliens" to be reunited with their wives and children, has a familiar ring to it, wouldn't you say?

As the largest "Alien Enemy Detention Facility", the Crystal City facility eventually held 4,000 individuals and comprised more than 500 buildings on 290 acres, including housing, K-12 schools, food and clothing stores, auditoriums, a hospital, warehouses and administration offices and the second largest swimming pool in Texas (after the war, the Crystal City Municipal Pool.) Opening in 1942, the "camp" held Japanese Americans, German resident aliens, and South American Japanese and German immigrants; the last Japanese Peruvians, who had refused to participate in the government's repatriation program (with the help of ACLU attorneys),  filed a lawsuit, and after two years, obtained parole to work at Seabrook Farms* in New Jersey. The Crystal City Internment camp was officially closed upon their release on February 11, 1948.

*In the link below is an interesting side story of the WWII detainee labor pool. http://www.hiddennj.com/2013/03/seabrook-farms-history-and-diversity.html

The "camp" (Crystal City locals always referred to the Detention Center as "the camp"), was surrounded by a high barbed wire fence with appropriately spaced guard towers and was patrolled outside the wire by mounted Texas Rangers. Detainees were taken out on work parties to various enterprises in the city and surrounding farms and ranches. The "camp" school system was an adjunct of the Crystal City Independent School District, the Principal was my father's football coach in the mid-30's (the only time in the school’s history to have won district!), and was later my Crystal City High School Superintendent in the 50's.

The "camp" originally housed migrant Mexican American worker's families who overwintered in Crystal City and went "North" during the spring and summer harvest season to work vegetable fields and orchards. An excellent account of that idyllic lifestyle is chronicled the novella ...y no se lo trago' la tierra, translated into English ...and the Earth Did Not Devour Him, by Crystal City's most famous son, Tomás Rivera, a past chancellor of the University of California, Riverside. But that's another story.

Produced and narrated by INS officials, this YouTube linked film presents a ‘rosy’ picture of prisoners' daily life in 1943, behind barbed wire (shades of the FLOTUS visit to Texas this past week.)

https://youtu.be/6DZzJkJxvA4

The "camp" was part of my growing up experience. I was born in Crystal City (as was my father) and was 3 or 4 years old when I first became aware of the camp as an integral part of the town. The main gate was literally on the opposite side and 1/4 mile down the road from the high school. We grew up believing it to be a POW camp, with stories of German spies inside sending out coded messages and other fanciful stories, I was nine years old when the camp closed.

After closing, the complete facility was deeded to the city; the barbed wire fence and guard towers were torn down and the school buildings were integrated into the Crystal City school system, the housing became subsidized rental housing for low income families (most if not all were "white families".) Several of my friend's families moved into the camp (to this day that section of town is referred to as the camp.) The larger camp residences were rented by various city and county employees, such as the principal of the high school. The City Marshal rented the previous camp commandant's residence. All the homes and other buildings were constructed of redwood on concrete slabs, the city and county road maintenance departments also moved into the corresponding camp facilities. The original Crystal City football field was given over to P.E. and intramural sports activities and "Football" moved to the camp, which had a much better stadium facility; as mentioned below, the camp swimming pool became the Municipal Pool (defunct in the 50's). An airport (defunct in the 80's) and the Crystal City Country Club and Golf Course (defunct in the 60's) were also built on camp property. A commercial prison was built just past the city limits north of town (defunct around 2015).

Eventually all the original structures were demolished and modern school buildings and associated civic facilities now occupy the bulk of the camp property. We had one 36 passenger school bus in the 50's, today they have 30 buses. Progress of sorts.

Fred Miller”