History Lessons on Tour
Enemy Alien Exhibit Tours Washington D.C
By Vincent P. Cuccia

Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” That wise sage understood that when a nation feels panic over a perceived enemy, it tends to relinquish its hard won freedoms in order to stay safe. But as Franklin points out, the result is not safety, but loss of those hard won freedoms. “Prisoners in Our Own Home: The Italian American Experience as America’s Enemy Aliens,” is a perfect example of what can come from a nation’s panic. The exhibit examines the systematic profiling of more than 600,000 Italian resident aliens as “enemy aliens” during World War II. For example, Clara Orsini who was twelve years old when government agents came to her home without warning one day and took her mother and grandfather away in 1941. With the United States at war with, among others, Italy, there was a new powerful foreign enemy within our borders: Italians and their American counterparts. They were considered a threat to our domestic security.

This exhibit “explores America’s civil liberties in crisis as a new generation responds to a new enemy and the atrocities of September 11, 2001,” according to curator of the exhibit and the Acting Executive Director of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College/CUNY, Dr. Peter Vellon. “Enemy Aliens” opened first at the Italian American Museum in October of 2003 and has since traveled to schools around the city. This summer it opened successfully in Washington D.C. at the American Immigration Law Museum (AILM) and ran from June 28th to December 1st. According to Executive Director of AILM, Andrew Prazuch, “At least 1,000 people have been through to see the exhibit.” Prazuch also agrees with Dr. Vellon that this exhibit is important in relation to 9/11, because, “I think people will look back in 50 years and ask ’why did we treat Arab Americans so badly?’ just like we do when we ask about the treatment of Italian Americans during World War II.”
AILM’s Museum is located in D.C. in a historical building between two other landmarks: the Ford Theatre and the International Spy Museum.
In New York City, home to the nation’s largest Italian American population and led by Italian American Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Italian immigrants were photographed, fingerprinted and registered with the Department of Justice and the FBI. The government told Italian resident aliens to stay off the streets after dark. Daytime travel was restricted. To walk the streets or subway to work, Italian resident aliens in New York City carried bright pink enemy alien passbooks, with photo ID and fingerprint. Failure to produce the passbook upon demand of a government agent often resulted in arrest. Spoken Italian in public places was officially discouraged by the Federal government.
In Washington, D.C. the attorney general decreed that an Italian resident alien's "enemy alien" status alone was tantamount to probable cause, effectively suspending the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. Under this decree, search warrants could be obtained without any showing of suspicious activity or evidence of a crime. Authorities in New York City and elsewhere raided more than 2,900 homes of Italian immigrants who did not hold American citizenship. They seized flashlights, cameras, binoculars, firearms and short wave radios.
As Dr. Vellon concludes, “More than 2,100 Italians in America were taken into custody. Some were held in prison camps until the end of the war. Some escaped these hardships, but as the exhibit demonstrates, few Italian Americans be they American citizens or enemy aliens—could escape the shame and fear and stigma tied to these laws and the war that raged with Italy, Germany and Japan.”
Mothers, laborers, opera stars, even the great Yankee Joe DiMaggio felt the sting of the “enemy alien” act. Wartime restrictions applied to DiMaggio’s father, a fisherman, who was prohibited as an enemy alien from fishing or even visiting his son’s waterside restaurant in San Francisco.
For information on how to bring this exhibit to your area, please contact Ms. Maria Fosco at the Italian American Museum 212-624-2020.