congressional chronicle on c-span.org. as useful information there, including voting results and six about each russian of congress. >> this week on "q&a," our guest is jan jarboe russell. her new book, "the train to crystal city: fdr's secret prisoner exchange and america's only family internment camp during world war ii," examines the unique nature of this camp located in southern texas, which was home not only to japanese detainees but also germans and italians living in the u.s. during the war. operated from 1942-1948, the camp was the center of the secret program called client passage in which hundreds were exchanged against their will for

american diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and others held behind enemy lines in germany and japan. >> jan jarboe russell, author of "the train to crystal city," who is sumi? >> sumi is the japanese-american main character of my book who was born in los angeles, and her father was a photographer. the most successful japanese photographer in los angeles. he was arrested as an enemy alien because he was a photographer. during world war ii, photography was like the internet. anybody who had access to it could take photos of military bases and things like that. the 32,000 enemy aliens' fathers who were arrested were not arrested based on anything they had done as human beings but on

their occupation, which could have been harmful according to the government to our war effort. sumi was this remarkable, plucky tomboy who was going to central junior high school in los angeles when pearl harbor was bombed, and her life changed in an instant. >> is she still alive? >> she is still alive. she is in her 80's, and she lives in oakland, california. she kind of is the mother of all the japanese-americans in crystal city who are still alive. she operates a newsletter called "a crystal city chapter" that keeps people up to date on deaths, children's issues. she was critical to me because once she agreed to talk to me, all of her friends talked to me, as well. i began going around the country trying to interview as many former children who were in the

camp. >> where is crystal city, texas? >> crystal city, texas is located 120 miles southwest of san antonio, which is my home, about 35 miles from the u.s.-mexican border. the lights of the internment camp could be seen from mexico at night, because the land there is incredibly desolate. it was, in fact, chosen as the enemy alien internment camp that housed multiple nationalities, german, german-americans italians, japanese, and japanese-americans, the only camp that housed multiple nationalities during the war. it was chosen in large part because it was in such an isolated location. if you wanted to have a camp like crystal city, it was a very good place to locate it.

>> how did you find sumi? >> the first thing is, it was a long journey to sumi. i first learned about this camp many years ago, 42 years ago when i was a student at the university of texas. i met a remarkable man, alan tan iguchi, who was the dean of architecture. this might sound funny, but i was very young and from a small town in east texas, and i had never seen an asian person before. i was 19 years old. i met this guy at a faculty senate meeting. i was a young reporter for "the daily texan." after the meeting, i went up to him and said, i've never met an asian person before. where are you from? he said, brentwood, california.

i said, well, professor, how did you get to texas? he said, my family was in camp there. my dad was a baptist minister, so when he said, i was in camp i said, church camp? he said, not exactly. he told me his family was interned in crystal city. over the years, i stayed in touch with alan. always the subject of this mysterious camp came up. in 2010, i stopped by his office in austin just to talk to him. i had read the book "unbroken," and i wondered what alan had to say about the comparison between americans held in pow camps in japan and the treatment of japanese-americans and german-americans in crystal city. i learned that allen had died, and i was devastated, because i thought, i have missed this

chance to tell the story of crystal city. his son handed me a file that had all of alan's notes on crystal city, and the number one name on that list was sumi. i called her that night, and i explained my situation. i asked if she would help me and she said yes. i flew out to los angeles that week, and the real research of the book began. >> how many hours did you talk to her? >> over the course of these five years, hundreds of hours. the other main character was ingrid, the german-american. one of the things about doing books as opposed to magazine pieces and newspaper stories is the long lead time in the research. first, i interviewed these people, and then they had no idea why they were in the camp.

the records of the camp are in national archives. the book became this process of a vertical structure that had to do with the timeline of the camp, when it opened, when it closed, and then interviews that were horizontal. the heart of the book, which was all of these amazing survivors of the camp who were children. >> you mentioned ingrid issa role. is she still alive? >> ingrid unfortunately died on pearl harbor day, 2014. i'm extremely sad she can't be part of this celebration. sumi and all of her friends are. she has a brother and a sister who are still alive, but ingrid

lived in honolulu. i spent the same amount of time with ingrid that i did with sumi, and these two girls essentially formed the basic structure or the main characters of the book. there were so many fascinating characters that i couldn't leave them out. there are a lot of other characters in the book as you go along. >> what were the circumstances that were different between ingrid and sumi? >> according to the geneva convention, we were not supposed to have an internment camp that had multiple nationalities. but it happened in crystal city anyway. the germans arrived first into camp in 1942, and once those families had been reunited in crystal city, they couldn't exactly throw them out. the japanese and the germans and

the small number of italians had to live together. in the camp, they didn't have much to do with each other. they self-segregated. in terms of the arrests of their fathers, their time in the camp, and their time after the camp, the situation between sumi and ingrid was very much the same. neither knew why their father was arrested until i was able to get their fbi files declassified. sumi's father was a photographer, and ingrid's father was a very well-known engineer in cleveland, ohio. had built a lot of dams and bridges and roads. the fbi concluded, based on some flimsy testimony from his colleagues, some of whom wanted

his job, that if her father could build a bridge or a road they might be able to blow it up. based on that, he was a so-called enemy alien. >> just to get a flavor, and i will be interested in your reaction to this film -- it is the government film -- >> right. >> do you happen to know when that was produced? >> it was done in 1945 as the war was coming -- we were getting ready to end it. the camp had been secret, and then suddenly, the government decided to do this film. it shows the camp in the best possible light, as you can see. >> let's just watch a minute of it, and i will get your reaction. >> the filming of the crystal city facility shows how men, women, and children, detainees

in world war ii, live, work, and play under american standards of decent and humane treatment. ♪ >> there is a party of women and children arriving. following their voluntary decision to join husbands and fathers. practically all the children and many women were american-born. incoming parties were greeted by a detainee welcoming committee and the band music.

>> first of all, when he said "decent and humanitarian treatment," was it? >> i have to answer that question, yes, it was. i think our national honor was truly saved by earl harrison the head of the imf, and joseph o'rourke, the commander. the other thing it said was that these people were there voluntarily, but what the thing does not say is that essentially these people had no other choice. in ingrid's case, in sumi's case, their fathers had been arrested and held without charges under terms of indefinite detention in camps. immediately, ingrid and her

family lost their home in strongsville, ohio and had nowhere to go. sumi and the japanese-americans were in relocation camps across the country. the government came to the fathers and said, we have a deal for you. we will reunite you with your families in the crystal city internment camp, the family internment camp, if you will agree to go voluntarily, and then i discovered what the real secret was. they also had to agree to voluntarily repatriate to germany and to japan if the government decided they needed to be repatriated. the truth of the matter is that the crystal city camp was humanely administered by the inf, but the special war divisions in the department of state used it as roosevelt's primary prisoner exchange. it was the center of roosevelt's prisoner exchange program. thousands of american-born children, german and japanese

mothers and fathers, were traded into war, as ingrid was and sumi, in exchange for ostensibly more important americans. >> how long did sumi and ingrid live in this camp, and when were they sent back to japan and germany? >> sumi was in heart mountain camp. >> where is that? >> heart mountain was a relocation camp in wyoming. her father was in an all-male camp in santa fe. he agreed right then in 1943 that he would go back to japan. before she came to crystal city, she was supposed to be traded in the 1943 exchange. in the negotiations between tokyo and washington, the numbers for that exchange were

cut, and so they came to crystal city, and she was traded into japan in 1945. ingrid and her family were traded into germany before the war ended in january 1945, into some difficult situations. this is the real tragedy of the camp from my point of view, that we traded american-born children into war as a consequence of the fact that they had prisoner of war fathers. these people who were exchanged suffered terrible situations. they also, despite what it said on the tape, they also lost all their freedom. they weren't free to go anywhere. they lived behind barbed wire.

when they were interned there, sumi was there two years, ingrid was there two years, and they had a roll call every day. it was hot as it could be. there were snakes and scorpions, and they all have memories of that. their parents were displaced from their lives and suffering from all kinds of maladies. it was no picnic in crystal city. >> let's watch a little bit of an overview of crystal city, the camp. >> the sun shines practically every day of the year with a cool breeze from the gulf in the evening. originally, it was a migratory labor camp of approximately 1000 housing units, utility, and recreation buildings.

to provide for a population of 3600, we added more than 500 housing units, school buildings, a hospital, and maintenance building. we tripled the number of streets and extended electric and sewage facilities. this is the perimeter over which armed guards kept a 24-hour watch. at night, the illumination on top of the fence was visible almost to the mexican border. >> you said they voluntarily went in, but could not get out voluntarily. >> absolutely. as you can see, those guard towers, they were always under armed guard. everyone knew the penalty for an attempt to escape was death, and in the entire history of the camp, no one ever attempted to escape. for one thing, where would you go? you are in the middle of nowhere. despite the fact that they said there was a cool breeze from

mexico, nobody that i ever talked to felt that cool breeze. it was an internment camp, but the japanese kids had a great sense of humor. sumi said that the boys in the camp, the japanese boys, would go at night to serenade the guards, and they would sing "give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, don't fence me in." the guards would laugh, and the boys would laugh. they are remarkably resilient, plucky kids. i guess kids are kids. they had a lot of tension amongst loyalty issues. by this time, most of the japanese fathers were pretty sour on the united states, and most of their american-born children were very bullish on america. >> what did the people living in

the camp know? did they have a newspaper they could read or a radio they could listen to? >> all war news was censured. i could read the letters that some of my main characters were sending out to their friends from the camp. everything was censored. the japanese had a camp newspaper, but it was benign stuff. somebody is born. somebody is doing something with their bungalow. one of the things that the children at the camp, german and japanese, liked a lot is that they did have family bungalows as the narrator of the tape said. they didn't have to eat in the mess halls like they had done in relocation camps for the japanese, and in male-only camps for the men.

they ate at home in a family setting. they really liked that. o'rourke, the commandant of the camp was constantly trying to make it as good a place as he could. he allowed the japanese women to open a tofu factory. we had our first tofu factory in crystal city that they had in a victory hut, and he allowed the german men to have a small beer garden. supposedly, they were supposed to only make beer once a week, but this rule was often violated in the camp. >> where did they get the money to spend? >> they had camp tokens. they did not get money. a man was given $.10 in a token for one hour's work, and of course, the internees all worked.

they grew their own vegetables. they made their own mattresses. for that, they were paid $.10 in this funny little -- it looked kind of like a casino chip. they were red and green and yellow chips, and they bought their stuff at the camp store with those tokens. >> give us an overview, please of the entire idea of putting japanese, italians, germans in these internment camps nationwide. how many camps were there? >> this was the only camp, brian, of its kind that had multiple nationalities and that had families. it was specifically for these two purposes. one, humane, to reunite enemy alien fathers with their

children, and the other purpose, exchange. roosevelt needed to create a pool of people. early on in the war, he realized prisoner exchanges have been going on in every war we ever had since the american revolution. we just don't seem to know that as americans. he knew that some of our people would be taken in war and that he would need people to trade. in addition to the people i just mentioned, he also brought in about 4000 japanese and germans from 13 different latin american countries, like bolivia, peru, colombia, and he brought some of these people in. many of those people wound up in crystal city speaking spanish. you have people speaking spanish, german, japanese, italian, and english in this one little camp.

some of those people, the japanese, peruvians, german, ecuadorians, were traded into war, too. essentially, that was the reason -- reuniting people and exchange. >> we showed a chart on the screen or a map of a lot of other camps around the country. do you know how many other camps there were total and how many people were in these camps? >> there were 120,000 japanese and japanese americans taken after the evacuation order. 120,000. 60% of those were japanese-americans. there were 10 war relocation

plants, mostly on the west coast, but there were other camps, as well, that had prisoners of war. i personally counted 52 different types of camps including the one at crystal city. >> what about the germans? >> 52 in total. >> everything. were there more japanese than germans? >> yes. in fact, the history of internment in our country is pretty much only understood in history books from the japanese experience because there were so many more of them, but now what we are learning -- folks are interested in this -- there were many more germans that were arrested than we knew. >> the largest number of ancestors in this country, 50 million people are of german ancestry -- they are at the top of the list in numbers. how did they take people to go into camps back in those days? how did they find the germans?

>> yes, it was a problem for the president. a lot of those people were working in factories for the war effort, and there were so many of them. one of the ways that they picked them was if they were not citizens of this country, if they were german-born and they were not citizens, that was one thing that cut down the list. if they were a member of the bund, the american nazi party, then they were arrested. if they had any kind of occupation that could aid germany in the war or japan, then that was it. that is how they culled them down. germans and german americans in this country are kind of a silent majority. they don't talk about these kinds of things. i think the bearing the burden

of the holocaust is so great that they don't talk about their particular -- very much -- they don't talk at all about the hardships they endured during the war. one of the reasons that i think the stories of german-americans were never told him crystal city was, when i talked to germans and german-american children in the camp, they told me that when their parents left crystal city either to be exchanged or to be freed or paroled, they signed a note that they would never speak of their experience in camp that they would not disclose it to anyone. the secrecy -- they were afraid of the government having been arrested once. the children didn't get much information from their parents. they were reluctant to speak, as well. >> why did they break their

silence when you talked to them? >> they are all getting old, and i think the other thing is, they wanted to begin to understand what had happened to them, and working through the documents was useful. you know, even after 72 years, why not speak? their children wanted to know what happened. >> here is a video of another person in your book by the name of everhart furer. this is from 2009, him talking about his experience. >> i came here when i was 18 years old into crystal city, texas, and i left here when i was 22. i was at an important stage in my life while i lived here. i can say in all honesty that

the japanese, calling it a concentration camp was totally wrong. it was not a concentration camp. it was an internment camp. we were treated humanely. our medical care was very good under the auspices of the united states public health service. >> did you talk to him, and is he still alive? >> he is. he lives in chicago, and he is a truly wonderful person. that's an interesting thing he was talking about. the germans and japanese to this day still don't see their internment at crystal city in the same way. the reason that the japanese call it a concentration camp is that according to their legal interpretation of that word, a concentration camp means a place where citizens of your own

country are held in detention behind barbed wire. the germans who know that most of us -- most of us think of the word concentration camp as a death camp, specifically a nazi death camp, simply abhor that. there are two historical markers at the camp, one for the japanese that calls it the crystal city concentration cap and one for the germans, the crystal city internment camp. in world war ii, the language of war becomes very political. he was one of the last germans out. he and his family managed to avoid exchange, and at the end of this crystal city camp, brian, was in existence until 1948, three full years after the war was over.

in those three years, a lot of the germans and japanese fathers began to file lawsuits against the united states to keep them from being deported because their children obviously do not want to go back to these places. as he said, he was 18 when he arrived. he was one of the last out on the german side, and he is one of the most remarkable speakers on this subject. >> there is a man -- we've got some video of a man who has a little bit of a different take actor george tokai. let's listen to 40 seconds of him. >> i still do remember that day when armed soldiers, soldiers with guns, bayonets on them, came to our home to order us out. i remember that as a very scary day. a child can sense your parents' anxieties.

they came down with what was called a loyalty questionnaire which on the surface sounds outrageous. after they had taken our property, our homes, our businesses, our freedom, and incarcerated us for a year, they wanted to test our loyalty. >> it is just so heartbreaking. he describes it perfectly, the moment, the instant your life changes forever, when your father is taken, and from a child's eye, it is a terrifying experience. the loyalty things, they did this in crystal city, as well, where you had to answer these questions, and if you refused to fight against japan -- it was the japanese that had to do the loyalty test -- then you are

called a no-no boy. if you said you would fight, you were a yes-yes. that was their definition of loyalty. that caused so much of a conflict between fathers and sons in crystal city, and also between brothers. there was one family where one of the brothers went to japan and served with the japanese military, and the other fought with the famed 442, the all-japanese unit on behalf of the united states. you have mothers and fathers with brothers who saw it differently, and all of these conflicts between fathers who did not want their sons to fight against japan.

how do we know that you wouldn't massacre our sons? >> did you ever get your house back or the money that they took from you? >> no. under the 1924 immigration act nobody of japanese birth was allowed to be a citizen. you couldn't become a citizen. you were exempted from it. when they owned land, they often had a white guy owning it for them in their name, and they lost all the land on the west coast that they had. >> why were the japanese prohibited from owning land and not the germans? >> the germans were allowed to become naturalized citizens. there was a quota, but the japanese were not even allowed. >> why not? >> because under the 1924 law,

the landowners on the west coast wanted to use these cheap japanese laborers to build the imperial valley, and they had a lobby. they just forbade them from becoming citizens. >> what was your take on fdr after all of this? >> i have two grandmothers who had fdr's portrait in both of their living rooms, and he was a hero to my family and to me. my take on this was, i was very surprised that almost the entire military and political establishment went along with all of this skulduggery. the only person who raised her voice against it was eleanor roosevelt, and she was shouted down. the only thing i could come to

is that when faced with war, presidents have difficult decisions to make, and the president felt that we were on our heels and was going to do whatever he could to prosecute the war. i have allowed the reader to make up their own decision about what they think of this. my book isn't political, but i have counted the costs of that to american-born children. crystal city stands today as a real reminder of how easy it is to open an internment camp and how hard it is to close one and how easy racial and ethnic hysteria can take hold, and once it gets going, how do you stop it? >> this is a government film written by the government, produced by the department of justice. did they run this camp?

>> it would be inf. the department of justice did not run this camp. >> let's watch. >> within the restrictions imposed for security purposes, few limitations were placed upon the number of letters which could be sent or received. mail was delivered to the internal security office where it was examined by germans spanish, and japanese censors. the daily milk delivery. at one time, there were 1600 minor children in detention. 2500 quarts of milk were required each day. daily ice delivery, important in

a climate that often reaches 120 degrees. >> who provided the food and the ice and the milk? >> the government did. a lot they provided was powdered milk. crystal city was a town of only 60,000 people. over the course, there were about 6000 internees. the town doubled. a lot of people from crystal city worked at the camp, and they did that kind of thing, bringing in government-supplied milk into the camp. a lot of the food was grown, as well. >> what was their number one complaint about the atmosphere?

she talked about mail and morale. was every piece of mail read? >> that didn't bother the people as much. it was simply the total lack of freedom, the lack of freedom and not knowing when or if you are ever going to get out of this place. the interruption -- they have three schools. they had an american school where you got an american education from texas. they had a japanese school run by japanese internees, and a german school by german internees, but the interruption in these children's education was for some people -- sumi did fine with it. she was in seventh grade when her father was taken. she ultimately finished high school after the war, but there were lots of interruptions. ingrid who was a brilliant young

person never really -- her education was interrupted in the sixth grade, and she got to about the ninth grade but never, ever got her full education. i think the children of the camp, the loss of a regular life, and especially an education, was a terrible thing. >> part of your story is showing them going back to japan and germany. when did ingrid and sumi end up back in the united states? how long did that take? >> it took a long time. i will tell you about sumi first. sumi arrived in japan and made this long walk with her family up to sendai, up in northern japan. she saw lots of terrible things along the way. >> the war is still going on. >> the war had just ended by the time she got there.

sumi was such a strong person that as soon as sendai was occupied by american troops, sumi went straight to the officer and said, i'm an american. i have my american birth certificate. put me to work. she went to work for the american air force in the sendai and essentially saved her family from starvation. >> you said her two sisters went to work there also? >> her two sisters who were in japan, she got them jobs. then sumi got everybody she knew from crystal city jobs at air force bases all across japan. these kids from crystal city went to work for the occupying forces. sumi did not get back to the united states. she eventually convinced her father, if you were a girl at

that time in the 1940's, your father is like your emperor. he tells you, you can do this, you cannot do that, and sumi was a very obedient daughter. her father did not want her to go back to japan, but she finally convinced him to let her go to the united states. she finally convinced him in 1947. ingrid's story is more complicated. this represented a great big surprise in the book. i was attempting to try to find -- i knew that there were about 1800 germans and german americans, most of them from crystal city, going into germany. >> what was the grips on? >> it was a huge ship. they took trains from crystal city to new york. they boarded the steamship and made a long journey, 24 days

across the sea. they landed in versailles in france, and then they went to switzerland to a small village. it was in switzerland that the trains from crystal city -- not really, from the united states but had crystal city people in it -- landed at a train station in this village in switzerland. the train coming out of germany was at the same train station, and they switch. >> the war was still going on. >> the war was still going on. i began to wonder, who was on the train to freedom when ingrid and her brother and sister were on the train in the war? by that time, there weren't that many americans still left in germany. there were some prisoners of war that were freed. by this astonishing thing, i learned through the national holocaust museum that germany

did not have enough americans to give. they gave about 100 jews who were not americans, obviously. they were from amsterdam, and they were from germany. there were 100 jews that made it out. one of those jews was named irene hassan berg, who is exactly the same age as ingrid. i tell the story in the book of irene making it out when ingrid went marching straight into hell. >> where did you find irene? >> irene lives in ann arbor, michigan. she's a holocaust survivor. as soon as i got the list, there were only two names of people on the list still alive, irene and jacob wolf.

jacob wolf lived in brooklyn and he has recently died. i interviewed him in brooklyn, and then i interviewed irene in ann arbor. irene is a very, very brilliant woman and a leader in the holocaust movement, but she had no idea that she was traded for anybody, much less an american american kids. the best moment in the book for me, brian, was when i went to honolulu the last time for the long interview with ingrid. i didn't know that she was near death, but it turned out that several months later she did die. we were sitting there, and i showed her the list from the holocaust. i said, you see this list. these were 100 jews who made it

out of bergen-belsen when you and your brother and sister and mom and dad went into germany. ingrid's face, her hands came to her face, and she said, what? she marked with her index fingers each name, and when she got to ingrid -- i said, this is the one who was exactly your age, and i showed her a picture of irene. she said, this changes everything for me. it makes everything that happened somewhat worthwhile because irene and her family got out, and she said, how many people can say that they were part of something like that? >> what year did ingrid come back to the states? >> she came into the states in 1948 and lived with an aunt and an uncle with her brother. she and her brother came together.

eventually, everyone in the family made it back. her brother joined the air force, and he became very important to the air force and had top security clearance. he was eventually able to get all of his family back. joanna, his mother, became a citizen. >> the father. >> he died of a heart attack. eventually, these people made it back, which says something about america and the tug of freedom. no matter how betrayed they were by their government by holding those kids, they still were somehow able to put that behind them and build and transform themselves from child internees

in an internment camp for loyal american citizens who raise their family and have lived exemplary lives. >> here is some video from 2013. it was done by the texas country reporter. it's about a reunion in crystal city, texas. one gentleman is working hard to bring up the memories of all this. >> more than six decades after the war ended, former detainees and families gather at a camp for the dedication of this historic site. >> here is where you are moved first. then he were moved up to hear. -- here. all through the years everything was kept a secret. today, it is all coming out in the open. >> my parents' bedroom was over here. >> the barbed wire and guard towers are gone, but the memories come flooding back for

so many people who, until today, had lost such a big part of their childhood. >> that flag was there. >> we all suffered the same experience. we were to leave this camp never, ever to tell anyone. it was to be kept a secret. >> many were released after the war. some buried the memories, and with it, the history of this camp. more than 60 years later william mcwhorter has succeeded in bringing honor to a place most just wanted to forget. >> have you been there? >> i was there that day. that is warner albrecht who did the map at the front of my book, which shows everyone, their bungalow. mr. mcwhorter did these panels that show some of what happened

there. slowly, people are beginning to talk, but you heard warner say it was meant to be a secret. they were told not to speak of it. that's the reason it has been so long in coming out. >> what is there for the average person that wants to go there? >> not much. there are just two concrete -- the japanese monument and the german monument, and a few panels, but there is not much left. it's the middle of nowhere. it is a very poor city and one of the poorest counties in america. earl harrison who was the man who chose this location for the immigration and naturalization service called it as close to siberia as we have in america, and it is still that way. >> how far is it from the mexican border? >> 35 miles. >> why did this camp stay open until 1948?

opened in 1942 after the war started and stayed open three years beyond 1945. what was the reason? >> once truman became president, he instituted this idea that all of those people should be deported, and all the people remaining in the camp should be deported. there were other prisoners of war camp's elsewhere in the country, and all of those people in those camps came to crystal city. it took a while for the camp to end because people thought their deportations. --fought their deportations. they hired german lawyers, and

the japanese hired lawyers. it wasn't so easy to close the camp. it just took years before they could get it. >> you mentioned earlier the 442nd, the regiment, the combat team. who served in that, and how did you get to serve in it? >> it was the u.s. unit. when the war began after pearl harbor, at first, president roosevelt said, no japanese-american could serve in the u.s. army. as the war progressed, president roosevelt changed his mind. the generals decided to come up with this all japanese-american unit that would fight. they recruited the people from that unit from internment camps, including the one in crystal city. if you were in that unit, and it was the most decorated unit of world war ii, it helped save the texans that were trapped in

italy with huge amount of casualties from the 442. they actually recruited people from crystal city and other internment camps. they are interned people, and then they are taken out of camp and go to the 442 where they fight for the united states of america. >> always in germany? >> in germany and in italy and in japan, as well. >> did you talk to anybody who served in the 442? >> yes. their stories are fairly well-known. they were called a go-four-broke -- go-for-broke unit. the ones that i talked to said, number one, they believed in their country, and number two, they

knew of no other way to prove their loyalty than to say yes. even though it cost these enormous splits with their fathers, the other place that they served was the military intelligence unit, and so these were the people who helped to break the code in japan. they too were heroes. they shortened the war, the mis people, and some of those people were young men from crystal city. >> you told the story about one of the young men in the family that went back to germany, and he was 12 years old, serving as a translator for the americans. >> this is lothar, ingrid's brother. when the family landed at joanna's, the mother's, house they were in germany after the exchange, and once the americans occupied the town, it didn't take much. the people just threw down their weapons. they had rifles and things like that.

lothar was there, and he did what sumi did. he went to the commander and said he wanted to go to work for the american occupying forces. he kind of became their mascot. as he said, you know, even though it was the war, he had a lot of fun because he rode around on tanks, and he helped people translate, and he helped -- what the g.i.s were doing they were requisitioning farms and villages so they could put american troops in. he had a great time with those g.i.'s. he went back and joined the air force. >> here is our last video, a familiar face for a lot of folks who watch this network. former secretary of transportation, former congressman from california, not in crystal city, but tells this beautiful story.

>> i've only seen my dad cry three times. once was on the seventh of december because he couldn't understand why the land of his birth was now attacking the land of his heart. the second time i saw him cry was on the 31st of may, 1942 when we were boarding the trains to leave san jose to go off to camp. here we were, a community of 13,000 people, behind barbed wire with guard towers every 200, 300 feet, with searchlights, machine guns. when we or our scout leaders said, on into the camp for a jamboree, we said, no. we're not going to come in. those are pows. we aren't going to go in there.

>> that is norman mineta. he was based at heart mountain in wyoming. in the end, how many different human beings did you talk to for this book? >> more than 100 people who were either -- who worked at the camp or were children in the camp. >> did you record it on audio? >> i did record some, and some i just took notes. what he was saying, that is where sumi was, heart mountain but the way they captured the emotion -- they always talk about their fathers, how their fathers suffered, and they never say how they suffered. this is why i think these young people, this generation of japanese americans and german-americans, are just such -- they are incredibly honorable people who are trying to honor their parents. at the same time, they are trying to honor their country.

we will never see people like this. >> how long did you work on this book? >> five years. >> what was the hardest part? >> i think the hardest part was getting the documents and uncovering the relationship between internment and prisoner exchange. i have now come to the conclusion that whenever there is an internment camp or detention camp, one of the reasons for it is prisoner exchange. that is one of the reasons you have an internment camp, and for us as americans to not be so naive about what is happening at guantanamo bay and other places -- if we have places like that i don't care what you call it,

there is a prisoner exchange being negotiated somehow. >> any new book ideas come out of doing this book? >> i don't know yet. i've just now gotten this one done. i can imagine that i will stay with world war ii. there are a lot of stories yet to be told. >> is there much video of the people that you talked to anywhere? >> there is a little bit of video here and there. it is not the greatest video in the world, but they have done some videotaping of each other. people like me have videotaped it. maybe it will be a documentary some day. >> our guest has been jan jarboe russell from san antonio, texas. has a book that she wrote several years ago on lady bird johnson, and the name of this book is "the train to crystal city: fdr's secret prisoner exchange and america's only family internment camp during world war ii." we thank you very much. >> thank you, brian. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at qanda.org. programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> this year marks a decade of compelling conversations on q and a. david kennedy, stephen kinzer, author of the brothers. and doris kearns goodwin, author

of the bully pulpit. you can watch them all at c-span .org. >> monday night on the communicators, we spoke with two industry executives at the consumer electronics show in las vegas. the senior vice president ericsson and cisco senior vice president talking about their companies and the technology on which the cloud operates. >> you talk about the network society. it is a society where everything that can benefit from having a connection actually has one. be put a vision forward in 2009 in barcelona, during the trade show going on there. of 50 billion connected