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The Little Flower was publicly coming to grips with "enemy aliens" in this small pamphlet, published in the last days of December 1941. Laguardia--a Republican Congressman defeated for re-election in the Roosevelt landslide of 1932 and elected Mayor of NYC in 1933--was an outspoken critic of the Nazis and Hitler from his first day in Gracie Mansion. In addition to being the first Italian-American elected to the U.S. Congress, Laguardia was also Jewish, and was a superb and constant speaker* against the monster in Germany.
In this pamphlet Laguardia outlined the legal implications of war and the non-citizen German or Italian immigrant, and possibilities and consequences of their being declared enemy aliens, resulting in "arrest" and detainment. (This applied to all "...natives, citizens, denizens or subjects..." of any foreign nation or government with which the United States is at war, and who could be "... liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed as alien enemies....".) Attorney General Francis M. Biddle cited Department of Justice figures: "Of the 1,100,000 (sic) enemy aliens in the United States, 92,000 were Japanese, 315,000 were German, and 695,000 were Italian. In all, 2,972 had been arrested and held, mostly Japanese and Germans. Only 231 Italians had been arrested**" (by 1943). By the end of the war, there were fewer than 3,000 Germans and Italians who had been impounded (the Italians being released by October 1943 following Italy's surrender).
There were upwards of 100,000 Japanese-Americans impounded, half of whom were American citizens. For some reason there was not a single mention of the Japanese population in this pamphlet.
*In 1933, the year of Hitler's major seating, Laguardia said: "Part of [Hitler’s] program is the complete
annihilation of the Jews in Germany", an uncommon and of course prescient point of view.
**This authority was based on Executive Order 9066 (issued February 19, 1942) and Executive Order 9102 (issued March 18, 1942). These orders authorized the "removal from designated areas of persons whose removal is necessary in the interests of national security".
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