Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II

Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History Of Italian American Evacuation And Internment During World War II by researcher and historian Lawrence DiStasi is a shocking and revealing look into a little-known incident of 20th Century American history: Italian-American internments during World War II. Wartime law restricted the freedoms and demanded identity cards of 600,000 Italian "resident aliens"; some 10,000 of these along the West Coast were forcibly relocated; and 250 were imprisoned in military camps for up to two years. Even some naturalized Italian-American citizens were required to abandon their homes and businesses because the military deemed them too dangerous to reside in "strategic areas." Worst of all, these offenses were entirely ignored after the war's end, completely eclipsed by the similarly reprehensible internment that the government forced upon a much greater number of Japanese-Americans. Una Storia Segreta is an important and long overdue contribution to American World War II history shelves, for it sheds light on a topic chronically overlooked in traditional American history education and reading lists.

Not only does this book recover a missing piece of American history, it also helps to explain the dark side of rapid "assimilation" of Italian-Americans after WWII -- as well as the corresponding decline of spoken Italian and the exodus from close-knit Italian neighborhoods to the suburbs. A focus on the entire U.S., rather than primarily on California, could have made this book even stronger. Una Storia Segreta nevertheless bridges the gap between third-generation and younger Italian-Americans and their older relatives, revealing the history that grandparents wished to forget. The voices in this volume provoke nostalgic smiles and outraged tears.