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

~ Lawrence Distasi (Editor) Sandra Gilbert (Foreword) (Author) "In a notebook kept by Prospero Cecconi during his internment as an allegedly dangerous enemy alien during World War II and only recently found by..." (more)
Key Phrases: United States, San Francisco, Italian Americans (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II looks at "both the secret shame of those who suffered the wartime restrictions, and the dirty little secret of those who imposed them." These words, from Lawrence DiStasi's (Dream Streets: The Big Book of Italian American Culture) introduction to his seminal book on the internment of Italian-Americans during WWII (with a foreword by Sandra M. Gilbert), reveal what Japanese-American detainees and their descendants already know too well about the wartime experience. DiStasi has marshaled a group of potent and moving essays personal narratives of ancestors and others who were detained, arrested, evacuated or who just disappeared and some more scholarly examinations of our government's treatment of the more than half a million Italian immigrants many of them naturalized U.S. citizens whose lives were turned upside down. B&w illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

It is little known that Italian Americans had been interned, evacuated and otherwise restricted during World War II. In California, Italian resident aliens were subjected to an 8PM to 6AM curfew, there were searches of their homes and seizure of their property, and there was an evacuation of thousands from prohibited zones along the coast.

In a collection of essays, Una Storia Segreta brings together the voices of the Italian American community and experts in the field, including personal stories by survivors and their children, letters from internment camps, news clips, photographs, and cartoons.

Una Storia Segreta is the secret story/history of Italian Americans that brings a new perspective to the history of wartime violations of civilian populations. The range of scholarly essays detail which parts of the Italian American community were targeted, where internees were sent, how the communities reacted, what some of the long term effects have been, and an analysis of government actions and motives, both stated and secret.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Heyday Books (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890771406
• ISBN-13: 978-1890771409
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #264,721 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Una Storia Tremenda, July 1, 2001

By A Customer

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.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When it was illegal to be Italian, July 4, 2005

By	Andrew Olivo Parodi (Oregon, United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I've always had an arms-length relationship with my Italian heritage.

A few months ago I decided to change all that, and so I read the books "Are Italians White?" and "White On Arrival." Both books talk about the fact that Italians were once subjected to discrimination, and at some points in US history the Italians were not even considered white. These books were upsetting, obviously. It was difficult for me to read that the people I had always secretly considered to be very special had been subjected to discrimination and at some points considered "undesirables." Actually, I found this astonishing. I couldn't believe it. But, you see, the books "Are Italians White?" and "White on Arrival" are largely about those descended from different regions of Italy than me, and those who settled in different regions of the United States than my ancestors. Italians, yes, but not specifically "my" Italians. So, I felt compassion for the Italians I read about in "Are Italians White?" and "White On Arrival," but somehow the discrimination they were subjected to didn't hit me in a personal way. It was again all at arms-length.

No such luck with "Una Storia Segreta." Though there are some exceptions, "Una Storia Segreta" seems to focus mostly on those descended from Genoa, Italy, and who settled in the California Bay Area. In the 1930s, my grandfather moved here from the Genoa region of Italy. I was born in the California Bay Area. The Italians described in "Una Storia Segreta" are largely "my" Italians.

"Una Storia Segreta" was actually jolting for me to read. It felt as though someone had torn into the most personal passages of my diary and published them without my consent. What I mean is, on some level I've always felt very, very ashamed of myself. I now see the source of the shame. As Lawrence DiStasi writes in the introduction, the result of the internment of Italians is that many Italians came to be ashamed of what they are. This is because, as Mr. DiStasi notes, Italian immigrants to the United States largely believed that this was a land of justice. If an Italian was interned here, then it was because he had done something wrong. But in the case of this World War II internment of Italians in the US, nothing wrong had been done. So, it must've been that what we ARE is wrong. The solution was to stop being what we are! Stop being Italian!

I had read the other reviews of this book, and I paid close attention to the one that said this book would bring outraged tears. I didn't think that was likely with me. I have volunteered for various Holocaust memorials. Not that Italian internment is the same as what happened to the Jews and six million others in the Holocaust. But suffice it to say that I am quite acquainted with the fact that great injustice has occurred in this world, and so I didn't think reading a book about the injustices perpetuated against Italians would bring me to tears. I even bargained that though this book focuses on Genovese people of the California Bay Area, and I am of Genovese descent and was born in the Bay Area, my life ultimately was not touched by what this book describes.

The tears did eventually come, however, after I put a reluctant two-and-two together. On page 307 of "Una Storia Segreta" there is a reproduction of a US-issue poster that reads, "Don't Speak the Enemy's Language! Speak American!" Though my grandfather, to my knowledge, was not interned, it is inevitable that his life was touched by such sentiment because he spoke only Italian upon his arrival in the US from Italy in the 1930s. In other words, my grandfather spoke only "the enemy's language."

"Una Storia Segreta" helped me understand that it is no accident that I have always had an arms-length relationship with my Italian heritage. It has made me understand why my own father is adamant that we are "American" and NOT "Italian." And it has made me love my father even more because it helps me understand that he has been dealing with a shame his entire life whose origins he most likely did not understand. (DiStasi says that this sense of being ashamed of what one is, is very common among first and second generation Italian Americans, though they often do not know where this sense of shame came from because few in the Italian American community are willing to talk about Italian internment.) "Una Storia Segreta" has helped me understand my life, and ultimately has helped me feel like a complete human being.

Andrew Michael Parodi

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important and long overdue contribution, November 7, 2002

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

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.