Hey, quick favor. We need your input. For a few weeks, this August, we are going to be giving

ourselves our usual late summer break, and as usual, we'll be running some favorites from the

archives. But this year, we are asking for your help in deciding what to run. In our newsletter,

we're going to be doing a series of votes on what episode we should feature each day.

So it's up to you to chime in,

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Hello and welcome to This Day, a history show from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, August 1944, it's the height of the Second World War.

Many of you listening are aware that on the west coast of the United States, this country set up internment camps where Japanese Americans were forced to

live in the latter years of the war. We've done a number of episodes on those camps. But let's go

instead to Texas, to a smaller set of camps and a really fascinating, heartbreaking, and I would

say largely forgotten story about another set of camps. In these camps, people of Japanese,

German, and Italian descent were rounded up and put behind barbed wire. But the wrinkle is that

these people were from other countries, from Latin American countries, who were deported

to the United States to be put in these camps. That's right. Latin Americans deported to Texas

and put in camps. Let's talk about the program that brought these folks here, some five or six

thousand of them and what life was like inside one of the camps. The most notable was a place

called Crystal City. Here, as always, to discuss Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody. Hey there. We collectively know a lot about U.S. history, but every once in a while, we should just admit that we find a story that is just like, whoa, I had no idea. I mean, this is something

I've written about, something I've taught about, Japanese internment, and I've never come across

this story before, which is on me, but like it is, it is definitely not a well-known story.

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