The Train to Crystal City

FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

By: Jan Jarboe Russell

Narrated by: Andrea Gallo

The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families - many US citizens - were incarcerated.

From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas, a small desert town at the southern tip of Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants, and their American-born children. The only family internment camp during World War II, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called "quiet passage". During the course of the war, hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City, including their American-born children, were exchanged for other more important Americans - diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries - behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany.

Focusing her story on two American-born teenage girls who were interned, author Jan Jarboe Russell uncovers the details of their years spent in the camp; the struggles of their fathers; their families' subsequent journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan; and their years-long attempt to survive and return to the United States, transformed from incarcerated enemies to American loyalists. Their stories of day-to-day life at the camp, from the 10-foot high security fence to the armed guards, daily roll call, and censored mail, have never been told.

Combining big-picture World War II history with a little-known event in American history that has long been kept quiet, The Train to Crystal City reveals the war-time hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America, the secrets of FDR's tactics to rescue high-profile POWs in Germany and Japan, and how the definition of American citizenship changed under the pressure of war.

©2015 Jan Jarboe Russell (P)2015 Recorded Books

history revealed

The narrator was merely adequate. The story compelling. It was a worthy of your time read.

U.S. kidnaps Peruvian Japanese to barter them to Imperial Japan?!

The writer deserves a garland of appreciation for her work. Separation of "enemy" families (incliding US citizens) so they would "volunteer" to be transferred Nazi Germany.

I didn't know...

To say this recounting was Informative is a huge understatement! I've lived in Dallas, Texas for the past 35 years, raised my family here... my 2 daughters have lived in San Antonio, my 2 sons went to U of TX in Austin. None of us ever heard of Crystal City or its history. I do think this story should be put into the history curriculum of not only all schools in Texas, but indeed the whole country. The fact that it happened is bad enough.. To Not Know is a travesty. Thank you, Ms. Russell for researching this piece of American history so well and putting it down on paper. Now, I know.

(Although the reader was clear & unhurried, I would have preferred a reading with more inflection/emotion..)

best book I have listened to in years

Untold story of German Americans, Japanese Americans and other internees in Crystal City Texas prison camp during WWII. Well researched and comprehensive. A powerful and moving account.

Learned a lot about internment camps!

I learned a lot about the struggles so many Japanese, German and citizens had during World War Two dealt with!