Why is the man responsible for the Trail of Tears still on the $20 bill?

[grantcart]

105. No they weren't and I do have links to prove it:

but really it is a common sense issue. In the Western part of the United States all people of Japanese Ancestory were swept into massive internment camps and no distinction was made to whether or not they were US citizens or not.

German and Italian nationals who were living here were interned, as were Allied nationals in other countries, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, etc. It was a common practice at the time to intern all alien nationals of foriegn countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_internment

However, unlike Japanese-Americans, who were rounded up whether citizens or not, only non-citizen Germans were rounded up, with the exception of American-born minor children of internees.



http://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/enemy-aliens-overview.html

By the end of the war, over 31,000 suspected enemy aliens and their families, including a few Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, had been interned at Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) internment camps and military facilities throughout the United States. Some of these internment locations included Sharp Park Detention Station, California; Kooskia Internment Camp, Idaho; Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Montana; Fort Stanton Internment Camp and Santa Fe Internment Camp in New Mexico; Ellis Island Detention Station, New York; Fort Lincoln Internment Camp, North Dakota; Fort Forrest, Tennessee; and Crystal City Internment Camp, Kenedy Detention Station, and Seagoville Detention Station in Texas.



However the camp at El Reno OK was not for American Citizens or resident aliens, it was a POW camp for Germans caught by the US military

During WWII, Fort Reno, about one mile (1.6 km) west of El Reno, was the site of a prisoner of war camp, and today contains a P.O.W. cemetery, with stones bearing the names of German and Italian prisoners who died there.


Most people are unaware of the fact that there were over 425,000 Germans who were kept at POW camps in the US. Here is a list of 500 of them and Fort Reno is on the list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_prisoner-of-war_camps_in_the_United_States


and this is confirmed by the OK Historical Society

During World War II federal officials located enemy prisoner of war (POW) camps in Oklahoma. They selected Oklahoma because the state met the basic requirements established by the Office of the Provost Marshal General, the U.S. Army agency responsible for the POW program.

. . .

Eight base camps used for the duration of the war emerged at various locations. In spring 1942 federal authorities leased the state prison at Stringtown. Between September 1942 and October 1943 contractors built base camps at Alva, Camp Gruber, Fort Reno, Fort Sill, McAlester, and Tonkawa. In autumn 1944 officials obtained use of vacant dormitories built for employees of the Oklahoma Ordnance Works at Pryor. In August of that year a unique facility opened at Okmulgee when army officials designated Glennan General Hospital to treat prisoners of war and partially staffed it with captured enemy medical personnel.

. . .

Most POWs who died in Oklahoma were buried at the military cemetery at Fort Reno.

So no mass deportations of Germans from German-American communities in PA happened like they did in San Francisco and all over the West Coast, the US government and the OK historical society both agree that the facility at Fort Reno was for combatant German POWs and not for civilians, internees or otherwise.

So besides all of that you were 100% correct. Germans were kept at a camp in Fort Reno, although they weren't American citizens, resident Alien Nationals but German soldiers who were part of a massive POW system.