the train to crystal city by jan jarboe russell

“In this quietly moving book” ( The Boston Globe), Jan Jarboe Russell focuses on two American-born teenage girls, uncovering 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. The only family internment camp during the war, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called “quiet passage.” Hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City were exchanged for other more ostensibly important Americans-diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and missionaries-behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. The trains carried Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The Train to Crystal City is compelling, thought-provoking, and impossible to put down” ( Star-Tribune, Minneapolis).ĭuring World War II, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas.

The New York Times bestselling dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II: “A must-read….

The train to crystal city by jan jarboe russell