Response to Malkin

Submitted by Arlinda DeAngelis (United States), Mar 1, 2005 at 22:33

As a grandchild of Italian immigrants whose sons, one of whom was my father, fought and died to defeat Fascism and imperialism in World War II, I remember my family sitting around a dinner table during the holidays rarely discussing their bravery or their courage or their patriotism of their war efforts.

I do remember a discussion about the Italians being sent to camps somewhere faraway ... in California. It was a shameful thing. Not that they were sent to camps but that they advocated for Mussolini and his great friend, Hitler.

My father and my uncles, ordinary decent men, some not even twenty years old, some in school, some with good jobs, some married with wives and children, came home after Pearl Harbor, packed their bags, left school, left their jobs, their families and their children and went to war to fight for the freedoms we take for granted today.

These citizen soldiers who fought the imperial Japanese and the European fascists and freed the modern world of the oppression those system inflicted upon society believed unanimously that the Italian-Americans who advocated for those that were killing American soldiers got off easy. They suggested they should have been incarcerated for life.

I think they were right.

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