Before United States Entry Into World War II
In September 1939, Britain and France declared war against Nazi Germany after the Germans invaded Poland. In a show of support for Britain and France, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, to compile a Custodial Detention Index of those to be arrested in case of national emergency. The Axis powers allied with Germany included Fascist Italy and the Japanese Empire. More than a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Department of Justice began to list possible saboteurs and enemy agents among the German, Japanese, and Italian populations.
In 1940, resident aliens were required to register under the Smith Act.
Read more about this topic: Italian American Internment
Famous quotes containing the words united, states, entry, world and/or war:
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“During the first World War women in the United States had a chance to try their capacities in wider fields of executive leadership in industry. Must we always wait for war to give us opportunity? And must the pendulum always swing back in the busy world of work and workers during times of peace?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“When women can support themselves, have entry to all the trades and professions, with a house of their own over their heads and a bank account, they will own their bodies and be dictators in the social realm.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“Some burn damp faggots, others may consume
The entire combustible world in one small room
As though dried straw, and if we turn about
The bare chimney is gone black out
Because the work had finished in that flare.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“One must know that war is common, justice is strife, and everything happens according to strife and necessity.”
—Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.)