Washburn hosts May 9 traveling exhibit on WW II

WASHBURN — BUS-eum 2 is rolling up at the Washburn Public Library on Tuesday, May 9 at 5 p.m. as it continues a statewide exhibition of the unknown story of German-American Civilian Internment in the U.S. during World War II.

Using 10 narrative panels, an NBC Dateline documentary and a 1945 U.S. government film about this unknown history, the bus-museum will allow visitors to delve into the issues and fears that our parents and grandparents dealt with during the war. The exhibit is relevant as Wisconsin had a disproportionate number of German-American civilian residents interned. Washburn will be able to join the other communities of the state where the bus has toured in having an opportunity to discuss this legacy as well as the implications of the “enemy alien” internment program.

The BUS-eum will be parked in front of the Washburn Public Library. Phone (715) 373-6172 for more information.

Through this project, Wisconsin residents will see WWII history in a new way, and “revisit” an event and a period too often misunderstood and obscured by facile cliches. The discussion itself is meant to support democratic involvement and processes.

Guiding questions to consider before viewing the exhibit:

• Are ethnic background or ideology justifiable grounds for internment?

• Does a given society “owe” due process only to its citizens, or also to legal non-citizen residents?

• During World War II the U.S. government forcibly removed 4,058 Latin American Germans from South America to camps in Texas, at Ellis Island and elsewhere. What are some of this actionâs legal and moral implications? Was this action effective?

• “Enemy-Alien” internment was a multi-million-dollar, seven-year U.S. Government project: was it effective or not? What other actions might have been taken, rather than to intern some 150,000 Japanese, Italian and German Americans?

• Both camp staff and many of those interned were sworn to secrecy. In 1988 the U.S. government acknowledged that it had interned Japanese Americans during WWII, and in 2000 it admitted that it also had imprisoned Italian Americans; as of this writing, however, it has never confessed to having interned German Americans. To what extent, and for how long, is a government accountable for its actions? Does it “owe” reparations to those wrongfully harmed? If so, in what form?