This article appeared in the Nevada, MO - Daily Mail and Herald Tribune
on April 19, 2007.

Bus museum makes a stop in Nevada to share little-known chapter in history

By Crystal D. Hancock

More than 100 local citizens took the opportunity to educate themselves about the experiences and trying times that German-Americans faced during World War II. "Vanished: German-American Internment 1941-'48" was the title given to the large mobile museum that visited the Nevada Public Library on Tuesday afternoon. There were videos playing in the bus, plenty of reading material for sale as well as the historian who drives the bus available for further educational information. Locals of all ages enjoyed the experience and seemed eager to learn more.

"Welcome to the Bus - eum 2" is how the sign read near the entrance of the mobile museum that visited the Nevada Public Library on Tuesday. Many local citizens toured the bus in hopes of being educated on lives and experiences of of German-American civilians during WWII.	Nevada locals watch in amazement as the video plays on, depicting and showing the internement camps and historical life stories of German-Americans and other ancestors whose lives were distrupted during WWII.

The World War II experience of thousands of German-Americans is unknown to most. During the war in the early 1940s, the U.S. government and many Americans viewed German-Americans and others of "enemy ancestry" as potentially dangerous. The government used many interrelated, constitutionally questionable methods to control people of German ancestry, including internment, individual and group exclusion from military zones, internee exchanges, deportation, repatriation, "alien enemy" registration, travel restrictions and property confiscation, according to www.foitimes.com.

The human cost of these civil liberties violations was high. Families were disrupted, if not destroyed, reputations ruined, homes and belongings lost. By the end of the war, 11,000 persons of German ancestry, including many American-born children were interned.

Pressured by the United States, Latin-American governments collectively arrested at least 4,050 German Latin Americans. Most were shipped in dark boat holds to the United States and interned. At least 2,000 Germans, German-Americans and Latin-American internees were later exchanged for Americans and Latin-Americans held by the Third Reich in Germany.

For more information, visit www.foitimes.com. The mission of the Web site is "to tell the story of thousands whose lives were forever changed because the United States suspected them of disloyalty. Government suspicion was based upon national origin and led to great hardship. Their story must not be forgotten. It deserves to be told. To date, it remains shrouded in history."

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