Survivors of WW2-era internment camp south of San Antonio gather to remember the injustice
Last Saturday, survivors of a World War II-era concentration camp located in the scrubland southwest of San Antonio came together, along with their descendants, for a day of remembrance, healing, and bridge-building with local community members.
The Crystal City Enemy Detention Facility around an hour and a half from the Alamo City imprisoned more than 3,000 people of Japanese, German and Italian descent taken from their homes in the U.S. and Latin America from 1942 to 1948. At its peak, it was the largest U.S. family internment camp.
In a ceremony held on the concrete slab left behind by the camp pool where two Japanese Peruvian girls drowned in 1943, the 200 survivors and descendants sat alongside Crystal City’s mayor and city manager while the names of 12 internees, all of whom died in the camp of causes both natural and unnatural, were read in prayer.
Pilgrims, who ranged from young children to octogenarians, came from places as far-flung as Japan, Peru and San Francisco to the town of 6,000 known for being a hotspot for Chicano activism in the ’60s and ’70s. The Crystal City walkouts of 1969-70 protested anti-Latino discrimination in schools.
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