Italian Civil Alien Corps in South Australia, the “forgotten” enemy aliens. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Italo-Australians during the second world war: Some perceptions of internment
Italian Studies in Southern Africa/Studi d’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe, 2011
The entry of Italy into the second world war brought considerable disruption to the over thirty thousand strong Italian Australian community whose presence was seen by the Australian authorities as a serious potential threat to national security. About 4,700 mainly male Italian Australians were incarcerated in internment camps while women and children were left to fend for themselves in a highly hostile environment. Although a significant social-historical phenomenon, very few and at best highly partial studies (such as Bosworth and Ugolini 1992, Cresciani 1993, Martinuzzi O'Brien 1993, 2002, in press) have been produced on the subject. Many Italian Australians, however, have tended to reflect, often from a victimological viewpoint, on the internment experience in their memoirs and reminiscences. This paper proposes to provide an additional dimension to the topic by examining oral and written accounts produced by some Italian Australian protagonists of the internment experience with a view to considering how their albeit subjective perceptions provide a particular viewpoint of one way in which Australia reacted to the events of war.
Immigrants & Minorities , 2022
Between the 1920s and the 1950s, hundreds of thousands of Italians emigrated to Australia, with fewer restrictions placed upon them than other continental European migrants. However, Italian migrants, especially from southern Italy, were often seen as 'undesirable'. This was due to both their ethnicity and the view that Italians were attracted to extreme political ideologies, such as Fascism and communism. This combination led the Australian authorities to treat Italian migrants as a'suspect community', which meant prolonged surveillance of Italian communities, as well as efforts to prevent entry, deny citizenship to or deport certain undesirable individuals. The policing of Italians in Australia intensified in the Second World War, which resulted in many being interned, regardless of political affiliation. But at other times, the political persuasion of the Italian migrants did play apart in how they were viewed by the authorities, with communists being monitored more heavily in the 1920s and 1950s and fascists being the focus in the 1930s and 1940s. This article looks at the shifting undesirability to Italian political activists in Australia over four decades and how ethnicity alongside ideology informed their policing by the authorities across several periods of political upheaval.
Australian Journal of Politics & History, 2020
Since the Archives Act of 1983 Australia's World War II internees have had access to their wartime files, yet little attention has focused on whether they and their families have consulted these records, or on their responses to them. From the early 2000s historians and archivists began discussing the need for combining private oral testimony with official records as part of a wider discourse on the importance of life stories for deepening knowledge about the past. This article explores the impact of a father's official internment records on his son, through the son's sharing of memories, lived experience and his reactions to official documents, in order to provide a more complete story of his father's internment and life than either the public record or the oral testimony alone can produce. We argue that Sam Ragonesi's oral testimony, especially concerning his encounter with Salvatore Ragonesi's official records, contributes to a greater shared understanding of experiences of war on the home front by integrating social, cultural and family dimensions hidden from Ragonesi's public history. In this way intergenerational experiences help both to contest the collective image of internment and create a more complex picture of the War. Between 1939 and 1945 approximately 7,000 foreign-born residents were interned in Australia, including over 1,500 naturalized British Subjects. 1 The most recent figures show that 4,855 Italian civilians represented the largest 'enemy-alien' group, and over 20 per cent of the Italian-born population. 2 Since the Freedom of Information Act of 1982 and the Archives Act of 1983 it has been possible to access individuals' official internment records, which has resulted in a growing body of scholarship. 3 Such access also led to political recognition
The Enemy Within? The Process of Internment of Enemy Aliens in Queensland 1939-45
Australian Journal of Politics & History, 2008
The mobilization of Australia for war involved not simply the recruitment, training, and transportation of the armed forces to aid Britain, but also internal preparedness and reorganization. Whilst the period from the declaration of war against Germany in September 1939 to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 may be regarded as an interlude before the trauma of total warfare, crucial internal policies and procedures were then being established that would have far-reaching repercussions. Mimicking the hysteria generated in World War One over the presence of enemy aliens and naturalized British subjects of enemy origin, the federal government moved swiftly to identify, assess, and, in many cases, intern Germans, Italians and, later, Japanese. These procedures became increasingly prevalent and punitive in response both to impending Allied defeat in Europe in 1940 and, more specifically, to the anticipated Japanese invasion in late 1941. These fears were often more pronounced in Queensland than in other areas of the Commonwealth for a number of reasonsthe vast state's geographical vulnerability to attack and, most importantly, the high concentration of enemy aliens on the northeast coast. Paul Hasluck argues that the internment of enemy aliens was one of the 'most important measures taken during the first six months of war. . .'I The War Book, prepared by the Department of Defence and modelled closely on its British counterpart, had already indicated those issues and procedures which were regarded as potentially significant in the event of war.* It laid down that the internment of resident enemy aliens should be restricted to 'the narrowest limits consistent with public safety and public sentiment'.' Yet, as federal parliamentarian Maurice Blackburn observed in the House of Representatives debate on the National Security Bill in 1939: 16 17 21 1
2019
In October 2000, David Cesarani decried the internment of refugees in Britain during the Second World War on BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Behind the Wire’. In recent years, novels, exhibitions, television, and radio programmes have introduced a wider audience to this oft forgotten part of the British wartime narrative, yet not all of those who were interned remained in the British Isles—some were sent to Canada and Australia. Of the five ships that set sail, one never made it to its destination. The sinking of the Arandora Star was the greatest tragedy of internment, and several hundred internees lost their lives. Those who survived were put straight on the Dunera, this time bound for Australia, on which many abuses were committed by British soldiers. This chapter will examine the memory of the camps, and consider how and why internment has been remembered and commemorated differently across continents.
"Conditions rotten": stories of Indigenous Australian prisoners in the Second World War
Wartime, no. 85, January 2019, pp 42-49, 2019
As historians are becoming more aware of the diversity of the Australian prisoner of war experience during the Second World War, increasing numbers of Indigenous Australians' stories are being identified. Through the combined hard work of researchers, families, and communities, a more complete picture of Aboriginal prisoner-of-war experiences is emerging.