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被送往克里斯特尔城的那些日本人

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The American government made no secret of the fact that it had rounded up Japanese residents of this country, even if they had been born here, and kept them in detention camps during World War II. At first glance, “The Train to Crystal City” appears to be about some version of that story, since the people depicted on its cover are Asian and some are being transported somewhere. But the facts Jan Jarboe Russell has unveiled are much thornier, more complex and terrible. The tale they tell is almost more than her mind-boggling but awkwardly organized book can handle.

美国政府从不讳言“二战”期间曾经集中美国的日本居民,把他们关进拘留营的事实——即使这些居民是在美国出生。乍一看,《开往克里斯特尔城的火车》(The Train to Crystal City)似乎同样讲述了这个故事,因为封面上的人物是亚洲人,有些正被送往别处。但是简·贾博·拉塞尔(Jan Jarboe Russell)在本书中揭露的事实更棘手、更复杂、更可怕。这本书发人深省,但却有失条理,几乎已经无法驾驭书中人物们所讲述的故事。

被送往克里斯特尔城的那些日本人

Forty years ago, as an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin, she was first told by a Japanese-American professor about the family internment camp at Crystal City, in southwestern Texas. During and after the war, it housed not only Japanese “detainees,” who were for all practical purposes prisoners, but also many Germans and a few Italians. The Germans loom large in this book, but the Italians play virtually no role.

40年前,拉塞尔在得克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校读本科时,第一次听一位日裔美国教授讲起得克萨斯州西南部克里斯特尔城的家庭俘虏收容所。“二战”期间和战后,这里不仅关押着日裔“政治犯”——他们实际上被当作囚犯对待——还关押着很多德裔和几个意大利裔人。这本书突出讲述了那些德裔的故事,但是几乎没提那几个意大利人。

Over time she learned that here were also people of Japanese descent who had been secretly kidnapped. At the request of the Roosevelt administration, the Japanese had also been spirited away from cooperating Latin American countries, with an especially large contingent from Peru. Many spoke neither Japanese nor English and had no connection to the United States. They were being held not as spies but for a more covert purpose: to be used as chits in a hostage exchange program once the war was over.

后来她得知,这里还有一些被秘密绑架的日裔。应罗斯福政府要求,一些与美国合作的拉美国家偷偷拐走了一些日裔,从秘鲁绑架的人数尤为众多。这些人中,很多人既不会说日语,也不会说英语,与美国没有任何关系。他们不是作为间谍被拘留,而是为了一个更隐秘的目的:用作战后人质交换的筹码。

Perhaps Ms. Russell’s jaw dropped as she got wind of each new part of this. Yours certainly will. But she has doggedly captuRed the awful intricacies that such a plan wrought, not only on the people who were uprooted but on the officials charged with handling them. No one had given much thought to how Crystal City would mix such different population groups; to how pro-Nazi Germans would get along with American citizens of German descent who identified as Germany’s enemies; to Japanese households who could not find any of the staples of their diet in this particular snake-and-scorpion-rich Texas region. Even the plan to enable tofu-making in Texas, at a time when it was hardly possible to order supplies from Japan, provides Ms. Russell with an interesting little story.

拉塞尔每听到一个新情况,可能都会惊得瞠目结舌。你肯定也是这种反应。不过,她还是顽强地描述了这个计划造成的可怕的、复杂的影响——不仅是对那些被迫背井离乡的人,还包括对那些负责处理他们的官员。没人细想过,克里斯特尔城如何融合这些背景如此不同的人;支持纳粹的德国人如何与以德国为敌的德裔美国人相处;得克萨斯州的这个地区蛇蝎横行,日本家庭找不到自己饮食中的任何主要食材。当时,从日本订购供给品几乎是不可能的,所以出现了一个让得克萨斯州能做豆腐的计划,这也给拉塞尔提供了一个有趣的小故事。

She got much of her information from more than 50 surviving Crystal City prisoners whose memories she tapped. This was a place for families, after all. And even though the primary detainee was usually a man, his wife and children willingly went with him — if they could even learn where he had been taken. The book tells of men who were seized in the days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the long months and years it took for their families to find out if they were dead or alive, let alone learn where they had been relocated. Many interviewees provide child’s-eye descriptions of what the long, strange journey to their unknown new home was like.

她的很多信息来自在世的50多名克里斯特尔城囚犯,她打开了他们记忆的闸门。毕竟,那是一个拘留家庭的地方。尽管主囚犯通常是个男人,但他的妻儿愿意跟他一起走——如果他们能打听到他被抓到哪儿的话。这本书讲述了在日军袭击珍珠港之后几天内被抓的一些男人的故事。他们的家人在其后漫长的几个月,乃至几年里打听他是否还活着,他们被送到了哪里更是不得而知。很多受访者当年还是孩子,他们用儿童的眼光描述了通往未知新家的漫长、奇怪的旅程。

Although they had no way of knowing it at the time, for these people Crystal City would become the closest thing many of them had to a home for a long time. The camp operated until 1948 — three years after the war had ended — and its residents continued to be policed and guarded. Nobody quite knew where to send them.

他们当时绝不会想到,克里斯特尔城会在很长一段时间里成为最接近家的地方。这个拘留营一直运营到1948年——那时“二战”已结束三年——之后这里的居民继续被监督、看管。没人确切地知道要把他们送到哪里。

Red-haired Ingrid Eiserloh, a first-generation American of German descent, had been born in New York and grown up in Strongsville, Ohio, the place she considered home. But a blanket policy of postwar “repatriation” meant shipping Ingrid, her parents and young siblings to postwar Germany, where they would endure near-starvation and have no set survival plan; Ingrid would also have to deal with the crude attentions of American G.I.s. The book gives abundant credit to such American officials as Earl G. Harrison, a onetime commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He was in charge of overseeing Crystal City and understood the additional, superfluous cruelty that came with this postwar treatment. But the unyielding anti-immigrant attitude that the United States applied to many Jews freed from concentration camps also applied to Crystal City’s unwanted population.

红头发的英格丽德·艾泽洛(Ingrid Eiserloh)是第一代德裔美国人,她在纽约出生,在俄亥俄州的斯特朗威尔长大,她视后者为家乡。但是战后“遣送回国”的通用政策把英格丽德,以及她的父母、弟妹们送回了战后的德国,他们没有任何固定的谋生计划,差点饿死在德国;英格丽德还得应付美国士兵的严密监视。这本书高度赞扬了厄尔·G·哈里森(Earl G. Harrison)等美国官员,哈里森曾是美国移民和归化局局长,曾负责监管克里斯特尔城。他明白这种战后待遇会带来多余的、没必要的残酷。但是美国对很多从集中营中释放出来的犹太人持有的强硬反移民态度也用到了克里斯特尔城这些不受欢迎的人身上。

Among Ms. Russell’s best sources: Mr. Harrison’s diary and the personnel file of Joseph O’Rourke, the officer in Crystal City who dealt with the day-to-day problems there. Given the officiousness with which both men might have distanced themselves from the tough issues that came their way, these documents are surprisingly honest and pained about the injustices being done. Mr. O’Rourke wrote of watching “typical American boys and girls develop deep feelings of betrayal by their government.” After all, in a situation rife with absurdities, they were being taught the Bill of Rights in schools at Crystal City, where those rights had been taken away from them.

拉塞尔最好的资料来源包括哈里森的日记以及约瑟夫·欧鲁克(Joseph O’Rourke)的人事档案,后者曾是克里斯特尔城的一名军官,负责处理那里的日常问题。他们两人秉持不越俎代庖的原则,可能没有干涉自己看到的一些严重问题,但是这些文件出人意料地诚实,为不公正的行为感到痛心。欧鲁克写道,他看到“典型的美国男孩和女孩产生被自己的政府背叛的强烈情绪”。毕竟,在那种十分荒谬的情况下,他们仍在克里斯特尔城的学校里接受《人权法案》的教育,而他们自己的权利却被剥夺了。

“The Train to Crystal City” combines accounts of terrible sorrow and destruction with great perseverance, and there is one really unexpected turn. Though their internment may have been, in theory, the worst thing the children of Crystal City ever experienced, some of them formed lasting bonds. So they have reunions. They have had a newsletter, Crystal City Chatter. And they have their memories, which they shared with Ms. Russell. She now shares them with readers who’ll wish these stories weren’t true.

《开往克里斯特尔城的火车》以极大的毅力把这些关于可怕悲痛和破坏的叙述综合在一起,书中还有个非常出人意料的转折。虽然理论上讲,克里斯特尔城的孩子们被拘留的生活是他们最糟糕的经历,但是其中一些人建立了长久的联系。他们后来多次聚会。他们有一个内部通讯,名叫《克里斯特尔城絮语》(Crystal City Chatter)。他们有共同的回忆,他们把这些回忆分享给了拉塞尔。现在,拉塞尔把这些回忆分享给读者,虽然读者们希望这些故事不是真的。

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