The Train to Crystal City
Courtesy
Children playing in the Crystal City camp.
In The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II, local author Jan Jarboe Russell brings to light what literary authority Kirkus Reviews described as “a shocking story of national betrayal.” Informed by research, archival photos and personal accounts from survivors Ingrid Eiserloh (of Ohio) and Sumi Utsusjogawa (of California), the book looks beyond Texas’ FDR-approved Crystal City Internment Camp (which housed more than 6,000 people before closing in 1948) to explore the covert “quiet passage” program that employed detained immigrants and their American-born children as “a ready source of exchange” for more “important” Americans behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. In advance of The Train to Crystal City’s January 20 release, the Southwest School of Art hosts a reading and signing with Russell—who is a Nieman Fellow, a contributing editor at Texas Monthly and the vice president of the Linda Pace Foundation—to be followed by a 1940s-themed after-party across the way at literary arts center Gemini Ink’s new digs (1111 Navarro). Free, 5:30pm, Coates Chapel, Southwest School of Art, 300 Augusta, (210) 734-9673, geminiink.org. —Bryan Rindfuss
