L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JANUARY 13, 2022 www.italoamericano.org 14 L'Italo-Americano father had been interned—to secure the Rotunda of the State Capitol as the exhibit's first traveling site. The display pan- els were affixed to blue backing panels artfully arranged around the dome of the rotunda, mak- ing for a splendid display. A large banner outside an- nounced the Italian American exhibit within. Thousands saw it there, Gov. Pete Wilson signed a Proclamation attesting to its importance, and the Leg- islature passed a Resolution to the same effect. Since then, Una Storia Seg- reta has grown in a way no one could have predicted. Dona- tions to allow it to travel (which required packing, transporta- tion—at first we rented vans and just stacked the loose pan- els in the back—and measures to allow panels that could not be affixed to walls to be dis- played on rented easels) began to come in from each organi- zation that applied to sponsor it. We developed a system whereby each receiving orga- nization would pay the cost of shipping the exhibit from its previous site to their own, plus a small exhibit fee. This seemed to work, and it continued for over twenty years. But that first year, 1994, was experimental. After Sacramento, the exhibit traveled to Santa Rosa's Sonoma County Museum, Pittsburg's Gallery 500, the Pavilion Gallery in San Jose, south to Monterey's Conference Center, and back to the Bay Area and Oakland's Colombo Club. At each stop, locals who had experienced the restric- tions in one form or another contributed accounts of what they and/or their families had gone through. And the deter- mination to keep the exhibit traveling led to improvements. The first major improve- ment came in the form of a Cat- alogue. It originated in an ini- tiative promoted by the Italian American Federation of the East Bay—a consortium of clubs in and around Oakland— whose members offered to fi- nance an exhibit Catalogue. We knew that would add immea- surably to the exhibit's impact by giving people something to take away, and agreed. I took photos and the text from the exhibit to my friend John Sul- livan in San Francisco's North Beach, who had helped design my Big Book of Italian Ameri- can Culture in paperback, and asked if he would design it. He did it beautifully, and we then took it to a printer in Berkeley, Mercurio Printing, which did an expert job at a reasonable price. From then on, that Cat- alogue accompanied the exhibit on all of its travels, becoming an indispensable part of its dis- play. We asked for donations for the Catalogue, and those proceeds, by adding a financial floor to the exhibit's travels, al- lowed it to become self-suffi- cient and moving from then on. We also knew we had to strengthen the foam core pan- els that had been designed only to be affixed to the walls of the Museo with gold-colored tacks. But such walls were not avail- able in most sites. Moreover, the edges of the panels already showed clear signs that they could not long withstand the rigors of travel. At first, we tried to reinforce the foam core pan- els with clear plastic sheaves that slipped onto the edges. This helped for a time, but the most dramatic improvements came in Monterey. The Italian Heritage Society of Monterey Bay donated funds—and Hugo Bianchini donated his exper- tise—so that each of the foam core panels could be trimmed, and then framed in black metal. With that, wires could be at- tached to each frame from the back, so it could be hung from the wall like a picture instead of being nailed or otherwise af- fixed to it. The second major improvement involved the building of two large crates, into which the now-framed panels could be packed and shipped securely. This readied the exhibit to be shipped fur- ther afield than ever: first to Los Angeles and San Pedro in 1995, and then to sites across the nation and the East Coast for its appearances there (first we had to have newer, more professional crates—ones that could hold up to the rough han- dling of air travel and forklifts— made, that were fitted precisely to the exhibit panels). At the time, Hugo Bianchini of Mon- terey predicted that the exhibit would travel for at least five years. We laughed, seriously doubting that this would be the case; but it has turned out to be a modest prediction. Una Storia Segreta has traveled to over fifty sites throughout the vast length and breadth of the United States for more than twenty years, and could still be traveling if we had the means and energy to keep it going. And all without our ever adver- tising or soliciting Italian Amer- ican organizations or colleges: each appearance has derived from a local organization hear- ing or reading about its impact, and making a request to us to sponsor the exhibit locally. There were more develop- ments, of course, over the years. When the exhibit opened at the prestigious Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in Philadelphia PA, the curators decided to pre- pare their own Introductory Panel made of clear plexiglass. This became the official Intro- ductory Panel from then on, and when the Institute donated the panel to us, we added the photo of the California State Capitol to it. That opening event at the Balch Institute, not coinciden- tally, became the richest event of its kind that I have wit- nessed: the food was special (a whole round of Parmigiano Reggiano was the centerpiece) and the setting opulent, as were the speakers. Then, our meet- ing with Sam Fumosa, of the New Jersey Sons of Italy (OSIA), provided us with an in- side track to transportation, as we could then arrange shipping through Fumosa's trucking company. We met Ciro Poppiti, an activist and lawmaker of Wilmington, DE when the ex- hibit was displayed there; and poet Maria Gillan, when she arranged for a showing in Pa- terson, NJ. A year later, when the exhibit was displayed at the Connecticut State Legislature, an Assembly Citation joined those that had been promul- gated by the state of California, the city of San Jose, and United States Congressman Norman Mineta of San Jose. It would be only the first of many citations and resolutions from State Houses that hosted the exhibit. It was not long after, in early 1997, that we heard from John Calvelli, then Chief of Staff in Rep. Eliot Engel's office and a board member of NIAF. Calvelli proposed that the ex- hibit return to the East, to be displayed in the Rayburn Office Building in Washington DC— this in preparation for legisla- tion to be introduced which would formally acknowledge the violations of Italian Ameri- can civil liberties during World War II. The exhibit was shipped across the country once again, and we set it up in its most prestigious site to date. And it was noteworthy, to us, that as we were setting it up, a passerby stopped, seemed in- tensely interested in what it said, and asked us about it. It turned out that he was a pro- fessor of American history at Harvard on his way to testify before a Congressional com- mittee, and acknowledged that he had never heard a word about this "other" internment. This reaction would become standard among historians and journalists in the coming years. Soon, Rep. Engel introduced HR 2442, calling for official government acknowledgment, for the first time, that these events had happened. Though 2442 did not pass the first time, it was re-introduced a second time in 1999, and this time— with the help of Chicago activist Anthony LaPiana, who inter- vened with his congressman, Henry Hyde—it was afforded Judiciary Committee Hearings. Those Hearings, at which testimony was given by Dom DiMaggio, Doris Pinza (wife of the late Ezio Pinza), Matt DiDomenico of the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), and Phil Piccigallo of OSIA, among several others, turned the tide in Congress. Representative Hyde put the bill on a special calendar, where it was able to pass on a voice vote. In 2000, it also passed the Senate, and President Clinton signed it into law on Nov. 7, 2000. The Wartime Viola- tion of Italian American Civil Liberties Act had be- come Public Law #106-451, and led, in a year, to the Report to the Congress of the United States, prepared by the Depart- ment of Justice. Most importantly, the secret history whose outlines Una Storia Segreta had helped un- cover, has continued to flesh it- self out. This story had re- mained hidden for fifty years because of the silence—first im- posed by the government, then adopted as protective cover by those affected—that has always surrounded it. That is, not only has the story been suppressed from historical accounts, but the Italian American commu- nity itself has remained largely unaware of its existence. With the exhibit, memories have been jogged, eyes have been opened, voices have been found. New stories—always specific to each place, always imbuing the exhibit with the particular flavor of local expe- rience—have emerged in a steady, and steadily-expanding flow. Not least are the docu- ments I was able to find at the National Archives in College Park, MD. There, I was able— with the stimulus provided by Guido Tintori's initial re- search—to find the documents from the Provost Marshal Gen- eral's office (PMGO) that con- firmed the internments of some 300 internees. Adding those to what we already knew has helped flesh out that little- known story, and given faces and histories to mere names. The latest development in this ongoing saga is the pro- duction, after several earlier at- tempts failed, of a prize-win- ning video entitled "Potentially Dangerous." Early in 2021, Zach Baliva contacted me to talk about his plan to produce a video on the WWII story. He had received a grant from the NIAF-sponsored Russo Bros. Film Forum to make a docu- mentary. What he did not say at the time was that the grant was a mere $8,000. and the time allotted was a mere four months (most documentaries require hundreds of thousands of dollars, and years to make). Incredibly, Baliva was able to complete his 50-minute video in the allotted time, and with the allotted funds supple- mented by a fund-raiser on Kickstarter. Recently, his video took first place in the Russo Bros. competition at NIAF's an- nual Gala. More important, Baliva was able to interview several of our informants, most in northern California, as well as record a long interview with me. Among other things, I was impressed with the profession- alism of his crew and equip- ment, all of it rented, and with his questions, which clearly demonstrated that he had stud- ied the matter carefully. Most impressive of all, perhaps, was his determination to complete his film, despite the consider- able obstacles of little money and time. Now, there is a possibility that this video can be distrib- uted to a wider audience, and even be employed to aid in the legislation that has recently been introduced into the Con- gress by Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Tom Luozzi. Its aim is, first, to receive an apol- ogy from the government for the civil liberties violations en- dured by the Italian community during World War II. Second, its aim is to secure funding for educational purposes (such as a more complete documentary; treatment of the Italian story in standard social studies and history texts) to educate the general public about what Ital- ian immigrants went through during the war. Because even though these events have now been publicized in the many lo- cations Una Storia Segreta has visited, and notwithstanding the passage of Public Law #106-451, and the publication of several books (at least two by this writer), and despite the fact that the Una Storia Seg- reta exhibit has recently gone online, with images of all the panels plus supplementary doc- uments located after the exhibit was constructed (see www.unastoriasegreta. com), it is still generally believed that the only population affected by government measures on the home front during WWII was the Japanese one. And this in spite of the fact that Public Law #106-451 specifically calls for government funding for edu- cational purposes to combat this misapprehension. Thus, in spite of all that this "little-exhibit-that-could" has accomplished, more remains to be done. How that will play out cannot now be known. But the rather remarkable series of events and responses so far, and the length of its run, and the national attention it has re- ceived, cannot help but give us hope. At the very least, the ac- cepted public narrative about what happened on the home front during World War II has been forever changed. And that—that updating of history to make it more accurate—can only be seen as a beneficial out- come. HERITAGE HISTORY IDENTITY TRADITIONS PEOPLE Continued from page 12

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