被送往克里斯特爾城的那些日本人

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.

美國政府從不諱言“二戰”期間曾經集中美國的日本居民，把他們關進拘留營的事實——即使這些居民是在美國出生。乍一看，《開往克里斯特爾城的火車》(The Train to Crystal City)似乎同樣講述了這個故事，因爲封面上的人物是亞洲人，有些正被送往別處。但是簡·賈博·拉塞爾(Jan Jarboe Russell)在本書中揭露的事實更棘手、更復雜、更可怕。這本書發人深省，但卻有失條理，幾乎已經無法駕馭書中人物們所講述的故事。

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，拉塞爾在得克薩斯大學奧斯汀分校讀本科時，第一次聽一位日裔美國教授講起得克薩斯州西南部克里斯特爾城的家庭俘虜收容所。“二戰”期間和戰後，這裏不僅關押着日裔“政治犯”——他們實際上被當作囚犯對待——還關押着很多德裔和幾個意大利裔人。這本書突出講述了那些德裔的故事，但是幾乎沒提那幾個意大利人。

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.

後來她得知，這裏還有一些被祕密綁架的日裔。應羅斯福政府要求，一些與美國合作的拉美國家偷偷拐走了一些日裔，從祕魯綁架的人數尤爲衆多。這些人中，很多人既不會說日語，也不會說英語，與美國沒有任何關係。他們不是作爲間諜被拘留，而是爲了一個更隱祕的目的：用作戰後人質交換的籌碼。

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.

拉塞爾每聽到一個新情況，可能都會驚得瞠目結舌。你肯定也是這種反應。不過，她還是頑強地描述了這個計劃造成的可怕的、複雜的影響——不僅是對那些被迫背井離鄉的人，還包括對那些負責處理他們的官員。沒人細想過，克里斯特爾城如何融合這些背景如此不同的人；支持納粹的德國人如何與以德國爲敵的德裔美國人相處；得克薩斯州的這個地區蛇蠍橫行，日本家庭找不到自己飲食中的任何主要食材。當時，從日本訂購供給品幾乎是不可能的，所以出現了一個讓得克薩斯州能做豆腐的計劃，這也給拉塞爾提供了一個有趣的小故事。

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.

她的很多信息來自在世的50多名克里斯特爾城囚犯，她打開了他們記憶的閘門。畢竟，那是一個拘留家庭的地方。儘管主囚犯通常是個男人，但他的妻兒願意跟他一起走——如果他們能打聽到他被抓到哪兒的話。這本書講述了在日軍襲擊珍珠港之後幾天內被抓的一些男人的故事。他們的家人在其後漫長的幾個月，乃至幾年裏打聽他是否還活着，他們被送到了哪裏更是不得而知。很多受訪者當年還是孩子，他們用兒童的眼光描述了通往未知新家的漫長、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.

他們當時絕不會想到，克里斯特爾城會在很長一段時間裏成爲最接近家的地方。這個拘留營一直運營到1948年——那時“二戰”已結束三年——之後這裏的居民繼續被監督、看管。沒人確切地知道要把他們送到哪裏。

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.

紅頭髮的英格麗德·艾澤洛(Ingrid Eiserloh)是第一代德裔美國人，她在紐約出生，在俄亥俄州的斯特朗威爾長大，她視後者爲家鄉。但是戰後“遣送回國”的通用政策把英格麗德，以及她的父母、弟妹們送回了戰後的德國，他們沒有任何固定的謀生計劃，差點餓死在德國；英格麗德還得應付美國士兵的嚴密監視。這本書高度讚揚了厄爾·G·哈里森(Earl G. Harrison)等美國官員，哈里森曾是美國移民和歸化局局長，曾負責監管克里斯特爾城。他明白這種戰後待遇會帶來多餘的、沒必要的殘酷。但是美國對很多從集中營中釋放出來的猶太人持有的強硬反移民態度也用到了克里斯特爾城這些不受歡迎的人身上。

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.

拉塞爾最好的資料來源包括哈里森的日記以及約瑟夫·歐魯克(Joseph O’Rourke)的人事檔案，後者曾是克里斯特爾城的一名軍官，負責處理那裏的日常問題。他們兩人秉持不越俎代庖的原則，可能沒有干涉自己看到的一些嚴重問題，但是這些文件出人意料地誠實，爲不公正的行爲感到痛心。歐魯克寫道，他看到“典型的美國男孩和女孩產生被自己的政府背叛的強烈情緒”。畢竟，在那種十分荒謬的情況下，他們仍在克里斯特爾城的學校裏接受《人權法案》的教育，而他們自己的權利卻被剝奪了。

“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.

《開往克里斯特爾城的火車》以極大的毅力把這些關於可怕悲痛和破壞的敘述綜合在一起，書中還有個非常出人意料的轉折。雖然理論上講，克里斯特爾城的孩子們被拘留的生活是他們最糟糕的經歷，但是其中一些人建立了長久的聯繫。他們後來多次聚會。他們有一個內部通訊，名叫《克里斯特爾城絮語》(Crystal City Chatter)。他們有共同的回憶，他們把這些回憶分享給了拉塞爾。現在，拉塞爾把這些回憶分享給讀者，雖然讀者們希望這些故事不是真的。