Wed Jul 6, 12:00 PM - Wed Jul 6, 12:30 PM
St. David's Episcopal Church Austin, Texas
301 E 8th St, Austin, TX 78701
Community: North Austin
Description
Join us and KUT's Jennifer Stayton for a 30-minute interview with Jan Jarboe Russell about her book, "The Train to Crystal City." Books are available for purchase in Holy Grounds and there will be a book signing directly following the interview. About
Event Details
Join us and KUT's Jennifer Stayton for a 30-minute interview with Jan Jarboe Russell about her book, "The Train to Crystal City."
Books are available for purchase in Holy Grounds and there will be a book signing directly following the interview.
About the Book:
The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families - many US citizens - were incarcerated. From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered more than 10,000 civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas, a small desert town at the southern tip of Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The only family internment camp during World War II, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called "quiet passage." During the course of the war, hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City, including their American-born children, were exchanged for other more important Americans - diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries - behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. Focusing her story on two American-born teenage girls who were interned, author Jan Jarboe Russell uncovers the details of their years spent in the camp; the struggles of their fathers; their families; subsequent journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan; and their years-long attempt to survive and return to the United States, transformed from incarcerated enemies to American loyalists.
About the Author:
Jan Jarboe Russell was born in Beaumont, Texas and grew up in small towns in the Piney Woods of East Texas. Her father was a minister of music in numerous Southern Baptist churches and later had a second career as a social worker. Her mother was an elementary school teacher. Books and music were constants in her household.
She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. In 1973 became a political reporter at The San Antonio Light. In 1
Books are available for purchase in Holy Grounds and there will be a book signing directly following the interview.
About the Book:
The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families - many US citizens - were incarcerated. From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered more than 10,000 civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas, a small desert town at the southern tip of Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German, Italian immigrants and their American-born children. The only family internment camp during World War II, Crystal City was the center of a government prisoner exchange program called "quiet passage." During the course of the war, hundreds of prisoners in Crystal City, including their American-born children, were exchanged for other more important Americans - diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries - behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany. Focusing her story on two American-born teenage girls who were interned, author Jan Jarboe Russell uncovers the details of their years spent in the camp; the struggles of their fathers; their families; subsequent journeys to war-devastated Germany and Japan; and their years-long attempt to survive and return to the United States, transformed from incarcerated enemies to American loyalists.
About the Author:
Jan Jarboe Russell was born in Beaumont, Texas and grew up in small towns in the Piney Woods of East Texas. Her father was a minister of music in numerous Southern Baptist churches and later had a second career as a social worker. Her mother was an elementary school teacher. Books and music were constants in her household.
She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. In 1973 became a political reporter at The San Antonio Light. In 1