Jan Jarboe Russell > Quotes

“The history of America is the history of overcoming hardships and that was never more true than during World War II.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“Shikata ga nai.” The phrase was as familiar to Sumi as Nobu’s face and meant: “It cannot be helped.” Teenagers”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“answer. She told him that she agreed with him and said, “A democracy which does not serve all its people could not long survive.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“His conclusion, preserved for posterity, was that the experiment of interning families of suspected nationalities—German, Japanese, Italians, and others—was a failure. Nonetheless,”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“Their shared loss went unsaid, but never unremembered. Sendai,”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“SAU&G line originated in 1909 in Crystal City and”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“The key was to live moment to moment, not in the past nor in the future. I”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“At the time I was at the point that I could have remembered all the terrible things that happened,” recalled Irene in an interview. “Or I could get on with rebuilding my life. I don’t think it would have been possible to do the two simultaneously.” Within”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“The point, Nobu told Sumi, was to find some disciplined way to endure suffering without losing one’s sense of identity, dignity, and purpose.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“I began to tell myself that if I’d survived Bergen-Belsen, I could survive anything,” said Irene. “I tried to focus not on what I’d lost, but what I had to gain. It was a struggle.” In”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“Through official news agencies, Japanese officials warned the population to avoid “unpleasant confrontations” and to act prudently, decorously, and with cooperation, “thereby displaying the true essence of the Yamato race.” The”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“In the challenging desert terrain, internees raised livestock and produced enough vegetables to feed the entire camp. On-site”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“The second phrase was gaman, which means to find some physical practice such as meditation, calligraphy, or the making of art that would help one persevere in the face of what seemed unbearable.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“The paradox was that Roosevelt asked loyalty of a disenfranchised group of people—people like Ernie, who’d been stripped of their rights as Americans.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“the additional bills. On July 20, 1944, Harrison resigned in protest. In a story in the New York Times, Roosevelt praised Harrison for his reform of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, “notwithstanding the wartime additions to the work of the service, such as the civilian internment program.” The Washington Post said in an editorial on July 24, “Hats off today to Harrison, who resigned that position in protest of our immigration laws, which he compares to the racial laws of Nazi Germany.” The “Jewish question” was now impossible for Roosevelt to ignore. At the beginning of the war, Roosevelt concluded that America could save the Jews of Europe by quickly defeating Hitler and his troops. But he worried about anti-Semitism in America and finally took on the issue directly. In speeches during 1943, Roosevelt said that any American who condoned anti-Semitism was “playing Hitler’s game.” However, immigration restrictions stayed in place.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“While internees had “first accepted with philosophical understanding the decision of their government,” Ickes told Roosevelt that these imprisoned Americans, charged with no crimes, were now bitter. “I do not think that we can disregard the unnecessary creation of a hostile group right in our own territory.” As”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“June 28, 1940, Congress passed the Alien Registration Act, and Biddle decided to persuade Harrison, whom he knew from legal ties in Philadelphia, into public service. The act made it mandatory, for the first time in American history, for every alien living in the United States to register and be fingerprinted.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“As they bore witness to their experiences behind barbed wire in Crystal City and to their brutal transport into war in Germany and Japan, the former internees did not ask why they were made to suffer but how could suffering be endured. The”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“To undo mistakes is always harder than to create them originally, but we seldom have foresight,” Eleanor told her husband. “Therefore, we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes.” In”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“Even as a child, I understood my family was a casualty of war. It could not be helped.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“She reminded Sumi of the Japanese custom of gaman. Nobu spoke the ancient word as a charge to her daughter: to have gaman was to endure the unbearable with dignity and forbearance.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“The Quakers were the only group in America that consistently opposed internment and offered protection for internees.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“The motto of Groton—cui servire est regnare, “to serve is to rule”—was part of his and Roosevelt’s DNA. On”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“No one knew that better O’Rourke, Harrison, and others who worked in the camp and whose persistence and sense of fair play somewhat mitigated the injustice—except of course to the internees themselves, whose lives were torn asunder.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“Both of our parents lived their lives practicing gaman—patience and resilience,” said Nobusuke, the second-born son. “They never wasted anything—not food, time, or anger. Instead, they waited for things to work out.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“The only task he concentrated on, day by day, was keeping himself and his family alive. He knew the Nazis’ goal: extermination. The only dignity he had left was in his ability to resist. On”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“Always along the way we have been able to meet the challenge of unfamiliar situations with confidence and the wise and patient guidance of parents and teachers,”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“No matter how exasperated the circumstances become, officers must bear in mind they are representatives of our government and must conduct themselves in a worthy manner. To become impatient, sarcastic, hostile or personal in remarks is an admission of weakness and defeat and, needless to say, should never occur.” In”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“Enemies are people whose stories you haven’t yet heard and whose faces you haven’t yet seen. —Irene Hasenberg Butter, Holocaust survivor, during an interview at her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 13, 2013”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II

“Mathias bore the immigrant’s burden. He had one foot on one side of the ocean in Germany and the other in America, which made him an outsider in both places.”
― Jan Jarboe Russell, The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II