When Appalachian Resorts Became Prisons for Axis Diplomats



Although the war had been going on for years, the US entered World War II rather suddenly when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The secrecy of the attack left Axis ambassadors, consular officials, and their families behind enemy lines in America. The government had to make a quick decision about what to do with the Japanese diplomats, as well as those from Germany and Italy.

Newspapers’ vitriolic headlines, editorials, and racist caricatures of buck-toothed Japanese fanned the flames of animosity, especially against the two most reviled men in America: Ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura and Special Envoy Saburō Kurusu, who had been sitting in Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s office as the bombs rained down on Hawaii. They were two among hundreds of Axis diplomats living and working in the nation’s capital. Fearful of envoys’ ongoing communications with home, the Roosevelt administration made a controversial decision to send these foreign nationals and their families to remote luxury hotels. The primary goal of this plan was reciprocity—the hope that good treatment of enemy diplomats here would engender the same for American counterparts trapped overseas. (It did not.)

This roundup, detention and eventual repatriation of more than a thousand Axis diplomats and dependents, little remembered today, was a cause célèbre that rocked the nation and enraged many Americans. “May I ask why our government deems it necessary to pamper the delegation of Yellow Rats by housing them at one of the country’s finest winter resorts?” fumed one Washington state resident to Senator Monrad Wallgren. A railroad executive from New York wrote to Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles: “As a patriotic American for many generations, [wouldn’t] any old wooden shack be good enough? Why coddle German and Jap prisoners who are all bitter enemies of our country, and who would ruin us if they had half a chance?”

The diplomats were assigned to three luxury hotels: the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia, the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, and the Greenbriar in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The Greenbriar was the most successful of the diplomatic internments due to the attitude and leadership of its management. The locals hated having the enemy among them, the diplomats complained about the accommodations, and the employees were vilified from both sides. Yet they stood up and offered the utmost in service because the government had decreed that's how it should be. Could the Greenbriar's wartime professionalism have been a factor in it later becoming a congressional fallout shelter? At any rate, read how the staff at the Greenbriar learned to be diplomats themselves as they swallowed their pride and did their patriotic duty at Smithsonian.


Login to comment.




Email This Post to a Friend
"When Appalachian Resorts Became Prisons for Axis Diplomats"

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More