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By Rita Giordano, Staff Writer, Philiadelphia InquirerWednesday, May 23, 2001- - Before an audience of U.S. Justice Department officials and prominent local Italian Americans yesterday, a retired Philadelphia schools administrator told a not-so-simple story of a simple South Philadelphia tailor: his mother.
"My mother came to this country when she was 6 months old," said Rocco Gigante, 73, now a resident of Runnemede, Camden County. "All at once, she found she was an enemy alien."
The time was during World War II. His mother's only crime? She was Italian.
For that, the family's possessions - a shortwave radio, his father's beloved cameras, the binoculars Gigante used to view school football games - were confiscated, never to be returned. To make even as minor a sojourn as a trip to Atlantic City, Gigante's mother had to notify her local post office.
"She couldn't go more than 10 miles," he said, emotion rattling his words.
The Justice officials listened and took notes. Gigante's story was one of the reasons they had come to town.
Through painful but necessary memories such as these, history is being rewritten. As mandated by a federal law signed by President Bill Clinton in November, the Justice Department is preparing a report that will document and acknowledge civil-rights violations against Italian Americans by the U.S. government during World War II.
Authorities believe more than 600,000 Italian immigrants were branded as "enemy aliens" during the war. They were made to carry identification cards, were limited in their travel, and had such possessions as radios, cameras and guns taken from them in the name of national security. Fishermen such as Giuseppe Di Maggio, father of baseball's Joe and Dominic, had boats confiscated. Some Italian Americans were even sent to internment camps, such as Fort Missoula, Montana, and detention areas at Ellis Island.
"The irony is they were looking, from behind bars, at the Statue of Liberty," said Joanne Chiedi, deputy executive officer for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.
Chiedi, the daughter of Sicilian immigrants, has been charged with producing the report, which is supposed to be presented to Congress Nov. 7. In addition to research through FBI records and other government documents, Chiedi and her colleagues are enlisting the help of community groups and visiting such places as Oakland, Calif.; Boston; and Philadelphia to gather personal accounts.
Chiedi's credentials fit her assignment. In 1988, she was named deputy administrator of the Justice Department's redress effort that made reparations to thousands of Japanese Americans detained during World War II.
The current bill does not call for monetary reparations, but Chiedi said Congress indicated it wanted the White House to issue a formal apology, and she is encouraging community groups to write to President Bush.
The National Italian American Foundation, which led the call for the legislation signed in November, was the sponsor of yesterday's forum, held at the Center City law office of Pepper Hamilton LLP.
The foundation - and the fight for the law - has strong local ties. Joseph V. Del Raso, a Pepper Hamilton partner, is general counsel for the foundation, and Matthew J. DiDomenico Sr., a Devon real estate agent, is the organization's executive vice president. DiDomenico, a Philadelphia native, noted that his grandfather's radio was confiscated during the war. DiDomenico was one of several leading local Italian Americans expressing their concerns and hopes before the Justice panel.
After the forum, Rocco Gigante's wife, Anna Marie, 70, said she remembered accompanying her grandparents to their local post office in Newark, N.J., when the grandparents registered as enemy aliens.
She was only 10, but she could speak English and they could not. Not until she was an adult, she said, did she learn that her mother's U.S. citizenship was temporarily revoked because she was married to an Italian.
Rocco Gigante said that his mother's father, a South Philadelphia barber, was also declared an enemy alien. At the time, Gigante was in junior high school, making scale models of enemy planes to help in training U.S. pilots.
What was done to people like his family and in-laws still bothers him.
"I'm angry about it. They were hardworking people, and to think they were treated like this," Gigante said.
He said he had a simple request for writers of the final report.
"Just acknowledge that the injustice was done," he said, "so that no other group has to go through it."
[[Rocco and Anna Marie Gigante of Runnemede testify about violations of their relatives' civil rights, as Rocco Gigante holds up his maternal grandfather's identification papers, before U.S. officials at the Pepper Hamilton law offices in Center City. (April Saul/Inquirer)]]
Rita Giordano's e-mail address is rgiordano@phillynews.com
For Italian Americans, memories and pain: inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/05/23/local_news/PITALIAN23.htm
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