Former Akron resident Eberhard Fuhr, 91, remembers hearing the Sunday radio broadcast in Cincinnati about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
He knew the United States would go to war, and he knew he would be busy the next day. The 16-year-old boy had a morning newspaper route, delivering the Cincinnati Enquirer to 165 homes in his Baymiller Street neighborhood before going to school.
Two other dates from that era also live in infamy for Fuhr. One is when the U.S. government took away his parents and little brother. Another is when he and his big brother were arrested. The family was of German heritage.
While the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans in World War II is well-known today, the internment of 30,000 German-Americans is not, Fuhr said. Although many were born in the United States, they still were regarded as “enemy aliens.”
“In 1940, the Alien Registration Act required every alien 14 and older to register no matter the nationality, including employment or school data,” Fuhr said.
“After Pearl Harbor, all aliens of the enemy were re-registered and required to carry an internal passport, surrender all weapons, shortwave radio, cameras. Travel over 50 miles required notification of authorities.”
The second son of Anna and Carl Fuhr was born April 23, 1925, in the German town of Weisdorf. His brother Julius was a year older. The family immigrated to America in November 1928 and settled in Cincinnati, where Fuhr’s father worked as a baker and where youngest son Gerhard was born in 1929.
For a dozen years, it was a typical Ohio childhood for the boys, but then the war erupted and tensions flared.
Fuhr’s parents were taken away in August 1942 while he was working as a counselor at a boys camp in North Carolina. “They didn’t tell me,” Fuhr said. “I got back just right after Labor Day, and then I said ‘Where’s Mom and Pop?’ ”
They were moved to a camp in Crystal City, Texas, that housed 4,000 aliens. Youngest son Gerhard, 12, was forced to go with them or be placed in an orphanage. Older brother Julius was on a football scholarship at Wittenberg, so Fuhr lived all alone in the house.
“I had my paper route, and that kept me in groceries,” he said. “But, of course, I couldn’t pay the mortgage and I couldn’t pay the electric bill and that kind of stuff.”
He recalls forging his mother’s name so he could play varsity football at Woodward High School. When Julius dropped out of college that fall, he returned home and found a job at Burger Brewing. Without guardians, the brothers eked out a living.
Fuhr, 17, a senior, was in distributive education class on March 23, 1943, when Woodward Principal L.D. Peaslee knocked on the door. “Eberhard, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to step in the hallway,” he said.
“When I stepped in the hallway, two FBI guys took me in custody right off the bat,” Fuhr said.
He was allowed to get a coat from a locker before the agents led him outside and handcuffed him. He didn’t have time to say goodbye to his high school girlfriend, Billie, who wore his class ring, or his teammates on the Woodward football team.
Fuhr and his brother Julius, 18, were thrown into the Hamilton County Workhouse, a rusting jail built in the 1860s. As inmates taunted them, the boys were placed in cells with galvanized buckets that served as toilets.
A hearing was held — no lawyers were present — and the brothers were sent to a facility in an old Chicago mansion filled with iron cots. On his 18th birthday, Fuhr requested permission to sign up for the draft, but was refused.
Armed guards kept watch in July 1943 as the brothers traveled by train to the internment camp in Crystal City, where they had a happy reunion with their family.
“That was really terrific,” Fuhr said.
Families lived together in wooden housing units on the fenced, 240-acre camp. Fuhr made the best of the situation during four years of captivity.
“You can be angry for a long time,” he said. “But after a while, you realize ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, but I’m here.’ ”
He worked as an orderly for 10 cents an hour in the obstetrics room, where 258 babies were born. Internees weren’t required to work, but they did so to ease boredom.
“I actually owe a debt of gratitude for my internment, as I met my wife [Barbara Minner] of 56 years there,” Fuhr said. “I also met great people interned from every walk of life, which changed me for the better.”
Life after the war
After the war, the camp emptied. President Harry Truman urged the deportation of “enemy aliens,” and judges agreed. Fuhr and his family were shipped to Ellis Island, N.Y., to be sent to Europe.
However, U.S. Sen. William Langer, R-N.D., convened a hearing in July 1947 and introduced a bill directing the attorney general to cancel the deportation of internees. Fuhr and his family were freed in September 1947.
“I was really ecstatic,” he said. “I could hardly contain myself.”
Only six weeks short of graduation, Fuhr took the finals to get his high school diploma. He graduated with a marketing degree from Ohio University, got married to Barbara and started a family.
He worked for Shell Oil in sales and moved to Akron in the early 1950s, becoming a naturalized citizen in Summit County. Sons John and Robert were born in Akron; daughter Anna was born in Youngstown.
Fuhr left Shell in 1964 and got a master’s degree at Wisconsin. He joined Pioneer Plastics and served as the national sales manager for architectural products. He retired in 1990 at age 65.
Today, he lives in Palatine, Ill, and does public talks about his internment. He would like to see more academic research on the topic.
“In times of peril, a country is going to do everything they think they need to do to protect itself,” he said. “I mean, that’s a given. But the given doesn’t mean you have to intern all the civilians of that warring power.”
Former Japanese internees received $20,000 and a formal apology, but Fuhr said he has never asked for that and “I wouldn’t even want it.”
He does want to raise awareness, though, and for those who think that history cannot repeat, he has a warning.
“I want the people to know what did happen, and that it can happen again unless certain things are changed,” he said. “It can happen again because the laws still exist.”
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of the book Lost Akron from The History Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.