The Story of Erich Braemer

One of the people Karl met on the train to Ft. Lincoln was a man from Seattle named Erich Braemer. Erich, as were all of the men on the train, was still in shock from his sudden arrest by the F.B.I. "I even have a son in the Army Air Corps," he exclaimed. As it turned out, Erich was not kept at Ft. Lincoln very long. After he arrived back home, he sent some of his new friends several articles from the SEATTLE TIMES and other area newspapers. The recurring theme of the articles was "we are proud of the Braemers". Erich's son, Fred, was the bombardier on the lead airplane, piloted by Jimmy Doolittle himself, on the incredible and dangerous raid over Tokyo during April of 1942.

Karl is sent to Ft. Lincoln, Bismarck, ND

Karl was kept in the Spokane County Jail until a few days before Christmas, 1941, when he was taken by train to Ft. Lincoln in North Dakota. The train to Ft. Lincoln had picked up men from all over the West. Riding on a train with most of the windows barred or blacked out and a machine gun mounted at the rear of the car, was an eerie experience for Karl. However, on the trip, he met several men who would become good friends and a source of comfort during the long days ahead.

Read more about the Vogt family in: THE MISPLACED AMERICAN, published by 1stBooks Library (now AuthorHouse) 2003

A short synopsis of the internment of ethnic Germans during and after World War II

On December 9, 1941 Karl Vogt, a German national residing in the U.S., was abruptly taken from his home near Plaza, Washington by agents of the F.B.I. and eventually sent to internment camps located in North Dakota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and finally Montana. For nearly two years he was not told what the "evidence" was against him and he was never told who his accusers were. Left behind on the family farm, and also subjected to harassment by the United States government, were his wife, Elsie, and his two young children, all American born citizens.
Karl had immigrated to the U.S. in 1923, and although he was not yet a citizen at the time of his arrest, he had begun the process toward citizenship and considered himself an American.

Now we know that Karl, my dad, was joined in those internment camps by at least 11,000 other ethnic Germans, most of them immigrants, like Karl. As it turned out, Karl was one of the lucky ones. He was incarcerated for two years, while many others were held for a much longer period, some for as long as three years after the war. A majority of those held in internment camps lost all of their material possessions. At least 2,000 people, including American-born children, were deported into war-ravaged Germany to be exchanged Americans held there.

An additional 4,000 of Karl's fellow internees were German residents of Latin America, who were forcibly brought to the U.S. and destined to become a part of the exchange program. Incredibly, a number of these Latin Americans were Jews who had fled Germany years earlier.