The number of internees from Seattle is not exactly known, but by the end of 1918 was estimated to be several hundred, according to The Seattle Times. Some 4,000 Germans and German-Americans were interned during the war along with another 1,000 POWs, many of them German captured sailors. Simply being German - an “enemy alien” - or sympathizing with Germany was enough to justify arrest. Legitimate concerns quickly merged with ethnic prejudice and public hysteria to crack down not only on saboteurs, spies and German sympathizers, but anyone who voiced opposition to the war effort.Īs a result, the Act allowed the arrest of people who opposed the war and military draft and recruitment, who espoused socialist views or who were members of the militant Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), a group considered by authorities to be inherently anti-American. Lumber for the war effort was harvested and milled here for the national defense and sent to allies.Įarly revisions to the Espionage Act expanded its reach to include anyone thought to undermine the American war effort. Points around the Salish Sea bristled with forts and gun emplacements, like Fort Worden near Port Townsend, to protect shipping. involvement in the war, the Act protected important installations like the Naval shipyard in Bremerton, essential to the war effort along with Puget Sound’s private shipbuilders. a tool to use against agents and spies who might work across the border. Washington state formed a kind of soft underbelly to British Columbia, which was already at war with Germany. The docks and shipyards were stocked with socialists, trade unionists and immigrant workers suspected of wanting to monkey-wrench the capitalist supply chain. West Coast ports and shipping were potential targets for sabotage. The Pacific Northwest was considered to be of strategic importance at the time. Those shipments were intended for Vladivostok in Russia, then an ally of Britain and France against Germany. In May 1915, for example, a massive explosion off Seattle’s Harbor Island and a railcar fire in Tacoma were widely regarded as acts of German sabotage to prevent supplies and war materiel from being shipped to Germany’s enemies. The Act was partly a response to a prewar terror campaign by the German government, which was conducting a shadow war on American soil as early as two years before the U.S. And a number of those occurred in the Pacific Northwest during the early days of its enactment. What we do know for certain is that more questionable cases involving the old Espionage Act resulted in convictions. Whether his actions merit punishment will ultimately be up to a jury. Yet the indictment unsealed by Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith earlier this week effectively paints the former president as a security risk. Many Trump supporters contend that the Act is being employed in this case for a political hit job. In 1918, the Act was amended to include sedition, which, into the 1920s, was used to justify political harassment, book banning and disloyalty, among others. It was a time when alarm over immigrants and “enemy aliens” and acts of terrorism targeting the homeland was at a fever pitch. The Act was passed into law in 1917 just after the U.S.
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