Journal Article

Good Citizens or Nazi Spies?

Rakita, Eszter

2025

Overview

The United States entered the Second World War following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. During the war, Japanese Americans faced persecution and even imprisonment due to their national heritage. The primary objective of this paper is to highlight that it was not only U.S. citizens of Japanese or German descent, but also Hungarian Americans, who could become targets of American authorities, albeit not to the same severe extent. The wartime atmosphere was so tense that the FBI responded to even the slightest rumors, launching investigations against law-abiding citizens who had no intention of undermining the American war effort. This paper examines the case of one Hungarian immigrant family—the Gondos family—as an illustrative example of how U.S. wartime intelligence targeted American citizens of “enemy alien” descent based solely on unsubstantiated rumors. Analyzing this case offers valuable insight into the experiences of wartime minorities in the United States. Therefore, the findings contribute to the historiography of twentieth-century American history, Hungarian migration history, and the academic field of American Studies.

• Publisher: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
• Subject: 20th century / Academic departments / American history / Asian Americans / Autobiographies / Case studies / Citizens / Correspondence / Criminal investigations / Cultural heritage / Cultural studies / denaturalization / Descent / discrimination / Enemy aliens / Families & family life / fifth column / Foreign born citizens / Gossip / Historiography / Hungarian-Americans / immigrant / Immigrants / Imprisonment / Intelligence / investigation / Japanese Americans / Law enforcement / Migration / Minority groups / Nazi era / Noncitizens / Oppression / Pearl Harbor Attack-1941 / Personal archives / Politics / Rumors / Spies / Teachers / Tense / War / World War I / World War II