Listen: GERMANS/RIPPLEY...internment during WWII
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It's well-known and shameful, that the United States kept people of Japanese descent in prison camps during World War Two. A growing number of scholars say there were also internment camps for up to a few thousand Germans. Scholars, like Saint Olaf professor La Vern Rippley, say there were at least fifty camps across the United States -- the closest to Minnesota in Fort Lincoln, North Dakota and Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. As of June 30, 1945, there were supposedly 21-hundred Germans in them. Professor Rippley says the reason these facts are not well-known is wrapped-up in the Unites States' attitudes about its Germans, one of the biggest ethnic groups in the country and the most-populous in Minnesota.

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