Hidden Lives: War, Internment and Australia's Italians

by Mia Spizzica

Overview

A dark chapter in Australia's wartime history has often been minimised or overlooked in mainstream history books. This collection of five scholarly essays, and 15 testimonials, offers new insights into the deeply personal experiences of Italian Australians whose families experienced World War II on the home front. It is the first such compilation by authors originating from northern, central, and southern Italian provinces, and from five Australian States. Although each story is unique, the authors share many Italian cultural values, language, history, and a profound sense of Italianness, as well as a connection to their Australian selves. These essays and narratives consider the often-unintended negative consequences of war, describing our commonalities through their personal struggles and a fundamental human resilience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781925231496
Publisher:	Digital Publishing Centre
Publication date:	03/27/2018
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Tearing Apart the Cardillo Family 13

The Truth Will Set You Free 37

A Teenage Girl’s Memories of Wartime in Queensland 53

Orazio’s Story 61

Surveillance, Internment and Dislocation 69

“The Hard Life at Tatura One Day Will End” 89

Claudia’s Story 115

There Are So Many Questions I Wish I Had Asked… 129

A Kafkaesque Experience 147

The Life and Death of Raffaele Musitano 163

Memories of Port Pirie and the War 179

With a Suitcase and a Mandolin 191

Beyond the Barbed Wire 203

Within Our Limitations 215

Like a Dream So Long Ago 235

“Hey Dago!” 251

“We were just ordinary blokes!” 259

Tears and Sadness 295

Childhood Recollections of Tatura Camp 3A 305

Shattered Dreams 313

Selected Further Readings 323

Appendix 1: Australia Location Maps 334

Appendix 2: Map of Italy 336

Appendix 3: Loveday Camp 337

Appendix 4: Cowra Camp 339

Appendix 5: Hay Camp 340

Appendix 6: Tatura Camp 341

About the Contributors 342

Editorial Reviews

Hidden Lives is a valuable addition to Italian Diaspora history, joining Una Storia Segreta (USA) and Enemies Within (Canada) to tell the stories of those immigrants who experienced detention during World War Two as enemy aliens in these allied nations. The combination of emotionally charged personal narratives and well-researched scholarly essays create new history, one that fills a long neglected void in Italian Diaspora Studies, enabling us all to know now what few knew, and even fewer talked about, then.

– Fred Gardaphe, Distinguished Professor of Italian/American Studies

Queens College, City University of New York

Hidden Lives offers new, accessible insights on a significant period in Australia's history. But beyond mere historical account, it urges the reader to consider these events in light of modern Australia's ongoing debates about multiculturalism, refugees, defence, and political leadership.

– Susan Carland, Director, Bachelor of Global Studies, Monash University

Not many of those Italians, Germans and Japanese that suffered unjustly during that terrible period of world history are amongst us today, but their stories and the memory of those events need to be told and retold. These stories need to be told because history needs to be set right; it needs to be told to do justice to those that were caught in the vortex of war and became victims of ‘nationalistic’ hysteria; their stories need to be told in the hope that we will not repeat these atrocities to new events and to other communities presently or in the future.

– Joseph A Caputo OAM (JP), Hon. President, Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia

The first-hand testimonies will not fail to move all who read Spizzica’s volume,

which reveals the extent of the travesty of wartime policies.

– Catherine Dewhirst, University of Southern Queensland

From the Publisher