"Still Potentially Dangerous in Some Quarters"

Abstract

The charges that led Gen. John L. DeWitt to deport Sylvester Andriano from the Western Defense Region in 1942 were bogus, the product of an anti-Catholic campaign by Communist Party activists, Masonic anti-Catholics in the Italian community, and recent Italian anti-Fascist exiles (fuorusciti). This wartime abuse of civil rights in the name of national security grew from a discourse of demonizing the religious, not solely the racial and ethnic, Other. The article makes several arguments about ethnicity and religion on the Pacific Coast: Faith-based political activism played a significant role in the region's urban political culture, as did cultural politics between Catholics and anti-Catholics. Irish American Catholic clergy welcomed, rather than excluded, Italian American laymen into the Church's highest councils in San Francisco,where the Irish had long dominated civic life. However, Italian Americans were bitterly divided between devout Catholics and disaffected anti-clericals.