A WWII German-American Internee Postal Card Sent from Camp McCoy

The 1-cent postal card shown in Figure 1 was first issued in 1914 and was used for years (Scott UX27). It is very common, and dealers will sell you one for a buck or two. What is unusual about this item is that one of the earliest German-American internees of World War II mailed it from Camp McCoy in west central Wisconsin. That makes for a very interesting story. On top of that, he was probably a stamp collector. 

Figure 1- Address side of postal card sent by Alfred Bruno Max Smith from Camp McCoy April 13, 1942. Source: Author’s collection.

The internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans under orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt is well known. Less understood is that at least 11,000 persons of German ancestry and about 1,900 of Italian descent were also interned. Even fewer people probably know that Camp McCoy was an internment camp before it was converted into a prisoner-of-war facility in 1943.

Camp McCoy’s role as a concentration camp started in January 1942, and it would eventually hold about 170 Japanese and 120 German and Italian Americans thought to be dangerous “enemy aliens.” Early on, most of the internees came from Honolulu and the surrounding area. One of those individuals was Alfred Bruno Max Smith, a U.S. citizen of German descent. He arrived at Camp McCoy on March 9, 1942, and about a month later, sent the postal card shown in Figures 1 to a friend.

Smith was born in Germany as “Alfred Schmidt” in 1893 and arrived in New York City in 1923. He moved to the Chicago area in the late 1920s and made his way even further west to Honolulu in 1935. He became a naturalized citizen in 1940, which is when he changed his last name from “Schmidt” to “Smith.” He owned and operated Hawaiian Roofing and Paint Company, and from all indications, he was a respected member of the community.

On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Smith and his wife, Auguste Suzanne, were arrested. At his hearing, five prominent community members vouched for Smith’s loyalty, but the military authorities forced him to sign a paper saying that he was an alien enemy. His wife’s hearing lasted a mere five minutes after which Smith and her were separated and detained. Prior to arriving at Camp McCoy, Smith was held on Sand Island at the entrance of Honolulu Harbor and in San Francisco.

Smith actively worked for his release. He teamed up with 12 other German-American internees from Hawaii who “felt that the War Department had committed a grave injustice by detaining them – each of these men had become naturalized citizens, and each believed their rights as citizens had been compromised.” (That quote is taken from a fascinating postmortem titled Historic Context for the WWII Internment and Prisoner-of-War (POW) Compound at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin published by the U.S. Army in December 2023.) The day after he arrived at Camp McCoy, Smith, together with his 12 colleagues, penned a letter to Representative Samuel W. King, the Congressional delegate from Hawaii. Smith wrote that “just as another American citizen,” he demanded to know where his wife was and how long his detention would last.

Smith would learn that his wife remained on Sand Island, but he would not get any other relief or answers. However, in May 1942, he would be transferred back to Sand Island. The military feared that the courts would order his release because he had never been brought before a judge to decide if his detention was legal. Such legal niceties would not be an obstacle to holding him in Hawaii since the territory was under martial law.

Smith was finally released on July 31, 1943, after being imprisoned for 19 months and 23 days, according to the March 12, 1946, Honolulu Star-Bulletin. That same news story reported that Smith filed a $50,000 lawsuit against the military officers who detained him arguing he “suffered great distress, humiliation, shame and agony” and incurred financial losses because he was unable to run his roofing business. In his lawsuit he pointed out that he had never been “brought before any court or tribunal or charged with any offense.”

I have not been able to figure out the disposition of Smith’s lawsuit, but it is likely he did not prevail. In a similar lawsuit brought by Smith’s fellow Camp McCoy internee Dr. Hans Zimmerman (but for more than $700,000), the charges were dropped against two of the defendants and a jury exonerated the other. Zimmerman also lost his appeal.

Other than filing a lawsuit against Army generals, Smith’s life returned to normal after the war. He continued to live in Honolulu, run his roofing and painting company, and take the occasional trip back to the mainland. (It doesn’t appear he ever returned to Wisconsin, preferring instead to stay on the West Coast.) Smith would pass away in California in 1990 at age 97.

As for the postal card, several things to note:

• Smith made it a point in the return address block to note that he was a “U.S. Citizen.” That line appears on other letters and postal cards he sent as Louis Fiset documents in his article, “World War II Internment of a German-American Couple in Hawaii” in the June 2012 issue of The American Philatelist.

• The postal card was censored, which was par for the course for mail from internment and POW camps.

• In his message to “Old Cap” Hills (Figure 2), Smith confirms the date he was detained and professes his innocence. His reference to “13 citizens” must be the group that pushed for information on their detention and release.

• In his sign off, Smith writes his Honolulu return address – 2821 Park Street – perhaps in the hope that he would be back there soon?

• And what about Smith writing, “Where can I find LINPRINT PUBLISHERS.” Linprint was a well-known producer of first day cover cachets and even stamp albums. Could he have been a stamp collector?

Figure 2 – Message side of Smith’s postal card.

He very likely was since “Old Cap” Hills was Frank K. Hills of Gary, Indiana. Hills was known in philatelic, bowling, and baseball circles as “Old Cap.” Born in Pennsylvania in 1882, “Old Cap” started to collect stamps in the early 1900s, and in the mid-1920s, he was editor of the Weekly Philatelic Gossip that had a national circulation. He even had a Wisconsin connection: He lived in Racine in the early 1930s where he managed Arcade Bowling Alleys. Perhaps that is where Smith and he met. Later in life, “Old Cap” managed Kekionga Stamp Company in Fort Wayne before “closing his album” for the last time in 1954.

Indeed, this is a very common postal card, but with a fascinating backstory.