In 1942, the FBI began a program to produce and augment fear, distrust and anxiety in Americans of Italian heritage by searching their apartments at night, arresting them without warrants in daytime, keeping them in custody for questioning and examining the parents of sons who were U.S. Army Air Corps officers.

I was witness to such an action on midnight in 1942 at 52 Maple Street in Yonkers. The incident occurred in a six-family cold water tenement, occupied by approximately five Italian families and one American family. Two FBI agents knocked on our apartment door. My mother, a naturalized citizen, said, "What do you want?"

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