Doris Berg Nye

Besides this website, I write a column for the Hawaii Reporter. (www.HawaiiReporter.com)

Doris Berg Nye is one of the HawaiiReporter readers who shared her story with me. Doris was eleven years old the day her father, mother, and her older sister Eleanor were picked up by the FBI and brought to the U.S. Immigration Station at Fort Armstrong, leaving her and younger sister, age nine, abandoned at home.

For the last 20 years Doris has been on a crusade to tell her story and the stories of European U.S. citizens who were interned. In April 1993, Doris was successful in having Senator Dan Inouye submit a personal bill in the Senate regarding her mother’s internment. This bill (HR 1425) asked that Mrs. Berg “should receive the same amount of compensation that eligible internees of Japanese descent are awarded under Section 105 of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.” The bill was submitted to the Immigration Subcommittee, however it was not passed.

To support her argument, Doris submitted a twenty-four page written testimony. I am posting an excerpt of her first-person accounts. Please keep in mind, this is written from the perspective of a twelve year-old child’s memory. If you would like to read the complete testimony, or would like to correspond with Doris, please contact her at arndoris@hawaii.rr.com.

Bertha Berg (Doris’s mother) was born on Kauai in 1897. Her parents worked the Kauai Sugar Plantation. In 1914 Bertha married a German alien, and the couple had a daughter, Eleanor, who was born on Kauai. However, that marriage ended in divorce.

Soon after the divorce, Bertha went to Germany where she met and married Fred Berg (Doris’s father) in 1928. The following year, when Bertha became pregnant, she convinced her husband to move to Hawaii because she wanted her child to be born in the United States; the couple moved and Doris was born at home in Kaimuki on January 6,1930. Her younger sister was born two and a half years later.

In 1930 a Federal law was passed stating that a female U.S. citizen did not automatically lose her citizenship when she married a foreign citizen. So, Bertha applied for her U.S. citizenship and was granted full restoration in July 1930.

Doris’s father, Fred Berg was born in Cologne, Germany 1902 and graduated from the University of Cologne in Commercial Science and Economics, and post graduate studies at the Universities of Munich and Nuremberg. In 1940 he became a U.S. citizen, 11 years after arriving in Hawaii. Thus, both her parents were citizens on December 7, 1941.

On that Sunday morning, December 7th, Doris was in her parents’ bedroom. Her dad was reading the Sunday comics to her when a loud explosion rocked the house. Doris ran to the window. She writes, “Pearl Harbor was partially hidden under a huge ominous dense cloud of black smoke. Dad said that maybe one of the many oil storage tanks . . . had caught fire. I dashed down stairs to where my Mom was fixing breakfast and turned on the radio. A harried announcer was declaring: ‘This is the real McCoy! The Japs have attacked.’ ‘Get ready to escape to the hills.’ . . . Mom started packing food and blankets. Oh boy, I thought, we’ll be camping out! . . . We went to bed early. . . The next morning my father went to work at Sears.”

Fred and Bertha Berg ran a private nursing home in Honolulu. Due to the attack, many of their patients’ families picked up relatives and brought them home. Doris remembers two men in suits approaching the home. “I thought that they were members of a resident’s family. They asked to see my Mom and I said for them to wait, that I would get her. I dashed up the back stairs to the kitchen, to my disbelief, the men raced right behind me. I found Mom. They started talking. She asked if she could put on some lipstick, I was horrified when they followed her right into the bathroom… I could see that one had a revolver. When they emerged, she said to me, ‘Doris, these men want to ask me some questions. Take care of your sister and the patients and I will be right back.’ The hours went by and she did not return. . . .Dad had not returned [from work] either. I knew something horrible had happened to them.”

Doris was afraid that her parents had been murdered. “We were left alone. It was war and we were expecting a 2nd attack!”

About a week later, Doris’s older sister Eleanor returned from Molokai where she had been visiting Aunt Marie, her mother’s sister. [Travel among the islands was temporarily suspended after the attack.] Doris “was so relieved to have her back.” But her relief was short-lived. On December 16, 1941, Eleanor Berg was picked up by the FBI. When they came to pick her up, Eleanor was in the third-floor bedroom sorting clothes. Doris tried to hide her sister, shoving her into the attic, but the men were right behind her. “I screamed: ‘Elle, they are going to kill you too!’ I beat, scratched, bit them ferociously as they led her across the lawn and into the car.”

A few hours later, Eleanor telephoned the Berg home. When Eleanor asked what they would do, Doris said she planned to take her sister and herself to Molokai to stay with Aunt Marie.

Doris contacted her Aunt Marie, however her aunt never responded. So Doris called her Aunt Anna, another of her mother’s sisters who lived in Honolulu.

“On December 21, 1941, my younger sister and I went to live with my Aunt Anna. She was not too happy about it. We were not allowed to say who we were or to speak to any of the neighbors. My aunt had told everyone that we were war refugees. I couldn’t blame her, for, of course, she and her family were U.S. citizens of German descent, under surveillance and afraid for their own safety. . . One day my aunt told me, somewhat angrily, that she had received a note from her sister, my Aunt Marie on Molokai. It seemed to me that she had asked her sister to take us in. In her letter, my Aunt Marie explained that she could not possibly take us in. That she did not take in any ‘outsiders’. . .

“One day in January, a woman came to talk to my Aunt Anna. The woman and my aunt were at the far end of the living room speaking in very low voices. . . After the woman quietly left, my aunt gave me a letter. It was written to both my younger sister and me. I will never forget its smell of tobacco. It was a letter written from my Mom. It was written in pencil on the back of a laundry slip and it appeared as if it had been folded very small and hidden in a pack of the woman’s cigarettes in order to be snuck out. . . I don’t remember specifically what was written, however, it was with a sense of relief to know that she was alright. We learned, whether from my Aunt or the letter, that Mom was being held at the Fort Armstrong Immigration Station.”

Doris coerced her oldest cousin to drive her and her younger sister to the Immigration Station to visit their mother. “I ran in. I spoke to two women behind of a desk, next to a sign reading ‘No trespassing’ at the entrance of a long corridor. I explained that my Mom and sister were possibly there, (I didn’t mention the letter—by this time I had learned, the less said, the better) and if we could visit with them, or if they could tell my Mom that we were there. They both professed ignorance, knowing nothing.”


It wasn’t until April, 1942, four months after Mrs. Berg had been picked, that Doris and her sister were able to visit their mother at Sand Island. She recalls, “There was a Navy launch waiting for passengers at dockside. On the launch, all of the relatives, including some children, avoided looking at each other. Many, including myself, looked down, perhaps from shame or fear. . . We landed at the small wharf at Sand Island. Then had to walk the mile (it seemed) over the white coral to the concentration camp, as we called it. As we got closer, I heard… the cries of the women in the camp! They had their arms outstretched to their loved ones who they had not seen, since the day they were picked up. . . What a joyful reunion. We walked thru a baffled entry (to keep light from showing at night-‘black out’ was still strictly enforced throughout Hawaii) into a large mess hall barracks with darkened windows. There I ate the most delicious cookies and fudge that I had ever tasted… she introduced us to some of the other detainees… Our visit ended too soon, then we had to leave, back over the coral, we waved and waved until we could not see our mother or the others anymore. We just visited with Mom, Dad, of course, was not there.”[Fred Berg been shipped aboard the U.S. Army transport Grant, to San Francisco and then via train to Camp McCoy in Sparta, Wisconsin.]

Doris’ sister Eleanor was released in April of 1942, and took over the care of her two younger sisters. “Elle was able to find a furnished two bedroom house about a half mile walk away from school and found a job near the Army and Navy YMCA at an open sided hamburger stand “Swanky Frankie.” Frequently, I would take the bus. . .to where she worked. She would sneak me hamburgers for lunch and more to take home for dinner.” To supplement their family income, Eleanor took in two women and their four children as boarders in their rented apartment and Doris, then a seventh grader at Aliiolani school, “worked at a little ice-cream parlor, across the street from the beach.”

By the time Fred Berg was returned to Hawaii from Camp McCoy his wife had been transferred to Camp Honouliuli in the Waianae plains and Fred was reunited with her there. Within a few weeks after her father’s return, Doris and her sister were allowed to spend weekends at the camp.

“. . . We had not seen him [their father] since the morning of December 8, 1941. Their home, their tent, had a coral floor that Mom had swept so that all of the bigger stones were brushed aside and only the smaller coral pieces like sand were left . . . All tents were kept meticulous. . . To cut the glare from the white coral and to make the gravel in front of their tent a little more attractive. . . Mom planted clumps of grass in front of their tent. He [her father] also built a little bench out of pieces of discarded lumber for them to sit on in the evening. . . There were so many happy moments filled with laughter when we were with them. Like trimming the grass together with an old scissor. Or gorging on delicious fudge that a certain German lady made for us when she knew that we would be spending the week-end.

Doris recalls spending her 13th birthday at Camp Honouliuli. “The Chef (another U.S. citizen of German ethnicity) for the German side of the Camp had been the Head Chef of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, when he was arrested. (It was feared that he might poison the officers who used the Royal for rest and recuperation. The whole hotel had been requisitioned for military officers. More likely another minor chef wanted his position). Emich, as I knew him, baked an elaborate birthday cake for me. Everyone sang Happy Birthday.”

Doris’s parents lived at Camp Honouliuli until their release on parole: Bertha Berg in June 1943, Fred Berg in August 1943.

After Doris’s parents were released on parole, she recalls, “We left our Waikiki home and moved into one of Mom and Dad’s homes near Diamond Head. . . My parents’ business prospered. I went on to attend the U of Hawaii where I was elected Pineapple Bowl Queen in 1949, …and was selected by Governor Steinback to represent Hawaii at President Truman’s Inauguration in Washington D.C. Both my younger sister and I. . . went on to obtain degrees from the University of California Los Angeles.”

In total, Eleanor Berg was detained for four and a half months, Bertha Berg for eighteen months, and Fred Berg for twenty months.

It should be noted that Eleanor Berg, like Gertrude Erika Schroeder, lived in Germany during the late 1930’s. In fact, her trip was reported in the Honolulu Advertiser on September 15, 1939. The article reads: “Miss Eleanor Berg of Honolulu is enjoying her stay in Aachen, Germany and thus far the war has not reached this city on the Belgian-Holland border, she told her mother, Mrs. Fredrick Berg of 2888 Liliha Street in a radiophone conversation yesterday.

“The call was put through by way of New York and Rome and within half an hour, Mrs. Berg talked with her daughter for three minutes and reported that the reception was as clear as a local telephone call. It was the first radiophone call between Honolulu and Germany since the outbreak of war.

“Aachen is o the famous Siegfried line of defense.

“I told my daughter to leave for Holland at once if there was any danger, but she assured me that there was no reason to leave. Mrs. Berg said, ‘Aachen is 143 miles from the scene of heavy fighting between French and German troops. My daughter plans to remain in Aachen for some time.’

“Miss Berg spent a year in Berlin studying secretarial work and languages and recently left for Aachen for an indefinite visit.”

If you would like to contact Doris Berg Nye about the story of her family, her email address is arndoris@hawaii.rr.com