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liked remote areas, away from the coast. In places like Califor-
nia, conspiratorial transactions with enemy nations could flour-
ish, they worried. Landlocked, Fort Missoula had infrastructure.
It even came with a hospital.
The U.S. wasn't yet at war, but the government had been toiling
to assist against the Axis Powers. In March 1941, the U.S. seized
ships from Germany, Italy, and Nazi-occupied Denmark in U.S.
waters. Among the vessels: Il Conte Biancamano, stuck in the
Panama Canal.
Il Conte Biancamano, like others captured, was a non-military
merchant ship. Still, the U.S. forbade return to Italy. At home,
sailors might join in the fight to grow Mussolini's forces. From
the Panama Canal, authorities took 's luxury liner crew, whose
visas expired, to Ellis Island.
Then these Italians boarded their train to Missoula, Montana.
At Ellis Island, Military Police crammed detainees in bunk hous-
es. The Missoula-bound train, holding Conte Biancamano crew-
men like ship's carpenter Benedetti, proved a prison on wheels.
Bars fortified windows. Guards patrolled aisles. The ride took days.
In May, when birds sing, and the river resounds with a swift bur-
ble, the first detainees arrived at Fort Missoula. Its vast acres of
lawn and lines of white buildings, tidy, utilitarian, and official,
gave way to enveloping conifers, their swath of green needles,
and stately mountains still imprinted by lake strandlines from
Italians at
Fort Missoula
