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WWII POW Camps in the United States

When the United States entered WWII in 1941, the United Kingdom was running short on prison space and asked the US for help in housing German POWs. The US agreed and when Liberty Ships transported US soldiers overseas, the relatively empty ships brought back as many as 30,000 Axis POWs per month to America. From 1942-1945, more than 400,000 POWs, mostly German, were housed in some 500 POW camps located in this country. When the war ended in 1945, the US began transporting the prisoners back to their home countries and by 1946 they had all been repatriated.

German POWs found conditions in the United States somewhat surprising. Other POWs, such as Americans captured by Japanese or German forces; or Germans captured by Russian forces, fared much worse and endured horrific conditions. The United States, however, tried to adhere to the terms of the Geneva Convention, which meant that POWs were treated with compassion and allowed to live in safe conditions. When required to work, prisoners were compensated for their labor. With that compensation, they could buy items from the canteen such as cigarettes, soda, or ice-cream. Prisoners were shocked to see many items available for purchase that were unavailable back home because of shortages and rationing.

While imprisoned in America, German prisoners filled a critical labor shortage created by the war. They worked on farms, in the fields, at factories, and even worked constructing roads and barracks in the POW camps where they resided.

Barracks in a German POW camp

Fritz Ensslin served as a tank gunner in an armored regiment of the German Army. After being captured, he was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, a POW camp in Missouri, in 1943. He described the 30-day voyage to America, “On a daily basis during the trip we were followed and attacked by German submarines. We arrived at Fort Leonard Wood at midnight after a two-day trip in well-secured rail cars.” Like many, Ensslin was afraid of the treatment he might receive as a POW. He was pleasantly surprised to find barracks that contained a bed, mattress, blankets and a pillow for each prisoner. “We had the feeling of being in a Hilton Hotel. For years we had been sleeping either inside or on top of our tanks,” he said. The men were given food described as a “dream meal” and joked with one another that if they had known they would be treated this way, “we would have sneaked across earlier instead of fighting until we ran out of ammunition.” Prisoners also received medical care when needed, and in the event of death, were given respectful funerals and burials.

In some instances, German POWs attempted to escape, but most were apprehended. One exception was Georg Gaertner. Gaertner escaped from a prison camp at Camp Deming, New Mexico in 1945. While imprisoned, he learned the war had ended, and he would be sent back to a hometown that was then under Russian occupation. He came up with a plan to escape by hopping a freight train. He changed his name, worked odd jobs in several states, and eventually married a woman who was unaware of his past. In 1985, he revealed the secret to his wife and with her encouragement surrendered to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In 2009, Gaertner was granted US citizenship. He passed away in 2013.

If you would like to learn more about POWs on American soil, Allied POWs held in Europe and Asia, or search additional WWII records, visit Fold3 today!

344 Comments

  1. Henry Rich says:

    My father worked at Camp Shelby, MS during WWII as a motor vehicle inspector. German POW’s frequently were assigned work in the motor vehicle shop. He often talked about these prisoners being happy to be out of combat and doing well. Other POW’s were assigned work building a spillway at what is now Johnson State Park near Hattiesburg, MS.

  2. Lora Matthews says:

    Enjoyed reading this article. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Chemnitz, Germany and stayed with a German family. During breakfast one morning, I was asked where I lived in the US. I replied Tennessee and the German man replied that his father was an officer in the German army when Hitler came to power therefore he saw combat in WWII. His father was captured by the Americans and sent a POW camp in Crossville, TN. With a lump in my throat, I asked him about his father’s experience in the POW camp. This German man replied that POWs were treated well and they were extremely grateful that his father had been captured by the Americans as they knew he would have the best chance of survival. He went on to say that his father even had opportunity to play tennis on occasion and have outdoor recreational time. The lump in my throat disappeared and we had a wonderful conversation about his family and his country after the war and their road to recovery.

    Well done and thank you for this article! It was a pleasure to read and hear additional confirmation of the beacon of light and hope that America is to the rest of the world!

    • Jimmie Loftis says:

      The old POW Camp became property of the University of Tennessee and was converted to a 4-H Camp. I was a camper there in the late ‘50s and even worked as staff in the summer of 1960. Stayed in the old hospital barracks and worked in the kitchen. Nightly square dancing, skits and singing was held in the recreation building with beautiful artwork on one large wall painted by the Italian POWs. The Germans had to be kept separated to avoid fights according to two prison guards that I became acquainted with that summer. One was the camp manager and lived on the premises. The other visited from Miami and took lots of pictures of the old barracks, guard towers, artwork in the rec hall and other facilities. I drilled him on his experiences at Camp Crossville and asked him to send some of the pix to me. I think I still have some of them in my old stuff. All of the old buildings have been demolished and replaced. The 4-H Camp is still operational.

  3. ADAM ROACH says:

    I am a broadcast historian and have been a study of WWII for a very long time This is the first time that I’ve heard mention of these camps. They certainly don’t tell you about this in the history books or news broadcasts from the era!

    • Jacquelyn Beauregard Dillman says:

      There were 511 German POW camps in the USA. All states had camps except for Montana, N. Dakota, Vermont and Nevada. Most of them were in the South and Southeast. The POWs were well-treated, some were ‘trusties’ and allowed to leave the camp daily to work on farms or in factories, some married local American women, and they were taught history and civics. The best history I’ve read on this topic is: “Nazi Prisoners of War in America” by Arnold Krammer, a professor of history whom last I knew was at Texas A&M University. Happy reading!

    • Lisa Smith says:

      I read an excellent book about German and Italian POWs in Missouri. It is called “The Enemy Among Us” by David Fiedler. It would be a great starting point for one of your broadcasts.

    • Bill Gawthrop says:

      For more detailed information see
      History of Prisoner of War Utilization by the United States Army, 1776-1945,
      by LTC George G. Lewis and CPT John Mewha, Department of the Army Pamphlet No 20-213, available at https://archive.org/details/PAM20-213 and Amazon

    • David M says:

      There was one at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama which had German paratroopers. They had large PW on the arms of their jackets. One escsped but tired of hiding and called the authorities from a nice restaurant in Huntsville. An officer arrived with a EM and all ate and went back to the Arsenal.

    • David M says:

      Another comment on the POW camp at Redstone Arsenal. The German POWs were commonly seen on trash details. At first people assumed that this was bad treatment or some psychological stunt by the American aurhorities. But that was not the point. At that timevRedstone produced large amounts of bombs and ordnance and the majority of the workers were young women. The Germans readily volunteered as they got to see lots of pretty youbg girls as well as a change of routine and some fresh air.

  4. Jimmy Baker says:

    Born on September 27, 1939, the day the rest of the free world declared war with Germany, my father worked in Maintenance and my uncle worked in the commissary at Camp McCain, MS. I have a picture and name of the near-blind German P.O.W. who, in gratitude for their treatment of him, painted my Mother’s portrait and hand-carved a set of bookends from scrap lumber (which I also have).
    My family was housed in modified, single-story Army barracks on the west side of and across Hwy 51 from the P.O.W. camp gate which is now known as Elliot, MS. Back then, it was all “Camp McCain”.
    All the kids were bussed to Grenada, MS, about 15 miles North, to attend school.
    The Army also used Camp McCain as an artillery training base using a firing range on the south end of the base toward Duck Hill, MS, a prominent feature being an abnormally high hill with a pond on top where wild ducks migrated.
    The farm…big dairy farm and farmhouse immediately North of Elliot belonged to a prominent family named Kraft. Yep, same Kraft family. Same farmhouse where the matriarch of the Kraft family later died in a fire.

  5. Franz Esterhazy says:

    Does Fold3 also offer records on German POWs in Canada during that time? This is an area I would be particularly interested. Thanks!

    • Corinne Iten says:

      Here are some documents of German POWs in Canada

      http://heritage.canadiana.ca/

    • Richard Earl Jones says:

      I’m sure they are available through some agency in Canada so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. My German landlord (1967) spent 4 1/2 years in a POW camp in Canada after being shot down over Cambridge, England. His summers were spent in Kansas working on several farms. He related a multitude of interesting stories as we sat in his kitchen drinking Reisling wines. Such an interesting man. He admitted that his war was nowhere near as bad as that endured by his wife. He ate well, had adequate housing and plenty of recreatiional time. And yes, he did learn to speak English fluently. Loved that gentleman. Wih there was a way to relay some of his stories. Way too long for this venue.

  6. larry van ausdall says:

    Wow. This brings back memories.
    During the World War II my family provided room and board the wives of soldiers stationed at Camp White, Oregon. We lived in nearby Medford, Oregon.
    Camp White was one of those camps that housed German prisoners.
    On weekends I sometimes went to Camp White with the soldier who’s wife lived with us. We would visit with the Germans thru a wire fence. As a 5 year old, I could never figure why these nice men were behind the fence.
    Later I found out anything I wanted to know, thru the Southern Oregon Historical Society.
    They did work outside the camp and some worked in the pear orchards and farms of southern Oregon.

    Thanks for reminded everyone of some of our great relationships with the German prisoners. Several came back to Southern Oregon and built there lives here.

    • I Berean says:

      I am surprised to read their wives were there. Were these American wives they wed after capture and internment? I don’t see how any German wives could possibly have made it to join their captured husbands between the difficulty to move from Germany through wartime Europe to the States. I would expect any German trying to enter the US at that time would be looked upon as a spy. Though an American woman marrying a German POW seems equally unlikely.

  7. Francis E Coats says:

    Requiring them to work was. I believe, a violation of the Geneva convention. We may have done what we thought was the right thing. But we did not try to comply with the Geneva Convention.

    • Gary Darlow says:

      Geneva convention won’t allow forced labor, these prisoners were paid as the article states, which allowed them to make purchases. I am sure if they didn’t work, they wouldn’t get paid. I knew a gentleman who was a high school student during the war, he would work during the summers in the fields along side the German POW’s just outside of Forsyth, Montana. He had interesting stories. At the time any able bodied person had to work to make ends meet. Montana had its fair share of POW camps.

    • Sue Bolt says:

      Well, my father was housed in Stalag 17 and endured horrific circumstances. BUT, he said the worst was not having anything to do. Nothing. Unlike the Russian Camp across the river that were worked to death including dragging their dead out of the camp every morning and digging the graves for the next day. I know German POWs that we’re housed in the U.S. who learned a trade and the language and sought citizenship at the end of the war. The USA worked at it anyway.

    • Lisa Smith says:

      The POWs were NOT required to work. If they chose to, they were paid. This is mentioned in the article.

    • Bill jackson says:

      …trueley conditions were great when you read of the treatment in other camps around the world!!!!!!!

    • Nell Masto says:

      Yes, maybe when the Geneva Convention drew up this document they did not understand that through work these pows learned a way of life that is pleasurable, not punitive. It was satisfying to be active and productive. Many returned as immigrants through legal paths to become the fabric that makes up our country, America!

    • James Werther says:

      What a vapid remark. Apparently you lack understanding of soldiers, discipline and purpose. And compensation for work done…not to mention the treatment and living quarters. See what the rest of the world offered before you go off again half cocked, uninformed with your fist in the air.

    • Bill Gawthrop says:

      Please see Articles 27 to 34 of the Geneva Convention of 1929 which was operative during World War II. It covers labor by prisoners of war. Work must fit the rank and health of the prisoners. The work must not be war-related and must be safe work. Remuneration will be agreed between the Belligerents and will belong to the prisoner who carries out the work.

      With regard to the comment: But we did not try to comply with the Geneva Convention, please provide supporting sources: Footnotes, bibliographic citations, or personal testimony linked back to verifiable sources. Bill Gawthrop

  8. R. HALL says:

    I wish that these stories were shown to the public so that left followers were more educated about the history of POW’s and the concentration camps treated people in them. The conditions of these camps are a far cry better then the media and socialist want people to know. Thank you for these stories, they are very compelling.

    • Betsy says:

      I wish you didn’t make statements like “The conditions of these camps are a far cry better then the media and socialist want people to know”. It has become very fashionable in some circles to refer to liberal Democrats as socialists although it is far from the truth and only contributes to the divide in our country.

      I, as a liberal Democrat find this story most interesting and think everybody should hear it. In addition, there can be no democracy without a free press. Our founding fathers knew this. You may have studied about Thomas Paine in history class. It is unfortunate that the press has been demonized unless it bows to the current occupant of the White House. Right now many networks are paying for extra security for their reporters because of him. You will hear much more actual news and a lot less propaganda on other stations other then Fox News. Please try to listen to someone else at least 1 hour a day.

      An finally, if you like your social security and medicare you probably are a socialist by your own definition. Now if we could just get good healthcare for all our citizens either by affordable insurance or some other way we would b all set.

    • Jacquelyn Beauregard Dillman says:

      I’m sorry to see the association you are making with ‘the left’ – this is an American issue and American history topic and concerns all of us who lived through WWII, which includes myself. The fact that we, as Americans, took in the Germans and treated them more than humanely speaks well of all of us, not ‘left’ nor ‘right.’ These POWs had healthcare, sanitary living spaces, good hot meals, were somewhat unrestricted with regard to writing home, were taught English, Civics and history. I suggest you read: “Nazi Prisoners of War in America” by Arnold Krammer.

    • Lisa Smith says:

      Your biased characterization of fellow Americans is inaccurate and unwelcome. Not all of us follow certain conservative propaganda stations or broadcasters. If you read the comments made by others, you will find that the stories of the POW experiences have been published by authors who write for the public (rather than for academicians).

    • I Berean says:

      They should be part of the history taught in schools. Regrettably the history taught, regardless of country, tends to be quite lopsided and generally missing topics like this, treatment of first nation or aboriginal history, nor does it present much of the means by which conflicts have been won (various so called weapons).
      I’d also recommend it as mandatory learning for Presidents.

  9. Tracy B says:

    I remember watching a story about a group of German POW’s who had formed a band in their camp with the instruments they were provided. I want to say it was on Who Do You Think You Are? And one of the men was a relative of the star on the show that night. It was the first time I had heard of the camps here in the country. It’s nice to know that we did treat our POW’s well. At times of war when mistreatment of the enemy is more likely it’s good to know that overall we treated out prisoners well back then. My mother’s family in Manila wasn’t that lucky, and they were civilians.

    • Jacquelyn Beauregard Dillman says:

      My uncle, Floyd G, Laughlin, died in a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. He suffered unbearably and was beheaded. He was not a civilian, he was one of the four escapees from the sinking of his submarine, the USS Robalo. I miss him to this day. Yes, it was a war, but look at the toll we all paid, the world paid, because of mad men thinking they could conquer the world. I revere those who paid the price but I sincerely hope we never face a world war again.

    • Jacquelyn Beauregard Dillman says:

      The band, and others similar, are well-covered in the book I recommended in prior post. Check out Camp Shelby in Mississippi. They put on concerts, skits, and they had libraries. Much support came from YMCA. Many camps had make-shift theaters, usually at the end of the mess hall. They had soccer teams. It is a credit to the USA that the German prisoners were so well treated.

  10. ann says:

    How can I discover more of death of father in law in Buchenwald at end of WW2. He was a German citizen picked up by Russian military in Berlin and sent to Buchenwald for investigation.

    • Sherry Nash says:

      I would start by emailing Ellis island, and they can steer you in the right direction. Good Luck and best wishes

    • John f Bolz says:

      My Uncle My Fathers Brother Jahann Bolz was put in Buchenwald and forced to Fight for Hitlers War and Shot in the war many times and then sent back to his Home Town Bad Kreuznach Germany

    • Rosemary Wright says:

      Hi I’ve just read a book called Beyond the Call, the true story of one WW11 pilot’s covert mission to rescue US POWs on the Eastern Front. By Lee Trimble.
      Any family of American POW’s in Europe would find it interesting.
      I loved the book.
      There are horror stories of Russian treatment as they advanced west to Germany.
      Regards Rosemary

    • Valerie says:

      Buchenwald was a NAZI concentration camp. Are you sure the Russians sent him to Buchenwald? It was liberated in 1945 by the US.

    • Corinne Iten says:

      Valerie, some of the German concentration camps where used by the Russians after the war, who imprisonned many Germans, not only soldiers but also civilians.

  11. Mary B. Wilson says:

    A few years ago, I visited some German relatives (whom I hadn’t known) in Oberderdingen and at that time, they told me that the father in the family was captured and sent to a POW camp in Maine. He loved being there despite being away from his family. When the war was over, he was released back to Germany and always spoke glowingly of his time in the US though he never came back to visit. His name was Erwin Erich Nuber and he died in 1958 in Oberderdingen, Germany

  12. Christina Hutchings says:

    According to the books written
    by James Herriot, veterinarian author of “All Creatures Great and Small” series, German, Italian and Russian POWs worked on UK farms during and after WW II.
    There are heart warming stories in these books you may enjoy. Hardest for some farm families to accept were those who had lost a loved one to German fighters or to bombing in England or Scotland.
    Yet the books tell readers that most of these bereaved persons that the German fighter was as much a cog in the wheel as any military member of any fighting force. It is complicated and there are no easy answers.

    • Ged Parker says:

      The most high profile German POW in Britain was Bert Trautmann who was in a camp in St Helens, Lancashire. He was allowed to play football for a local team and after the war signed for Manchester City as a goalkeeper; winning the FA Cup in 1956 despite breaking his neck in the final! his biography is a searing account of growing up a Nazi and fighting on the Russian Front and in the Ardennes.

  13. Colonel K says:

    Camp Bullis, just north of San Antonio, TX, housed German POWS during WWII. One of their construction efforts was the enlargement of the camp swimming pool. I don’t know if they ever go to use it, but today it is a catfish pond. Escapes by German and Italian POWs from various US camps were common and became something of a game. The techniques involved varied from traditional tunneling to pole vaulting to simply walking out the front gate disguised as American soldiers. The motives for escape also varied – a sense of duty, a desire to return home to loved ones, freedom, or a chance to meet girls. One of the funniest incidents had to be the time two German officers tried to check into a tourist hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas, despite the fact they were in German uniforms and spoke no English. The dumbfounded desk called the police, and they were back at the POW camp the next day, newly minted heroes to their compatriots.

  14. J Turner says:

    Nice to read about how kind and considerate we used to be as a country even with folks who were actually trying to kill us all and take over the world! As opposed to the treatment against the Japanese-Americans who lived here. And also those who are now seeking relief from poverty and war in their own countries…..

    • Sherry Nash says:

      Yes, All Wars have an ugly side also, I do know about the Japanese containment facilities, We are a Great Country but we need to be careful what type of people we let in and their motives

    • Linda Coffey says:

      I am 1/2 Japanese and it is so sad how the Japanese-Americans who were born in the US were stripped of their property, businesses, and all assets and put into interment camps all because of xenophobia. They were Americans too!! No reparations for them though. Many of them died in those camps. Don’t repeat this type of behavior based on unfounded fears and hatred.

    • Lisa Smith says:

      One of the main reasons for the generous treatment of these POWs was for (positive) propaganda purposes: by showing the POWs about life in a democracy/republic, it was hoped that, when they were repatriated, they would share honest, positive impressions of America. It was hoped that this would help discourage the future rise of yet another ruthless despot. It was so successful that many POWs tried to not be repatriated after the war.

    • SFox says:

      We are STILL a kind and considerate country compared to much of the rest of the world. We take in more immigrants than practically every other nation – we just ask that they be as law abiding as we expect our own children to be. (I own a cottage in Canada; and yet would never even THINK of crossing the border without proper documentation – no one OWES me entry into their nation.) Our problem is that we have been told nothing but negative things about our country for about 40 years now; which is hard to understand. I was an American history teacher; and was never told any of this information about such wonderful POW camps for our enemies in the US! Yet we got plenty of curriculum about Japanese internment camps to teach. Why in the world were we only given the bad to teach? It truly is hard to comprehend; the educational onslaught against our own nation by many of our own academia… Yes, it was awful that people were that fearful in WW2 – but if ISIS moved into your town today – how do you think you would react? If someone told you they were part of an ISIS community, but were not a danger – would you just take their word? Before you laugh it off; realize that my son-in-law’s 6 uncles were lined up in their hometown a few years ago and executed in front of everyone because they were Catholic – the ‘wrong’ religion according to the killers. And there was not a single outcry anywhere – it was just standard operating procedure. WW2 was an equally terrible time; and most of us were not living then – we have NO IDEA what we would have done – and yet we feel justified in judging those who did… THAT is the saddest thing about America today; how judgmental we have become about everything and everyone – usually with almost no information of the ‘big picture’. So just enjoy hearing these wonderful stories; and tell them to everyone you can. And then thank God that you live in this Country that is not perfect; but that tries for the most part to be.

    • John f Bolz says:

      Most of America does not agree with the current Administration

  15. Sheila Benner says:

    It must have been in 1994-45 in Florida at Camp Gordon Johnston Army camp. I was born in 1935 in Maine. My dad was part of a large Coast Guard unit (mostly Me. and New Eng. boys) who taught the Army how to land amphibious landing craft before heading for the war with Japan. There was quite a large POW camp on the base. My mom and I would walk close to the fence in one area sever nights a week to listen to the Colored church close to the POW camp. I still remember how great their music sounded. As I remember thee prisoners were all very young boys and men. I’m sure they were glad to be aoout of the war. Hitler used every male no matter how young they were.

  16. William Teaford says:

    While stationed in Germany my Unit had several German employees. One had been a German POW who was in Colorado. He was a Bavarian Farm boy who immediately felt at home in the mountains. He loved to go out to work on the farms, especially for the wonderful lunches. In the barracks, one morning he awoke to find snow on his bed. He was so homesick he could hardly stand it. He did not mention problems among the prisoners, possibly because he was Luftwaffe.

  17. Tully Simoni says:

    Trying to find info on an East Coast base (NY/NJ) area that housed WWII Italian prisoners. Have picture of father on stairs of barracks/mess hall (??) where Italian POWS were used as camp cooks. Father spoke Italian and was used as a translator.
    Not sure if Germans were also at this camp. Any suggestion to researching this Camp or info about Italian POWS in America would be appreciated.

    • Gary Darlow says:

      I believe there was a POW camp at Camp Missoula, Montana that had Italian POW’s. You can check with the Montana Historical Society in Helena and I think there is a museum at Camp Missoula that would have further information.

    • Carmine says:

      Look into Aberdeen Proving Grounds I think in NJ may be one. Just a guess.

    • Carmine says:

      Sorry I meant Maryland not NJ

    • Jacquelyn Beauregard Dillman says:

      Mr. Darlow, the comment below, cites a camp in Montana. According to the most definitive map, shown with this article, which dates 1944, there were no German POW camps in Montana. Nor were there any in N. Dakota, Vermont and Nevada. There were efforts to keep camps from the Canadian and Mexican borders and a ‘zone sanitaire’ existed about 170 miles from both coasts where no camps were built. This zoning also applied for shipyards, munitions plants or vital industries. As a result, two-thirds of the base camps [the larger camps] which contained approximately 3/4 of all prisoners were located in the south, southeast/southwest. By July, 1944,there were 98 base camps across the USA. The total reached 155 by the end of the war for the base camps. The total number of camps, large, medium and small: 511.

    • I Berean says:

      Tully Simoni – according to Wikipedia Camp Belle Mead in New Jersey housed mainly Italian POWS. You might find that a starting place. If your father is no longer alive you could try reaching out to younger siblings or if he had younger cousins who were close and see if they might provide additional information.
      Happy hunting

    • Mark Keyser says:

      Not NY/NJ related but Camp Myles Standish in Taunton, Massachusetts held Italian POW’s during the war while Fort Devens in Shirley, Massachusetts held German Pow’s.

  18. Michael E Brown says:

    Read the book “On American Soil” it is a eye opener.

  19. Will Haar says:

    I was stationed in Germany in the l sixties While there I worked on a project that included crossing a farmer’s field. We spoke with the owner, who spoke very good English, and he explained he had learned english in Arizona while as a POW. He said that he was treated very well and that he worked and lived on a farm. The family he worked for lived a long way from the camp and complained of the daily drive so he was given permission to live with the family if he promised not to run away.

  20. Mary Amberg says:

    I have a copy of a book entitled “Behind Barbed Wire” by Anita Albrecht Buck about the German prisoners of war in Minnesota during World War II. It gives stories and pictures of the 16 camps in Minnesota. It is very informative and interesting.

  21. Larry McCartt says:

    I enjoyed Jimmy Baker’s reply concerning his father’s time at Camp McCain. My father was Sanitation Officer for McCain and five POW camps near there. As a 12 year old I. visited him and was allowed to visit those 5 POW camps with his Italian driver, Tony. It was a trip from Covington KY I’ll never forget.

  22. Jim Jacobson says:

    There was actually one successful German POW escape. Escaping through the northern U.S. the POW (can’t remember his name) fled into Canada and made it back to Germany. He was a pilot and later in the war was lost in the English Channel.

    • Jacquelyn Beauregard Dillman says:

      I have not found this story yet in my reading, but I’ll keep looking. In the meantime, I hope you have read about Georg Gartner, 24 yr old, Africa Korps sergeant, escaped from Camp Deming, New Mexico on September 21, 1945. He had worked as camp translator. He escaped when he learned that Wash DC plans were to repatriate all POWs to their home-towns. His trouble was that his home-town was now in Soviet territory. His story is in “Hitler’s Last Soldier in America.”

    • P Connel says:

      The man you are thinking of was Luftwaffe leutenant Franz von Werra. His story is told in the film “The one that got away” starring Hardy kruger.

      On the other side of the coin, the American treatment of German POW in France at the end of the war was less glorious. When a large number were transferred to the British sector, the head count was much less than the declared ration count. There were allegations of food rations being diverted to the black market and starvation of POW. French civilians were reportedly apalled at the treatment of their former enemies.

    • Don Richards.Australia. says:

      I think that they actually made a film like this,about a German Airman who escaped thru Canada to Germany to fly again for his country. He was made a hero in Germany before losing his life on a raid against the Allies. A lot of Italian war prisoners came to Australia and worked here. They were treated well,but Japanese POW’s were also brought here. Some of these,after being treated well,made a disasterist attempt to escape from one of the Camps. A film was also made of this also. It is a pleasure to read these articles which show both sides of our histories.

  23. John f Bolz says:

    I found out in the last few years My Uncle my Fathers Brother was a POW in Mesa Arizona Camp called PAPAGO ,I would like to know if anyone who was there if they could tell me anything about the Camp ,Or Maybe know My Uncle Carl Bolz He would have been a very young man about late teens early twentys Any Info Thank You John Bolz please email me [email protected]

    • Howard Lewis says:

      I attended a talk at the Cave Creek, AZ, public library about German POWs quartered in Papago Park, Phoenix. The speaker, a local historian, said one of the first things the Army did was ask each prisoner if he would pledge not to run away. Most did, and they were the ones who went out of the camp to work on farms. They generally felt well treated by the Arizonans, sometimes making lifelong friendships. Many wanted to stay in Arizona; a few came back to settle. Only 2 prisoners escaped. When they were brought back they said they’d wanted to experience freedom for a while. Members of the SS, who fought alongside the Wehrmacht (regular army) were regarded as fanatic Nazis, members of a criminal organization. They were left in Europe.

    • John f Bolz says:

      Thanks for the info I just found out on U tube that Papago was where the great escape in American History was There is along the river a Bronze Monument telling about it Just go to U Tube and search Papago camp and you will find a lot more about the camp

  24. Nancy Wilson says:

    I have read a bit about a Camp near Algona, Iowa in Kossuth County. Their historical society includes, I believe, in their museum some wood carvings that the German prisoners made, and the camp there has been written about. (For more it is possible to check the web site or Facebook of Kossuth County Historical Society.)
    Also there is a book about a camp in Louisiana, titled “Playing With the Enemy” by Gary W.Moore.– they taught the prisoners how to play baseball. It’s based on the actual experiences of Mr. Moore’s father.

  25. Howard says:

    My father’s first assignment as a second lieutenant was Camp Michaux, used by the OSS to interrogate German U-boat Officers and later army generals. The camp violated the Geneva Convention, as it was kept secret from the Red Cross. My father then served at POW camps in Virginia and Maryland. He rose to captain and became a camp commander.

  26. Mary Roberge says:

    Oklahoma had many POW Camps. Land was cheap and there was no place for a run-a-way to go. After the war in 1946-7 my dad, Chet Magill was in charge of closing the camp in Alva OK. We lived in the “officers Qtrs. Which was just outside the camp. The qtrs. Only had an outhouse. Once a week, mom and dad and my Three sisters and I, wearing bathrobes would drive thru the front gate where armed guards would walk in front of our car to the POW bath house, where our entire family would use the separate showers. Rhee were so clean. Then we would get back in the car and be escorted out of the prison. I have so many stories of the escapades of my sisters and I then. I was only about 6 or 7.. I wish I could write a book. My oldest sister was 16 and all the prisoners were in love with her. Used to give her presents thevwould make. They did not want to go home. Some stayed in Alva and became law abiding citizens.

    • I Berean says:

      MARY ROBERGE – please do write it. Even if never published on paper there are various ways to publish through the internet. If the task seems daunting as a book, start a blog and simply write about one or two experiences per blog, posting once a week to once a month. Just ignore all those little nay sayers inside and outside your mind. As NIKE was want to say “just do it!”

  27. Louis Mayer says:

    There was a German POW camp in New Orleans, LA. My aunt, Bessie would visit the camp and speak directly to the prisoners.

  28. EDWARD P STALEY says:

    I AM 83 AND KNEW OF THE CAMPS IS ALABAMA AND MISSISSIPPI AND NONE OF THE OTHERS. THANK YOU FOR THE WORK YOU PUT INTO THIS ARTICLE AND THE LETTERS FROM READERS. I WILL SAVE IT TO PASS ON TO OTHERS.
    THAKS AGAIN.

  29. Sharon Morger Jones says:

    My father was a truck driver at a German POW camp in Pixley, California in early 1945. He would take the prisoners to the fields to work. On the way back to camp, he said he would regularly stop at a dairy and treat them all to a glass of fresh milk.

  30. I.B. Eggers says:

    Camp Belle Mead in New Jersey housed main!y Italian prisoners of war.

  31. Lynda Platt says:

    Aiken, SC had a POW camp from November ‘43 until May ‘46, where up to 600 German prisoners were housed in tents.

  32. FEF says:

    My father was a civil service worker (fire department) at the Cheyenne, WY, POW camp housed at what is now the Francis E. Warren Airport. I was told by a citizen that SAC had planes in the air 24/7/365 from that airport. These were Italian prisoners and he made many friends among the prisoners and many worked with my dad in the fire department. One of the prisoners made him a scale model of a fire truck but did not have enough time before repatriation to complete it. My father treasured that gift and he would tell the story of his life there and the young man who gave it to him. He had only a small pocket knife and sandpaper to use in making it and it was 1/15th. the size of a real fire truck.

    Before going to Cheyenne he was stationed at a camp near Ft. Leonard, MO, which housed German prisoners. Many of these prisoners worked on farms in the vicinity.

  33. Howard Hodges says:

    Better than what some Japanese-Americans received in the 10 concentration camps (or internment to use a little politically correct word.) Entire FAMILIES — nearly all US CITIZENS — taken from their East Coast homes with only days to sell their belongings and businesses, including farms with equipment, and sent to these camps BEHIND BARBED WIRE with US Soldiers watching them from guard towers with machine guns. Yet their sons were often in the all Japanese-American At my unit, the 442nd “Go For Broke” Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated unit of its size in US military history. We should also remember their story. And NOT a single Japanese-American was ever found guilty of any kind of sabotage.

  34. Jacquelyn Beauregard Dillman says:

    There were at least 15 base camps in Oklahoma. I hope you do write your book! Check out book by Arnold Krammer, “Nazi Prisoners of War in America.”
    Camp Alva is listed on pg 268.

  35. Paul Marquardt says:

    Trying to find info on my grandfather who was captured and put into POW camp in France and Germany. He served in the Luftwaffe ack ack battery.
    Also in search of info of my Mom’s brother who was lost on the Russian front, listed as MIA.
    I hope you can help me with this endeavor.
    Thank you.

    • Corinne Iten says:

      Did you write to the WASt (now Bundesarchiv) for both soldiers and the DRK Suchdienst for documents about the one lost on the Russian front?

    • Paul Marquardt says:

      Yes. I contacted WASt and they sent a form to fill out. But the problem is,I don’t have much to go on. I have some details of his activity in WW2, but not what is needed on the form. I have no family left on that side.
      On my Uncle that was listed as MIA, all I have is his name and a picture of him in uniform. My last Uncle mentioned him a ways back. Even my Mother never did.
      So now you know my problem.

  36. Tully Simoni says:

    In searching for Italian POW camps on the East Coast, I stumbled on this nice summary of US POW camps on Wikipedia.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_prisoner-of-war_camps_in_the_United_States

    This may be of use to this group in locating the camps and their location.

    Good luck

  37. Madonna Mooney says:

    My mother grew up in Princeton, Maine – Washington County. She told me stories about the POW camp there, at the Indian Township and how local dairy farmers, like her father, would deliver milk to the camp.
    Her parents’ (Plaisted) farm was “bought by the government” during WWII in order to build an airport, for “the ferrying of planes to Europe.” Fortunately, we were able to visit her old farm/airport in 2013, she was 89. We arrived just as a private jet was taxiing for takeoff . My mother was able to stand at the rail and watch it zoom past into the beautiful summer sky. What a beautiful parting gift for her.

  38. Lynn Ellsworth says:

    I can remember several German POWs that worked on my grandparent’s cotton / alfalfa farm in Safford, Arizona. I was only about 7 years old, the memory is of one scene when they were taking a break by Grandma’s windmill water tank. I remember the blond hair. I believe they were kept at the Fort Grant prison facilities.

  39. Nancy Alley says:

    I grew up on a farm about 2 miles from Fort Missoula, YES, In Missoula, Montana
    they did have Italian prisoners of war.
    Also some Japanese American men for a short time.
    They have a great museum on the fort now.

  40. Christopher Pine says:

    This story is about the German prisoners of war, surplused by the Allies to the U.S. White Europeans. Are there similar accounts of members of the Japanese Imperial Army who ended up as prisoners of war of the Allies in the Pacific? Were they kept separate from the “No-No Boys”, Japanese-American prisoners of conscience who refused to serve because of a special oath of allegiance they would have been forced to sign? Were prisoners of war kept separate from the those Japanese-Americans being held in internment camps and federal prisons, merely because of their ethnicity?

  41. Janice Paddock says:

    My dad was stationed at Mountain Home Army Airbase in Idaho in 1944. On one occasion, he needed to visit a neighboring base where there were German POW’s. At nine years old, my only experience with German soldiers was in newsreels at the movies where they were always marching and we believed they were monsters. While waiting in the car with my mom in the car that day, a group of POW’s were marched past us and didn’t goosestep as we always saw them do on screen. I remember saying to her: “Mama. They’re just like real people!” And, her reply was that they were real people, just from another country. I was shocked.

    Shortly thereafter, we were transferred to Farragut Naval Training Station, also in Idaho, which housed a contingent of POWs, some of whom waited table in the officers’ club. We soon made friends with one prisoner in particular; and, after they were sent home, he corresponded with my folks for several years; and my brother visited him while on a trip to Germany.

  42. John f Bolz says:

    What ever Religion You are or what you believe IM VERY VERY SCARED FOR AMERICA AT THIS TIME FOR WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW FOR THE PAST FEW YEARS PLEASE PLEASE AMERICA WAKE UP AND FIND COMPASSION FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS PLEASE PLEASE IM SAYING THIS WITH TEARS John Bolz

    • Sherry Nash says:

      This is a discussion about WWII POWs, I’m sure there is a forum for your fears, however that has nothing to do with this discussion. If you have something to add to our interesting discussion, please do, Sorry if you were mislead. Have a great night

    • Maxine R says:

      This discussion is painting a very nice rosy picture of how German POW’s were treated when Aleuts citizens and Japanese USCitizens were not treated as well by the US government. It is still going on today and very upsetting. $20,000 when your home and business were destroyed?

    • Sherry Nash says:

      The German POWs were treated better than any other country would have treated them, I do realize why the Japanese citizens were housed in their interment camps, as we were in a war with Japan, and they Government couldn’t trust the Japanese citizens not to be spy’s, they had no time to vet them at all, it had to be done swiftly for the Country’s safety. We moved the Aleutian Island tribes so they were out of harms way, they were treated awful, however the war was moving fast, so not a lot of choices. I think they made they right choices to keep our troops safe.

    • Maxine says:

      That is not what the documentary said. You need to get your facts straight.

    • Sherry says:

      Which documentary are you referring too? There are several

    • Sherry Nash says:

      Also are you aware that Canada also put the Japanese in internment camps for the very reasons I mentioned in my other post? It had to be done for the safety of our service members, they Japanese were not allowed phone calls to Japan, the US also did not allow them to send money, as they suspected some were funding the war, they were kept contained until after the war was overbb

    • Janice Paddock says:

      If your argument about the justification for tearing Japanese people from their homes and imprisoning them in camps being the right thing to do; then why weren’t all people of German descent given the same treatment? And, Italians? Have you forgotten Hitler and Mussolini? I lived in a town in Idaho that had a Japanese internment camp; and some of our friends and neighbors (all of whom had been born here) were torn from their homes and sent to the camp. These camps were no better than barracks. Some families had sons who fought and died while serving in our armed forces.

      The treatment of Japanese-Americans was deplorable and was one of the most egregious decisions made by any administration and is a blight on the history of this country.

    • Sherry Nash says:

      I am too from that area of Idaho, I guess we have different opinions! But I welcome everyone’s opinions.

    • Ms. Alexandra M.R. Youngs says:

      I, too, am frightened of what is happening in America these last several years. We all need to treat each other as we would like to be treated. We are all the same – just raised in different countries, holding beliefs we have that we were taught in the families and countries of birth.

      To survive as a species we need to care about one another, love one another, treat each other with respect, dignity, love, and compassion. That is the only way our species will survive. I hope you have some peace, John F Bolz.

    • John f Bolz says:

      Thank you for your reply and understanding , I was told that this was not the place for saying what I said , What brought me to saying what I said was two of my Uncles ,My Fathers Brothers where put into Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany and later released and forced to Fight for Hitler , one Brother was shot many times and was sent to Bad kreuznach Germany his home Town and the other brother was captured in France and sent to a POW Camp in Mesa AZ called Papago ,My point in saying what I said ,I just feel what is happening now seems to much like what happened then and it makes me very sad ,at leased the German solders in Americas POW Camps were treated with respect and given jobs and paid for their work ,Why cant we do that now Thank you for hearing me John F Bolz

  43. Maxine R says:

    During WWII there was a POW German Camp in SE Alaska. There was also a camp for the Aleut people who were forced out of the Aleutian Islands because the Japanese were invading. The Aleuts were forced to live in awful conditions in a Salmon cannery. The German prisoners were treated much better than the Aleuts who were original inhabitants of the Alaska territory. This wAs reported to me by my mother who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1942-1945. The Bureau supplies the two camps and the Germans were treated much better. In the 1980’s or 1990’s the US government finally made repatriations to the Aleuts and Japanese US citizens who were unfairly detained and treated so badly. I believe they each received $20,000. When the Aleuts returned home their homes had been ransacked by US troops. This was all documented in a documentary hence the $20,000.

    • Sherry Nash says:

      My Father served in the Alueut area, he said they were treated terrible, I’m glad they received compensation but $20,000 doesn’t seem like enough, they weren’t involved in the War at all

  44. Harry House says:

    My mother remembers German POWs topping sugar beets on farms near Nashua,MT. They would sing as they rode in the back of the trucks going to the field as well as when they were topping. She says their singing was very enjoyable to hear.

  45. Rosemary Wright says:

    Hi I’ve just read a book called ‘Beyond the Call, the true story of one WW11 pilot’s covert mission to rescue US POWs on the Eastern Front’. By Lee Trimble.
    Any family of American POW’s in Europe would find it interesting.
    I loved the book.
    There are horror stories of Russian treatment as they advanced west to Germany.
    Regards Rosemary

  46. Mark Keyser says:

    My dad and four of his first cousins served during the 2nd world war. (Their German immigrant grandfather was an artillery officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.) Dad and one of the cousins served in the US Navy and US Army respectively. The three other cousins served in the Wehrmacht. As the war ended one was captured by the Americans and held as a POW in Germany. The other two were captured by the Russians although one was transferred to a British POW camp for some reason. The third was captured at Stalingrad in 1943 and held by the Russians in Siberia until 1956. To understate his captivity, he had a much ‘difficult’ time than did the others held by the Americans and the British.

  47. Terry says:

    I keep reading the comments in hope that someone was brave enough to mention that the Germany POWs were treated better and had more access to base or post facilities then the Negro officers and enlisted . That part of history shouldn’t be ignored.

    • beverly harlow says:

      That’s right and my favorite movies are the tuskogee airmen go for broke and redtails. I do a lot of research on those and now on the buffalo soldiers. The last one in Seattle Tacoma area is 98years old and his daughter or granddaughter has a museum. I’m in Washington state and we had four pow camps. My father William Roy Hubert was a guard on one and the only other thing I know is a German pow made him a beautiful train engine and it had German writing on it. My dad never talked about the war.

    • Jim C says:

      I can attest to the disparity in treatment between African Americans and German POWs during WW2. My father was a white flight line maintenance officer at Walterboro Army Airfield in Walterboro, SC, which was also a German POW camp. All Tuskegee Airman replacement pilots were trained at Walterboro on high performance fighters (initially P40s, later P47s). The African American pilots were all commissioned officers, who had already successfully completed their preflight and basic flight training before coming to Walterboro. Among the many unfair instances of their treatment at Walterboro, they could not use the “white” PX, while German POWs were free to use this PX unsupervised and spend the money they earned on nearby farms. This is only one of many instances of unfair treatment that my father related to me. It is truly a sad chapter in our history.

  48. Shirley Soenksen says:

    A guide to the Janet Worrall POW Camp 202 Collection located west of Greeley, Colorado was created by the Greeley History Museum and is available online at: https://greeleymuseums.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Janet-Worrall-POW-Camp-202-2006.31.pdf.

  49. Tim Herbert says:

    Japanese POWs in the US. I have not been able to find Saburo Nakamura he was cared for by my grandpa on the SS JOHN BURROUGHS.

  50. Margaret Mikelson says:

    I read the comment that names states that didn’t have POW camps and would like to correct it. I cannot vouch for other states but I know for a fact Montana had POW camps because I know personally of some that were located in communities I lived in. Many of the POW’s worked in the sugar beet fields of eastern Montana and I haMve visited one in Missoula that held German and Italian POW’s at Ft. Missoula.

  51. Steve Veirs says:

    My father trained engineers at Fort Leonard Wood for the duration of the war. A German prisoner there painted two oils of Big Piney River scenes which we have today. My father said that they were painted in exchange for the paints and materials. I cannot read the stylized signature, but trust that the artist was happier in Missouri than in combat.

  52. Lacie says:

    How could l have grown up an army brat to a platoon sgt father IN germany and not know this about my then host nation? I never knee this was a thing. Ever. Ive been to the german camps and still have nightmares some 35 years later….

    On a more positive note have you all ever done a story on the giant Californian redwoods that were planted and protected in germany? And the stoey behind those trees and that village i lived in?

    • Lacie says:

      Yeah i know. Typos. Im sure theyre there. Dyslexia doesnt let me see them tho. Apologies for them if they are there.

  53. clark novak says:

    Germans treated captured soldiers as best as could be expected, seeing s the war was on their soil and their infrastructure had been carpet bombed. A problem America didn’t have. We know this because Kurt Vonnegut wrote a book about it.

    By all accounts our Japanese internment camps weren’t bad either. But we did inter them. Pretending we were morally superior to our enemies in this war is silly. The quality of prisoner treatment is proportional to what each side could afford.

    • Janice Paddock says:

      Seriously? If the Germans hadn’t been the ones who started the war, their “as best as could be expected” treatment might be understandable. Our soldiers wouldn’t have been in their country if that madman Hitler hadn’t begun his insane attempt to rule Europe and wipe out Jews and other “inferiors”.

      And, “Our Japanese internment camps weren’t bad either.” As compared to what, exactly? They could have been Hilton Hotels and it would have still been outrageous. Those people (the vast majority of them American citizens, some of them second or third generations) were forced out of their own homes and required to live in barracks and were only allowed to take a few possessions. You might think differently about those camps not being bad had your family been among the internees.

      And, “The quality of prisoner treatment has absolutely no relationship to affordability. It has to do with humanity, or the lack thereof. The poorest nations can treat their captives kindly. The richest can show insane cruelty. What they can “afford” has no relativity.

    • Kerry Roberts says:

      Wow, do you have a swastika tattooed on you or Rising Sun painted on your back? We were much more superior in the moral obligation toward our WWII prisoners than they were to the Allied soldiers. As a huge interest in all that’s US History, I feel educated enough to state my case in my argument. I understand what being fought in their homeland was devastating, but to execute Allied POWS on the Death Match of Bataan is inexcusable. One sure we committed horrendous atrocities during the war, but not to the point of human degradation that the Axis Powers inflicted upon our brave men and women of the Allied forces.

      I’m sure we can point-counter point forever and a day and we’d get no further along with this topic.

      Respectfully,

      Kerry Roberts

    • T K says:

      This is in reply to Janice’s comment—people tend to forget that German-American citizens and Italian-American cititzens were also “watched” by the govt and were also imprisoned in camps. Funny how no one ever cares about that.

    • Janice Paddock says:

      I’m not sure what this has to do with your comment: “Our Japanese internment camps weren’t bad either.”

      With the Japanese, entire families were removed from their homes and interned in the camps.

      With Germans and Italians, Justice Department officials took a variety of factors into consideration when considering whether to subject an individual to confinement, placing particular emphasis on membership in proscribed organizations. Right or wrong, at least there was an investigation which led to their incarceration; and, their families weren’t taken into custody.

      Whatever — if you were of Japanese, German or Italian descent and living in America during this time, it was a very dark period for them and for America.

    • I Berean says:

      TK – I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that no one cares or cared. There is a difference, such as the fact that men of Italian descent were generally accepted into the US ranks and for the most part not considered spies. They were not herded as an “ethnic group” into camps, with all but a suitcase (generally) of belongings taken permanently from them. For the most part, again, Japanese Americans, regardless of how long their families had been in the US, despite even being born in the US, were not permitted to enlist. All this despite the fact that Italy was an Axis power. However they didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor. Even German Americans were not herded into camps, so if there is more emphasis on Japanese Americans perhaps it is because they were singled out as an “ethnic group” for “special”, undeserved (IMHO) treatment.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      TK, you are absolutely right. My aunt’s parents were Italian and lived as everyone else did without anyone watching over them, but of those with Japanese ancestry were herded up and shipped to camps with wire fences around them and guards. Many of them owned their own home, but had to sell it for very little in a very short time. After the war was over, they had nothing to go back to and had to start their lives in a community all over again with nothing. Can you imagine at the age of 65 trying to start your life over again with no place to live, no furniture or appliances and little clothing? But they were never compensated for their sacrifice. It was tragic.

    • Yvonne Mashburn Schmidt says:

      I’ll have to disagree with your statement: “By all accounts our Japanese internment camps weren’t bad either.”

      I work every day to help the US Army PCRB identify and locate next of kin and DNA-eligible family members of unaccounted-for soldiers. I have worked many many POW cases from Cabanatuan in the Philippine Islands. People would be shocked at how these soldiers died and the information in these soldiers’ files.

    • Jim Kinne says:

      Seriously? Obviously, history must not be your subject. There are volumes of documents and photos of the conditions and lives of POWs from all sides of the war and I can absolutely state that NO personnel from the US that I have talked to has ever talked to the glowing culinary/lavish lifestyle led by American POWs in Germany during WWII. In fact, several that made it a point to familiarize themselves with the subject became dismayed at what was afforded Axis POWs compared to the conditions/food stuffs provided to them.
      “Morally superior” – in comparison, I’ll take it over whatever supposed mental mindset you would have proposed.

    • I respectfully disagree with your understanding of the differences between American POW Camps and those of the Axis. First, your beliefs appear to be based on the god-awful ‘Blame America for all Evil’, which for some reason has infected our educational system….from top to bottom.

      My Father, and ironically my father-in-law, was drafted in early 1945, along with many other married men over the age of 25 with children. They were to be part of a large group, at least 250,000, expected to be needed to physically invade Japan. They were transported from San Pedro, CA to Camp Roberts, CA. They drafted to serve “for the duration of the war plus 6 months.” So, they were basically in Basic Training for an entire year.

      There were many German POWs assigned to duties at Camp Roberts. They worked in the kitchens, laundry, grounds keeping, and repairs. They had very liberal contact with the American soldiers. Of course by early April ’45 it was clear the European War was pretty much won. My Father became friends with one of the Germans, named Hans. He actually came along several times on our picnics when we visited my Dad. I rather doubt any American POWs in Germany or Japan were ever given such freedom of association.

      Later, we moved to a Naval base where majoe scientific research and development was done. We had neighbors, both husband and wife were Physicists. They had both been held in German custody, and both had been so severely tortured that they could not walk, and they both had had their tongues partially cut out.

      The wife of another set of good friends had been an American Military nurse in the Philippines, and had been captured by the Japanese early in the war. She was held as a POW until the Philippines were liberated. She was subjected to horrible beatings, assaults, and starvation. Remember, she was captured early in the war. Not later when the Japanese people were starving. Weighed 70 pounds when the Americans rescued her.

      Other people we knew had the same experiences. One guy had been part of the Bataan Death March, and witnessed fellow Americans murdered. If a man fell he would be either immediately shot, or run through with a bayonet.

      I suggest you read some books written by the people who lived through those dreadful times, instead of the later day apologists!

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      You are so very right. In a book about one of the POW camps (in Stark, NH) it was said that the German POWs were very thankful that they were in an American POW camp. One POW in particular was to be repatriated, but his home was in East German under Russian occupation. He escaped, but was found, and he said that he did not want to be repatriated. It was also stated that the POW’s in the US were so much better treated than the POW’s in Germany and, I’m sure also, in the Japan POW camps. The Japanese were particularly brutal, but the German POW camps were no picnic, either.

    • J.J. Smith says:

      I tend to agree with you. Some of the criticisms of your remarks seem to be a little too harsh. Maybe physical conditions weren’t too bad, but the thought of loyal American citizens being imprisoned is unacceptable.

    • James Horn says:

      BTW, several thousand German Americans were interned. They were mostly associated with the German American Bund which was actually a Nazi front operation, there were innocent among the guilty, but as with the POW camp, there was no distinction between dedicated Nazis and the others. The Nazis in the internment camps took full advantage of this to indoctrinate others, and some who were not Nazis at the start were converts by the end of the war.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      Do you know of any camps where they were interred? I know of Italians who were not interred during the war.

    • Corinne Iten says:

      Nancy L Auclair, see on foitimes.com or gaic.info for the German Americans and segreta.org for the Italian Americans and densho.org for the Japanese Americans.

    • Doug Sinrud says:

      There was a POW Camp in the Bitterroot Valley near Stevensville Montana, I was told that some POW’s stayed & blended in with the community. They were a part of the agricultural community there.

      My wife from Sedro-Woolley, Washington in a discussion on the subject says there was a POW camp near there

    • Purcupile says:

      Kurt Vonnegut was full of shit he also wrote about teenage girls screwing Shetland ponies. It was one of the most disgusting books I’ve ever read. Just because it was required reading in your 8th grade class doesn’t make it true… it was a work of fiction you nitwit

    • joanne cole says:

      An insult to our nation and our soldiers. I interview WW2 Vets as a volunteer. One told me that during the occupation, they put German officers in the same one that they had held the Jewish prisoners, and fed them the same. At night they could hear the German’s fighting with one another, as they had set up a type of ‘court’ to see who ate and who did not…and some died as a result. I’m sure you are aware that many women prisoners were used for sex by the Germans as well. Also, if seeing photos of starved Jews, and the holocaust isn’t enough for you, compare to the photos of the health of those interred in America. I totally support America’s holding them in our camps, 100%.

    • Norm Ishimoto says:

      Curious to know which “all accounts” you read. It is commonly understood that when American citizens of Japanese ancestry were rounded up 2 months after Pearl Harbor, many like my father-in-law were “boarded” in the Tanforan (and Santa Anita, etc.) race tracks. Their horse stalls were not always cleaned of manure, and many had whitewash painted over the manure. Either way, they stank of manure. They were given empty bags and pillowcases, taken to hay piles, and told to stuff them. These became their mattresses and pillowcases.
      My mother’s family was pre-interned in the Fresno Assembly Center which included “accomodations” in the racetrack horse hotel, and rushed to the Arkansas camps when their building was done. Their barracks were hastily constructed of raw wood. The one thickness of wood quickly warped and sand covered everything. They had to sleep with cloths over their faces so sand blowing into their rooms from all sides would not enter their eyes, noses, and mouths.
      My father was dying of tuberculosis in Los Angeles. He was taken to a special TB hospital specially created just for Japanese TB patients. He recovered and was imprisoned at Manzanar. While there, he narrowly escaped being murdered by an army sentry; all of the army sentries who shot “escaping prisoners” were court-martialed and ALL were found innocent. Even the guy who claimed that a paraplegic tried to crawl away. No matter that the blood stains started at his wheel chair inside the camp and ended at his corpse where he was trying to crawl away from the sentry.
      Crooked camp administrators stole supplies and food for sale on the black market just like Indian agents started doing a half-century earlier.
      My dad told me that the mayor of LA made a publicity tour to show how Manzanar inmates were living luxuriously on wartime US taxpayers’ money. They got rid of him by inviting him to stay for dinner!
      All adult inmates were required to work at $12, $19, or $26 per month, else, they would have no allowances.
      Again, these were all noncombatants. My dad unsuccessfully tried to enlist (remember, TB), two uncles fought in the 442 in the famed I Company (94% casualty rate), and a third uncle served in the Military Intelligence Service to liberate Manila. My father-in-law fought in the 442, too; my grandfather was prohibited by federal law from American citizenship but still served in the US Navy while young.
      Most of the above is what my parents and in-laws told me and the rest, what’s been verified by historians. I was born in 1948.

    • Sherry Nash says:

      You seem angry because of your heritage, you are aware that the Japanese Bombed Pearl Harbor? All Japanese were interned as not to be able to get information to their families in Japan. Yes there was a reason for it. Are you aware that the Japanese during the Bataan death march, would stab our soldiers with bayonets and cut of their penis and stick it in their mouths just for not marching fast enough, they weren’t fed, no water, no human compassion. Sorry your relatives had it rough in the interment camps, and had to work to buy Coca Cola and candy bars. I truly think our American POWs were in hell, and yours were just inconvenienced. Not to mention that the Japanese also took American babies and through them in the air and caught them on the ends of their bayonets. My Father was a historian for the Government and there are photos to document the above atrocities. History is something that should never be forgotten.

    • I Berean says:

      Sherry Nash
      Your response shows the same type of mindset as those in power during the war. That mindset ignores the difference between Japanese military in Japan and Japanese Americans living in America, many born in America, fully participating within the American culture, including economically. The policy that deprived Japanese Americans of their civil rights, first and foremost, was a knee jerk reaction born of anger, misplaced fear, racism and plain old backward thinking. In examining past actions (in this case by the government) it should be done by examining issues in context and there is no place for an examination that tries to excuse actions (how Japanese Americans were treated by their government – America) based upon the atrocities committed by a completely different group set (Japanese soldiers).
      Your lack of understanding of the issue at hand is clearly demonstrated with your statement “I truly think our American POWs were in hell, and yours were just inconvenienced.” The Japanese Americans were NOT POWs captured by an opposing army. They were civilians, not combatants, trying to live their lives the same as other Americans at the time.
      We should expect, require and yes demand better of our leaders with a minimal expectation of learning from our past, especially our errors. Yet the war was barely over when America began its witch hunt for “Commies” which, while obviously not on the scale of wartime actions, still succeeded in destroying the lives of innocent people based upon the same misplaced fear and backward thinking that created the WWII internment camps in the US (and contributed to the turning away Jewish refugees trying to escape the Nazis). It is a mindset first implemented in the treatment of First Nation peoples herded onto reserves. Yet nothing has been learned. And the same mistakes are still being made today to the detriment of all. It is the same mindset that believes it is better to incarcerate 10 innocent men than to allow 1 guilty one to go free. Works fine until you’re one of those innocent men.
      The message you responded to had nothing to do with soda and candy bars, it was relating an individual’s family’s experience during the war and the WRONG treatment of an entire population based not upon anything they had done but upon where their ancestors were born. Yet you have such sympathy for the person of German descent whose grandfather died apparently from a dirty needle.
      The ill treatment of immigrants by the US (and yes other countries but we’re talking about the US) has an incredibly long standing history and one that its citizens should be fighting to change, not maintain.

    • Mark Keyser says:

      A very sad time for the Japanese Americans, indeed, for America in general. A close friend, Gordon, and his family were relocated to Wisconsin where they worked on a farm. Gordon told me, jokingly, that “the government thought that we were too far from the coast to contact the Japanese!” In the late 1950’s he entered the US Army where he served with honor until he retired.

      My family, which was of German extraction and who came to the States in the mid 1800’s felt the ‘suspicion’ most especially during the first world war. My great-uncle owned a large brewery in Washington, DC. (In fact, during the time that he owned the brewery he was the largest private employer in DC.). Uncle Christian also owned a large dairy farm in Hyattsville, MD. He was scared to death of fire and, consequently, he had his large dairy barn built of reinforced concrete. The rumors spread that the barn actually held gun emplacements that, they said, would be used to bombard Washington. His wife, Amelia, wrote a number of entries in her diary about the hysteria not the time. Uncle Christian was a true-blue American.

    • Frank Green says:

      @Cark Novak. You wrote, “Pretending we were morally superior to our enemies in this war [World War II] is silly”

      Your lack of factual knowledge of World War II (WWII), and specifically how the Axis powers treated prisoners of war (POWs) in WWII is really astounding.

      Well, learn this: The Japanese military code during WWII, the bushido warrior code, dictated that human beings who surrender, regardless of what side they are on, give up their humanity and become nothing. They are considered less than an animal. Just for surrendering. So they can then be turned into slaves, or tortured and murdered, and have done to them whatever else the exalted bushido warrior thinks is OK. You call that MORALLY SUPERIOR? You have no idea how your naiveté insults the memory of the POW survivors and the POW dead and the Allied soldiers who fought and won the war and liberated them.

      The Nazi prisoner experience speaks for itself, it is so well documented by this date (2019).. Ever heard of the Holocaust? Before he passed at age 89, I was friends with a former U.S. Army Air Force crew member who served on a B-24 in WWII. I came to know him because a relative of mine was his aircraft commander. After his B-24 was shot down and he was captured, my friend told me that he and a number of other Allied fliers were interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp and made to put out fires with hoes and sticks while barefoot (they’d had to give up their boots and shoes). This was because they were captured American air crew and the fires had been caused by an American bombing mission near the camp. I guarantee you no Axis POWs held in the States were treated that way.

      Ever seen the movie The Great Escape? It is a true story, based on several POW accounts and among many other things it depicts how 50 American, British, and Commonwealth POWs (all air crew and alll held in Stalag Luft III, near present-day Zagan, Poland) were machine-gunned, murdered in cold blood, for essentially being too much trouble for their Nazi overlords. There’s your morale superiority for you. Strongly suggest you go watch The Great Escape just as fast as you can, you ignorant fool.

      Please don’t take just my word for any of this. There are many, many, books out there in libraries or where books are sold written by former POWs in WWII who lived through their incarceration and wrote down their stories—for the benefit of future generations populated by uninformed people like you. Strongly suggest you study several of those POW memoirs from both the Pacific and European theaters, before you make any more posts like your last one on this site. .

    • Kevin says:

      Check your facts on Japanese camps please. I personally know people interred in them. Yes, America was MUCH more humane. I don’t believe anything was meant to sound “morally superior ” rather just pointing out that torture and abuse was not part of the lives of most prisoners held on American soil.

    • Dallas Hayes says:

      You are wrong. Japanese treatment of allied POW’s was brutal. Bataan Death March and the Burma railways work are just samples of abuse.

    • ralph brandt says:

      96 % of Germans imrisoned by Aericans were repatriated. 94 % of americans imprsoned by Germans were repatriated. I agree some of this difference was the war location. The Japanese treatment of prisoners NEVER came close to that of the german treatment. It was brutality, starvation, more than half died…. ALthough Germans and Americans at times executed prisoners in violatiojn of Geneva, usually when they had no alternative, exception i know of the Malmady Massecre at the bulge and an American order that was flawed after D-day that said, take no prisoners, and shoud have said, take prisoners, we wanted the troops to work hard to capture for intelligence. These were isolated events for the German and American army. We have records of it being done simply to prove superiority by the Japanese. Some of the survivors of Wake and Bataan were just plain executed and the Bataan death march was designed to reduce the numbers….

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      There were also suicides by Americans who were being drafted because they were so afraid of being sent to the Pacific and being captured by the Japanese. The case of the Bataan death march was a prime example of what our soldiers endured if captured in the Pacific theatre. Does anyone know if we had any POW camps for the Japanese soldiers?

    • Peter Wood says:

      Around 4000 Japanese PoWs were held in camps in the USA. But tens of thousands were kept prisoner, outside of the USA. Just like the German and Italian PoWs, many were not repatriated until 1948.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      That is very interesting. Do you know where the POW camps were for captured Japanese soldiers?

    • Peter Wood says:

      The majority were held at Camp Clarinda in Iowa, Camp
      Kennedy in Texas, and Camp McCoy, Wisconsin

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      Thanks. Do you know of any books on the subject of Japanese soldier POW camps?

    • Peter Wood says:

      There is a good Theses by Adam Rock. Click on this link and, when the page opens, click on download (on the top right of the page), where he looks at Japanese PoWs and Internees held in the USA https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/4740/

      The American Way: The Influence of Race on the Treatment of [Japanese] Prisoners of War During World War Two

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      I’d love to read the whole thesis. Do you know how I can read it in it entirety?

    • Peter Wood says:

      Click on the download button, as described. It will download all of it.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      Thanks.

    • Ralph Brandt says:

      We did have camps for Japanese prisoners and some were in the US, HOWEVER, logistics drove the camp locations. We had many empty ships coming back from Europe, it was easy to transport them and if they were left in Europe we had to feed them there, an America to Europe supply issue. So the German and Italian prisoners came here. Also England had almost no place to put anything.
      On the ohter hand it was easier to keep the Japanese prisoners in the south pacific, there was space.

      And there was one other reason. Americans were far more afraid of Japanese Prisoners – a good portion of that was driven by the Hollywood depictions of the Japanese soldier as a crazed person, much like the Crill committed (The Committed oo Public Information did in WW1 with Germans. I wrote a book, Amazon Kindle, Amassing power – oppressive Governments that has a section on Crill…. He was commissioned by Woodrow Wilson – Hitler would have been proud of his work….

    • Jack Lapeer says:

      Maybe you meant George Edward Creel.

    • ralph Brandt says:

      Sorry… YOu are correct on the name..

  54. Maggie says:

    There was a camp in Concordia, Kansas. Some of the prisoners took classes at the University of Kansas. They had art projects that are in the museum there. There has been an effort to move all the artifacts from the museum in Concordia out to the camp locale. I have been there a few times.

    • James Stoffers says:

      After doing research on my family history (almost all of my ancestors were from Scheswig-Holstein in northern Germany), I was shocked to find out that my grandfather and his brother (both German immigrants who settled in Iowa) had travelled to Concordia, Kansas during the war to visit their nephew who was a German POW. The nephew (who had been drafted into the German army at the age of 15, and who had never before met my grandfather) declined the food and other small gifts my grandfather and great uncle had brought from Iowa, fearing reprisals from a small percentage of his fellow German P.O.W.’s who remained militant Nazi’s. The irony is that while my grandfather was visiting his German P.O.W. nephew at Concordia, his son (my father) was fighting the Germans in Europe!
      One more note: Most of the P.O.W.’s at Concordia were gratified to be in American custody on American land. The same could NOT be said for Allied P.O.W.’s in German or Japanese custody. Conditions for Allied P.O.W.’s ranged from extremely difficult to horrific. I say this as a student of WWII history, an American infantry veteran myself, and a horrified observer of our present Commander In Chief who currently resides in the White House.

    • Sherry Nash says:

      I would have taken you story more seriously has you not used it as an agenda to Bash The President of the United States of American.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      I’m with you. Right on in every word! The heel spur was his way of getting out of going into the military. In my humble opinion, he is a disgrace to our wonderful nation that so many military fought to protect and some died to protect. We cannot do enough to honor their sacrifices. And, our present Commander in Chief, when asked what he did for the war, gave some stupid answer that had nothing to do with helping the military in any way, shape or form. He is a coward, in my opinion. He should kiss the feet of every military person who served our wonderful nation.

  55. Phil H. says:

    My Grandfather was a Sgt. during WWII. My Grandmother told me that they were stationed on a base up North (maybe ILL.). She told me that the German POWs would come by & shovel coal for the furnace in the Winter. She said that they were friendly and that she would give them something to eat.
    My Dad was in the US Army & served in Germany March 45-Jan 46. They have all passed away now so I can’t ask them for any additional info.

    • Robert says:

      There was a POW camp located in Fort Delaware near the town of Delaware City, DE. I knew a former supply sergeant that served near there during the war at Fort DuPont. The funny thing about this supply sergeant was the fact he had immigrated from Denmark before WW2. He had just become an American citizen right before the war. He told me stories of how he would go to the island that Fort Delaware was built on to get POW work details for Fort DuPont. He lived on post at Fort DuPont so some of the prisoners did things around the house where he and his family lived. It was funny when he told me the POW’s all wanted to work to help his wife around their quarters because she was a great cook. She would always make them lunch and supper before they returned to the POW quarters at Fort Delaware island. He said he became friends with some of the POW’s and exchanged Christmas cards with them after they returned home. He also told me one the former POW’s stopped by to see him when the Former POW came back to the United States on vacation in the 1970’s. The only thing I can say about what occurred with the German POW of WW2 was some of them did ok if they thought enough of the States to come back here on vacation.

  56. Beverly McDonald says:

    There was a German POW Camp in my hometown of Bastrop, LA.
    Prisoners were used as Field Labor in local food and cotton production.
    There were many who were glad to no longer be involved in hostile action after their capture.
    Some asked to remain and not be repatriated.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      There was a POW camp in Stark, NH, and it was written about in a book entitled “Stark Decency/ German Prisoners of War in a New England Village”. I ordered the book since my father was born in Stark and when the Town Clerk sent me the book, she also sent me an article from a newspaper “American Scene – In New Hampshire: An Unusual Reunion”. It is a long story about a German prisoner of was “Hermann Uelsmann” chatting with one of his former guard’s, Carl Giordono. The story said” Wars look better after 40 years, when the old men who were soldiers forget how frightened they were.” It went on to ask “Why would they do this for us?”, the former German prisoner remarked.
      She, the Town Clerk, also sent me a advertisement in Stark, of a German-American Friendship Day in Stark, New Hampshire, schedule for Saturday and Sunday, 28 Sept. 1996 and 29 September 1996 with included crafters, artifacts, food, exhibits, a Mad Bavarian Brass Band, a visit to Camp Stark, etc. It appears that the prisoners were treated very well and did some work in the town. Evidently, there was a video of the event and I plan to write to ask for a copy of it.

  57. Mark Keyser says:

    Over night some more POW-related stories came to mind. I grew up in the 50’s in what was a ‘veteran’s housing project’. Malcom (Mac) Turner lived across the street from us. Mac was a little guy just a bit over 5 feet tall and he’d been captured by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge where they found I’m hiding in a large pickle barrel. He spent the balance of the war in a POW camp. I asked him how they were treated and he replied, “Not too badly, didn’t much to eat though, but, then again, by that point of the war neither did they.”

    My father-in-law, Joe Hallahan, CM3, on board the USS Jack Miller picked up Australian prisoners who’d been held by the Japanese. We still have letter of thanks from one of them thinking Joe for his help. They really suffered at the hands of the Japanese.

  58. Frances Fowler Cowan says:

    My Uncle, Raymond Golden, was with the group that liberated the Philippines from the Japanese occupation.during WW II. My uncle told me that when he walked ashore a Filipino woman gave him an egg as appreciation.

  59. Kerry Roberts says:

    Much gratitude to those who served our country. My father passed in 2013 and was career military. He was officially s 3 War Veteran, lying about us age at 16 to enlist in toward the end of WWII. Didn’t see action, but did serve in the Korean War and retired in 1968. He was so proud, as were his children and grandchildren, if his 3 War Veteran hat he wore religiously, even having it in his casket during viewing!! He died with bits of shrapnel in his stomach he’d received during the Korean War!!! God Bless the USA!!

    • Nancy Auclair says:

      My grandmother, who lived in Berlin, NH, told me after WWII that a nurse from Berlin had been captured by the Japanese in the Pacific theatre and that the Japanese had cut out her tongue so that if she was freed by the allies she wouldn’t be able to talk about the conditions, etc. So very sad.

  60. Kathi Lucci Desko says:

    Just wish NARA had kept the records of the POWs. I had Italian relatives that were POWs in Utah but cannot find any documents on them.

    • Peter Wood says:

      All of the records (of German and Italian PoWs) were handed over in the 1960s, as instructed by the Geneva Convention, to the ‘home’ governments. So the records are now in Italy and Germany, in archives. The International Red Cross HQ, in Geneva, also has records on all PoWs. But you can only get access (a reply takes about six months) if you are directly related to the PoW.

      Google GENTRACER for a website (for which I am in no way linked) which has transcribed basic details of: Italian Prisoners of War in the Continental USA on 31 March 1945 (NARA RG 389, Entry 464A, Box 1505, Vol. 1 (A-B)).

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      You said that you have relatives who were POW’s in the states, so even if you are a nephew I think that you should still be able to get information on your relatives. Have you tried to get information stating your connection to him/them?

  61. JM Smythe says:

    During WWII my father was stationed at Fort Benning, GA. between overseas assignments. We had German POW’s digging ditches and repair roads in the Fort near our quarters. They spoke great English and we kids would sit on the piles of dirt and talk to them.

  62. Keri Shannon says:

    My uncle guarded German prisoners in New Hampshire during the War and was included in a book on the subject.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      Yes, Keri, there is a book on the subject and I have one. It is very interesting and informative. I purchased it for $25. My father was born in Stark and so it was especially interesting to me.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      The POW camp you speak of was in Stark, NH and a book was written about it.

  63. Rebecca Ann Sinn says:

    Yvonne Mashburn Smith – I believe the individual was speaking of the Japanese interment camps here in the USA – that housed Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants.

  64. Ray Henderson says:

    How were American POW treated by German SS? Depends: CD by Roger Cohen SOLDIERS AND SLAVES. Listen to this story. I was 8 years old when German POW begin arriving in the San Joaquin Valley CA. Depending on the area, the POW picked cotton,grapes, fruit and what was needed. . Have also visited several POW camps in the Southern states. I’ve been told that German Subs surfaced off the coast of Maine and bought fish from the US fisherman.

    • Elizabeth McCapes Livingston says:

      Does anyone know where the POW camps were located in CA. I was in high school during WWII but don’t recall of ever reading about them. Thank you for your help.

    • MM says:

      Subs were detected off the coast of Maine and a couple of the submarinaers came ashore to spy. They were caught. I have never heard of any of the submarines buying fish from fishing boats at sea on the Maine coast. I can tell if people knew of it, those fishermen would not have faired well amongst us Mainers. I don’t know that they would have been hurt, but they sure would have known that they were not liked or approved of for their actions. To me, that would have been treason i.e. giving aid to combatants against the US.

  65. Doug Sinrud says:

    My wife know of WWII POW camps not shown on maps, one in Montana and one in Washington state, why is that?

    • Pete Wood says:

      I am studying all allied PoW camps – in the USA, Canada, UK etc etc. The reason you know about PoW camps that are not on the official list, is that there were hundreds (thousands) of satellite camps (temporary and/or part time) where prisoners were housed. away from their base camps. This was often because the PoWs were transported elsewhere, for harvesting or building projects etc. I don’t think people realise how much work was done by PoWs during, and after the war. Many axis prisoners were not released until 1948.

      Here, in the UK, volunteer German and Italian prisoners were even used to clear the huge amount of mines and unexploded bombs (UXBs). In return they received better food and accommodation.

      I would like to know of any sites that should be added to the definitive list of PoW camps, please. The more info you can give, the better. Thanks.

  66. William L. Sasman says:

    I was a PW guard at Camp Opelika, Alabama and later Turner Field, Albany, Ga. Our PW’s received the best of care Inside their camp’s they had their own mess hall’s and PX. We took them out to farms around and they worked. They were paid for this work to use in their PX’s. They had the equipment to do sport’s and other thing’s as music and play’s. The PW’s we had were very fine people and were liked by us and those they worked for. I have heard of other camp’s that had Pw’s that were for old Hitler right on. Thank the lord we dd not see them. I later went oversea’s With the First Division . I never got to see any of their Pw camps by see the Displaced people’s camp’s. They were nothing to be happy with for sure.

    • Kim osborne says:

      My grandparents farmed in the Crenshaw county Alabama area. They spoke of German POWs working on their farm. They said the pows were hard workers. They also said that when it was time for the pows to load up to go to the farms they would rush to get to the bus going to the Turner’s farm. My grandmother would cook hot meals for them.

      Kim

    • Robert M Copeland says:

      You write: “I was a PW guard at Camp Opelika, Alabama and later Turner Field, Albany, Ga. Our PW’s received the best of care Inside their camp’s they had their own mess hall’s and PX. We took them out to farms around and they worked. They were paid for this work to use in their PX’s. They had the equipment to do sport’s and other thing’s as music and play’s. The PW’s we had were very fine people and were liked by us and those they worked for.”
      This is completely consistent with my parents’ recollections; my Dad was a Medical Service Corps officer in the camp at Douglas, Wyoming.

  67. Cecil Wayne Austin says:

    On the opposite side My father in law an American Soldier was wounded in Southern France in 1945 and likewise captured by the Germans near the Rhine River at the end of the war. He always said he received good treatment from the Germans including good care of his war wounds in the German hospital. He told the story of one German Guard that threatened to take his watch away from him, but he resisted and thus prevailed.

  68. Jim Fogarty says:

    While serving in post-war West Germany my wife and I visited a town called Mosbach in the area of the Black Forest. A German gentleman approached us, noted that we were Americans and said “thank you.” “For what,” I replied. “For treating me so well as a POW,” said he. I asked him where his camp was and he said “in a place you never heard of called Mead, Nebraska.” He was surprised to hear we were from Omaha, a short drive from Mead. The old soldier noted how clean and comfortable his POW accommodations were, that the food was good and he was allowed to work on nearby farms with German-American families. It was like home and they even got mail from Germany via the Red Cross. Quite a few of them did not want to leave when the war ended, he said.

  69. Denise says:

    Very true. My Uncle was a POW in Germany and he was treated horrifically, and he very, rarely spoke about it. However, when he returned to the US and was being served by German POWs here, and saw how well they were being treated, he was extremely upset. I do remember him talking about that.

  70. Joseph M Rogers says:

    My wife’s father was medically retired as a master sgt in 1944. He had a terrible heart condition and died in the Naval Hospital in San Diego. When my mother-in-law went to visit my wife then 8 years old was taken care by a German POW during that time. My wife still has fond memories of that older German POW.

  71. Nancy G Chesnutt says:

    My mother worked at Fort Jackson, Columbia, South Carolina during the war while my father was in Australia. I remember her saying that the German POWs were able to get cokes to drink but she could get one only very rarely!

  72. Nelson Ames says:

    Reading about POW Georg Gaertner reminded me of something from a while back . There is a cemetery in southern New Jersey on the Delaware Bay . POW’s were held I believe across the river in Fort Delaware (?). As a Civil War buff I found myself in the area exploring Fort Mott . I met the caretaker of the cemetery , got to talking and he mentioned that POW’s who passed away were buried there . He pointed out three headstones & asked if I noticed anything “unusual” . After a bit I noticed their dates of death were identical . He told me they were Russian soldiers who had fought with the German army and were captured . When the war ended they would be repatriated to Russia & they knew what fate Stalin had in store for them , so they committed suicide together ,

    • Mark Keyser says:

      Interesting note. Dad’s ship, the USS Eberle, shelled a German base on the Ile de Porquerolles off of the coast of Southern France. After a bit of shelling a white flag was raised. The Captain of the Eberle sent a party of sailors to the island with dad at the head. I think that dad was sent because he was a fluent German speaker. As it turned out, the troops were Armenians who’d been pressed into service by the Germans after the battle of Sevastopol where they’d been serving in the Soviet Army. During the siege at Sevastopol they’d been starved to the point of having to eat their own dead. After they were captured by the Germans they were told to fight them or be shot – they put on German uniforms and lived. This contingent was led by Joseph Avokian an Armenian who’d been a school teacher before the war. By the time of their capture they’d had it with the war and wanted nothing more but to go home. The crew took the men back to the Eberle. Dad took Avokian’s 8 mm Mauser (which I still have) and gave him his last clean shirt for which Avokian thanked him. At his point the Armenians had pretty much been abandoned on the islands and their uniforms were in tatters. We have home movies of the Armenians on board the Eberle that dad took. Since they were technically a part of the Soviet army they were turned over to the Russians and the best that dad could learn they were all shot and killed. I’ve since attempted to locate LT Avokian’s family without any luck. A sad chapter.

  73. Tom Clemens says:

    My father was XO of a small POW camp in AL. One German did sketches and paintings which were in our home. After my parents died we were able to find the artist and visit him in Germany. He was a wonderful person and told me things about my father I never knew before.

  74. Dorothy Shewey says:

    There was a POW camp in Rochester. NY.
    I remember the German POWs
    shoveling snow from our neighborhood streets when we were walking to school.

  75. Andrew K. Rindsberg says:

    The prisoner of war camp at Aliceville, Alabama has been memorialized in the local museum. See their website: http://www.alicevillemuseum.org/

  76. Sue Kimp says:

    When i moved to Pueblo, Colorado a few years ago, I went to an Art Show that was held on the top floor of an old building.
    My older cousin said it used to be a dance hall where she remembered dancing with German POW’s during WW2!
    She said the dances were held often and the boys were polite to the girls..
    but closely chaperoned…
    She also said some of them worked in the CF&I steel mill and others helped on family farms harvesting potatoes where the husband/sons had gone off to war.
    I wish i had asked her more about them but she passed away a few years ago…
    She loved to dance!!

  77. Howard Mann says:

    My dad was based at a POW camp in Louisiana after the war. The German prisoners made him a ring which he kept. He was a Ranger in the 5th Battalion and was at Normandy, fought at Brest, France, and throughout Europe. Wounded early in 1945 and was transferred to the 95 Division.

    • Doug Pello. says:

      What company was he in while with the 5th Ranger Battalion? My brother-in-law, Marvin Townsend was in Co. E.

  78. Elaine says:

    In Des Plaines, Illinois, I am told the old Methodist Camp Grounds was a place for German Prisoners. They worked on the farms here and helped build runways at O’Hare airport, before it was called that. There was quite a concentration of air plane workers also. I hope it’s true!

  79. George Goff Col, USA, (Ret). says:

    Interestingly, in some states people of color in the military and in uniform were not allowed to drink from the same water fountains as whites, were not allowed to enter through the front door of a business establishment or eat in the same restaurants as white soldiers. German POWs when being transported in the course of their internment were allowed the same status as their white guards which elevated the POWs over the status of a person of color who was serving in the military.

  80. Grant Mitchell Spork says:

    My father’s cousin, Rudi, was taken prison in North Africa while under the command of Irwin Rommel’s Africa corp, he was a tank mechanic. Conditions in the desert as a German Soldier were difficult with poor supplies and logistics,extreme heat during the day and freezing at night, flies and boredom. After holding up Monties advance in a fort firing decoys out to the desert, Monty was held up thinking there were 5000 Africa Corp in the fort, there were only around 10 soldiers left as a remnant. Rudi was captured by the British and expected he could be executed. He was taken prisoner and sent on one of the first ships to the USA arriving on the East coast, I think New York. The German prisoners were loaded onto trains to traverse the USA and arrived on the West coast, where he volunteered to work on farms in agricultural labor. He said that his treatment was exemplary with American citizens throwing Hershy bars and confectionary through the windows of the trains for the German POW’s at every station they stopped from East to West Coast, good food and treated with dignity. The ancestral homeland was in Northern Prussia, Altstein, the lakes district and Konigsburg which was given to Poland at wars end with a portion of the northern Polish area given to the Russians. Around 10 million Germans displaced. He ended up settling in Australia after a time as an intern in Scotland. As an Africa Corp veteran he had been fighting the Australians…………………married a lady who had been a kinder child, an interpreter for the British in Palestine and never returned to Germany. Rudi was a gentle man who started and ran a body work shop employing many people in skilled work. A man who survived extraordinary times.

  81. Neil Johnson says:

    I grew up in Sterling, Colorado where there was a WWII camp and my high school German teacher in 1965 was a POW prisoner there, stayed in the States and got his citizenship. My mothers maiden name was Grauberger and she remembers in her youth around ’42-’45 that there were folks that were not too kind to the family because of the name. I later used the German I learned while I was stationed in Germany during the Vietnam War between 67-69. Never did get to thank Mr Walter Bredehoft for what I learned in his class.

  82. Jack LaPeer says:

    My father-in-law, George W Loewe, born in 1914, was a T-5 barrage ballon crewman assigned to Battery A 311th CA (coastal artillery corps) BAR (Barrage) BLN (Ballon). He was trained at Camp Tyson, TN and served at Los Angles, CA before the 311th barrage ballons unit was deactivated at Fort Custer, MI on September 9, 1943. He as reassigned to Military Police escort guard company. As an POW guard, he was assigned to POW camps in the Midwest, including Michigan and Wisconsin, that were supplying agricultural works. One such camp was just outside of Sparta, MI in the Peach Ridge orchard area. He met my mother-in-law in Sparta and they were married. After WWII they settled in Sparta and raised their family. Several years later the Grand Rapids Press did a Sunday feature (Sunday, Sept. 15, 1974 The Grand Rapids Press by Jim Mencarelli) of the Sparta POW camp of 1944 which included an interview of my father-in-law. I’ve scanned a copy of that article and placed on the Fold3 website I created for George W Loewe.

    I’ve always thought an interesting story would be about the early WWII domestic barrage balloon units, many of which were disbanded in 1943 when the aerial threat was no longer perceived in the US. I understand some did overseas tours.

  83. Neil johnson says:

    I wouldn’t let #45 kids the bottom of my feet. He’d have a fetish with that and not going there

  84. Lizabeth Wright says:

    My father grew up in Winchester VA. He told me that when he was a teenager he had a sunmer job transporting and supervising German POWs who were assigned to help in the construction of Rock Enon boy scout camp, in Gore, VA. His impression was that the POWs were well-treated and grateful to be out of the conflict.

  85. Patti says:

    My grandfather Bringle who came from a North Carolina German family was at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana helping to run the camp. He died there in 1945. He was getting ready to go fight before the war ended and had a shot with a used needle from the camp nurse. He died 3 days later.
    I never met him.

  86. Donald C. Hill says:

    Two of my brothers served in WWII, one in the army & the other in the Army Air Corp. This left Dad short of help with the crops he raised near Cynthiana, KY. I believe it was the summer of 1944 when Dad first arranged for German POW’s to help with our tobacco crop. Armed military guards with rifles were stationed at each end of the field. Details of that group of prisoners are not clear; however, the following year is more memorable. The POW’s that came in 1945 to help with the tobacco were trusted, thus no guards were involved. We were in our barn, & I was on our wagon with a couple Germans while they helping unload the wagon of tobacco. This very tall prisoner took his wallet out, pulled out a picture of a young boy, put his hand on top of my head & with tears in his eyes, indicated the boy was his son. Mother feed the POW’s a big lunch with pitchers of cold milk under our huge oak tree next to our yard. They certainly enjoyed her cooking. When the day’s work ended, the POW’s loaded into Dad’s car to go back to the camp. I wanted to go, but there was no place to sit. One of the prisoners opened the rear door & said I could sit on his lap. I hesitated, but didn’t want to appear afraid. I learned later the camp was in or near Lexington, KY. I soon realized that I regretted the offer to go along, because I was shaking from fright. I sat as far forward on his lap as possible, gripping the back of the front seat, thinking I might get stabbed in the back any minute. It was a long trip for me!

  87. Chuck Haley says:

    My dad told me once about German POW’s that were held in Wisconsin during the war. He said that once they went on strike because they wanted Cokacola in their barracks.

    • Valerie Choudhury says:

      My cousin Niki von Mach was and Oberlautenant and a POW in Colorado. He had to worry about the Nazis in the camp. His father was an Oberst, colonel and quite old then. His parents hid his 1st cousin Yanni Pepino a half Jew who escaped from a concentration camp. After the war a Russian tried to kill Yanni so he hid for 2 more years then went back to Dresden. Niki became Germany’s rep in the European Market and a general in NATO. Hs brother died in Russia. In Baltimore we wept at the bombing of Hamburg and Dresden. I’m 1/4 Palestinian Jewish not Ashkinasi. They were converts not real descendants of Moses etc tho they run Israel and are cruel to the real Jews there.

  88. Joe Barrett says:

    It goes without notice that the issei, nisei and sansei were not included in your POW records. It is no secret that they were prisoners of war during WWII held in Crystal City, Manzanar, Rowher, Poston, Tule Lake and several other places. We tend to live in denial that we had all these prison concentration camps.

  89. Jean says:

    My father was an American Army officer who served in North Africa and Europe during and for a time after World War II (he was born in America in Central Nebraska, but ethnically he was a “German from Russia”). I wasn’t born until a few years after the war. My second hometown in central Nebraska had a high population of German-American citizens before and during the war and a small prisoner of war camp housing captured German soldiers during the war. (Nebraska had several German prisoner of war camps, and many of those soldiers worked on surrounding farms or orchards). At that particular town there was also a U.S. bomber base and an Army ammunition plant, and near another nearby town there was another bomber base and a naval ammunition storage area. I always thought it was the perfect setting for a Jack Higgins WWII novel like his “The Eagle Has Landed,” but that wasn’t any of the book genres I write.) Many of those German POW soldiers had a better life in America than they had while fighting the war. A few even returned to America after going back to Germany, from what i’ve read, and at least one may have returned to marry a girl from eastern Nebraska and take over her father’s well known orchard in Nebraska City where he had worked during the war as a POW.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      WWII Was tough on everyone, but especially the Japanese-Americans who had to give up their homes and businesses and were put into POW camps. Although you Uncle Christian had a business in DC and al farm in MD, at least he didn’t have to give up any of it. I think that everyone in the US suffered in one way or another. Men with families were drafted, towns were on alert for unknown aircraft and even I, as an 8 year-old child, had nightmare of the Japanese invading. One nightmare had the Japanese burning the school, another had them on motorcycles terrorizing people. Yet, we lived in upstate NH and were much closer to Germany than to Japan.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      There were more than one movie about the POW camps in Germany. It would be nice to have a movie about German POW’s in American in contrast. The Town of Stark, NH had a reunion of the POW’s who had been interred there. This was held in 1996 and guards reunited with the POW’s. I have a book that was written about that POW camp.

  90. Lisa Lier says:

    There was a P.O.W. camp at Jackson barracks in New Orleans. I know they housed Italian soldiers not sure about German soldiers. A good friend of mine is Italian and is a descendant of one of those soldiers. He and another Soldier we’re allowed to leave the premises to work. That is how those two men met their future wives. At the end of the war they had to go back to Italy the ladies travelled to Italy also where they all married. The two couples return to New Orleans and the two former Italian pows became US citizens and raise their families in the New Orleans area. There are many descendants they are now of those two Italian POW’S!

  91. Gene Smith says:

    Thank you for that history story. Learned some new things today!

  92. John Q says:

    We live at Fort Clark Springs in Kinney County TX, it was during the war a Cavalry Post and they housed a number of German POW’s here as well.

  93. Frank Skrzyszowski says:

    It also helps that we didn’t suffer the ravages of war at home, the bombing, maiming killing, torture, fire bombed cities homelessness, starvation, all around cruelty. America was a relatively naive place, still amazingly is in this world of instant global politics due its insular nature and ego centric politics. Suffering the POWs here in the US was made easier by the absence of a war zone on our turf. Other countries in Europe, especially the russians which paid the bitterest price for victory were less generous, and one can imagine why. The germans hardly had been on boy scout holiday and good behaviour when marching and scorching into eastern Europe. i went to school in germany in the 70s and loved chatting up veterans and heard many many war stories and some fond recollections of POW time stateside

  94. Dennis Paul says:

    Does anyone have any information on the camp in Needles, California for Italian POW’s?

  95. dorothy fahey says:

    Dorchester Ma next to Carson Beach, they had a Italian prisoner of war camp and when war was over they made the barracks into housing for the veterans

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      Since the POW barracks were made into veterans housing at the end of the war, the barracks must have been quite livable which means that the POW’s didn’t suffer any hardships there, at least in housing.

  96. KEVIN K KAMPHAUS says:

    Per my aunt, my uncle was a POW guard in California. I haven’t been able to find his service records so I cannot verify.

  97. Wife’s grandfather Nickolas Schmoll is featured in novel, “POW Love Story” by R. Merial Martin. He was privileged to be housed at Camp Claiborne, La., and experienced all that you show in your article and more.

  98. Mike Austing says:

    I’d be interested in seeing a listing by towns of all WW II POW camps in the United States by name and location!

    • Doc Ellis says:

      There was holding area near Horseheads, NY just north of Elmira. I do not how many were held there but the facilities were used after the war as an industrial park. My father worked there for National Homes Corp, one of the first of prefab homes. I worked there for one summer before going to college.

  99. Mike Austing says:

    See the Fort Devens (MA) Museum page on Facebook; there was a POW camp there and a number of POWs that died there are buried there.

  100. I grew up in Princess Anne County, Virginia, My grade school was in an area near Oceana Naval Air Base. There had been a German prisoner camp across the road in field from the school. When it rained a coin or a military badge with a swastika (sp?) would wash up to the surface. At age 14 it was a great prize. After graduating from ROTC and commissioning in the army I was assigned to Third Armor in Germany. As a reserve officer I had to provide my own married housing. My landlord, Richard Ihrman, had been in that camp. He had been captured in Norway on a British commando raid along the coast years before Normandy and at age 18 he became a POW without ever firing his rifle. A gracious man with a nice family and we shared many stories as I worked for his farmer/employer during my summer months in high school.

  101. B Swahlen says:

    My mom lived across the road from a POW camp in Ft. Stanton NM, she was very young, but she still remembers, not having shoes or much to eat as her family was very poor. She always thought the prisoners lived in better conditions as they had a bowling alley and food to eat.

  102. Lynn P. Hagan says:

    We live about 10 miles from Camp Hearne in Hearne, TX. Great book written by Texas A&M history prof called Lone Star Stalag. Site has a museum and foundations and the auditorium still standing. One of the largest German POW camps in the USA. See their website for more info camphearne.com

  103. J Lancaster says:

    My grandparents lived in northeastern Pennsylvania and during the war my grandfather had two POWs working on his farm. When I visited once as a very young child, I remember them bringing in buckets after milking to empty into the separator, and that one of them liked to drink the leftover liquid after my grandmother finished churning butter. I was not aware of how much English they spoke – enough to greet a little girl – but they must have been able to communicate with my grandparents. They liked both of them very much and my grandfather kept in touch with them after they returned to Germany.

  104. Katherine Redman says:

    There was a POW camp about 1-2 miles away from where we live in Pasco County, Florida.

  105. Robert M Copeland says:

    My Dad was a Medical Service Corps officer at the POW camp at Douglas, Wyoming, his first posting after OCS. My Mother was very pregnant at the time, and went to Douglas (where her brother’s wife lived while he was in Europe). So I was born in Douglas, “to be near my mother” 😉 My parents always spoke warmly of friendships with the POWs, and heard from several of them after the war. People are always surprised when I tell them where I was born and why—Never heard of POW camps in the US!

  106. Eric says:

    My Uncle served at the Camp Atlanta (Atlanta, NE near Holdrege, NE). I believe that it was a large German POW Camp with 3000 German POWs, I am not quite sure if that is acurate. I believe the prisioners were hired out to nearby farmers. I believe I understand that the prisioners were all draftees and any hard core Nazis were sent elsewhere.

    • Bruce Schwenke says:

      Camp Atlanta was one of the biggest in the US. It had several satellite camps. I believe they processed over 200,000 POWs

  107. DianePaulsen says:

    My German grandfather was in the Afrika Corp., was captured and brought to Aliceville, AL. I have one letter from him while he was in the camp to my Mother who was living in Passau, Germany where she was born and raised. My Mother was in Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany in 1944/45 as a political dissident. She was Catholic and didn’t acknowledge an SS officer as he passed by her so they shipped her off. Without success, I have tried to find any documents of the prisoners in Aliceville, AL camp. My Mother did relate the fact that he loved the way the Americans treated them and she said he said they even served the prisoner’s beer with meals!

    • Bev Hart says:

      I read the novel Ravensbruck a couple of years ago. It took me about 4 weeks to finish it because I had to stop reading several times because it was so intense, so detailed in its descriptions of the conditions for the women there.

  108. Tom Judy says:

    Does anyone have knowledge of a prison camp near Lyndhurst, Virginia?

    • Bonnie Williams says:

      Hi-It is very possible, as there were several camps in the very southeast of Virginia. A good book is “Nazi Prisoners of War in America” by Arnold Krammer. Also has good resources in the back of the book. Try the International Red Cross as well if you are looking for someone.

    • Todd Bradley says:

      Ref Bonnie Williams’ comment. As one of his history students I helped Dr. Krammer research his book, and we found amazing stories. My home town of Kaufman TX had a camp. According to citizens from that time the US government was saying we were winning the war, but the POWs Kaufman saw were tan, healthy, and in good spirits. It made them wonder who was really winning. POWs mostly chopped cotton in Kaufman. A farmer told me that as he watched them work, a POW threw down his hoe and said, “Well, Hitler said by 1944 we would be in America. And here we are, chopping cotton.” The camp in Huntsville TX was in a dry county, yet the German POWs were given 3-2 beer (a weak version of beer). Many more great stories. Read the book.

  109. Marion (Bakos) Salvador says:

    I was 7 years old when Pearl Harbor brought us into the war. We lived about 10 minutes from Westover Army Base in Chicopee Massachusetts. Every morning I remember running out to watch the convoy of trucks carrying “German Prisoners of War pass past our house to the tobacco fields and how much I enjoyed waving to them as they went by. They returned my waves as enthusiastically as I gave them. Then, every evening I ran to wave to them as they were returning to the base. I have a sister (very pretty blonde) who is 9 years older than I and when she accompanied me with my waving, somehow the prisoners seemed ever more enthusiastic with laughter and whistling. I wonder why???!!! I was innocent and was not aware of the significance of the description of these friendly and very nice people as someone I shouldn’t be friendly back to them. Well, as I am prone to say, “In the dictionary, the definition for the word ‘war’, should be stupid, absurd, etc., etc.

  110. JC says:

    I recently visited the former POW camp located at Fort Stanton New Mexico. Very interesting to walk around the old building remnants constructed by the prisoners, they even have signage in German in them. It is a part of American history this I honestly did not no much about, and glad I had the opportunity to see it. Looks like when they were finished with it and sent the POWs back home, they just shut the doors and let nature take it course. The years have no been kind to those crumbling buildings but they are in fact, remains of the past.

  111. Gerald Andrews says:

    Is anyone aware of a prisoner camp for Japanes solders located in Griffith Park in Los Angeles during WW2?

  112. Kay Huchteman says:

    My husband’s grandparents had a farm, and the German POWs from Ft. Reno, OK worked on that farm. Both sons were in the service, and they were so happy to have the help. In addition, it gave our German Grandpa an opportunity to practice the native tongue of his parents.

  113. Mary C says:

    My high school senior year paper was written on this subject. I found it an even more intriguing topic after discovering my Maternal grandfather was a German Pow

  114. MSgt Richard S Miller Ret'd says:

    Research Camp Swift outside of Bastrop Texas’.

  115. John S says:

    A local farmer from outside of Westminster, MD shared with me pictures of POWs he had working for him. They were harvesting and processing wormseed on his farm. The camp was just north of Westminster.

  116. Laura Murray says:

    I am 81 years old and remember asking my Grandfather , when I was 16, how it was possible for the people of a civilized nation like Germany to have been converted so easily to the Nazi vision. Now, at my age watching the growing division of my country, the split in families, my own included, it gives me pause, when thinking about WWII; and all those that followed in the 20th century. The civil conversation here and memories of all of you have shared, give me hope. Has our country done somethings wrong? of course. But I remember blackouts, camouflage netting over hwy 101 in San Diego, food stamps and fear when I was young. And now I remember 9/11! Better we discuss how not to repeat the past.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      I am 84 years old and I also remember being so afraid on the East Coast. We, as children, discussed where we would hide if we were invaded. We had black-outs, had special black-out shades, certain foods were rationed (sugar, meat, etc., etc.) and I remember my grandmother asking for the meat bones at the meat market, diluting a can of milk with water, and mixing oleo margarine in a plastic bag with a color pellet. Today I cannot eat margarine and don’t like fried bologna. I remember having nightmares and running into my parent’s bedroom crying from the nightmares from an invasion. I can only imagine how very difficult and frightening it was for those in Europe and England who were living the horror.

    • Shannon Campbell says:

      I read all of these messages and yours was my favorite. I agree. Man (or Woman) that doesn’t learn from the past is doomed to repeat it. I truly hope our country can come back together. Not to sound too political but how about if we make our country kind again?

  117. Jim Bellina says:

    For an excellent read, a true story and soon to be released movie on POW camps in the US, read Playing with the Enemy, by Gary Moore. A good “prequel” to read is U-505, about the capture of this U-boat (and the significant “coding device” that was captured), and the German sailors who ended up in a “secret” camp in LA.

    • Pete Siegel says:

      “The Train to Crystal City” by Jan Jarboe Russell is an excellent account of the internment camp at Crystal City, Texas.

    • Jerry S says:

      That camp was in the town of Ruston in north Louisiana. The captured U-boat is in the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago. Fascinating exhibit well worth the trip.

  118. Joyce Slatner says:

    I live West if I-94 in Kenosha County. There was a prisoner of war camp in Brighton, Wisconsin. The men lived on what is now a camp, but at the time was owned by the Fox Family. I was told the prisoners worked on Dairy farms in the area. They seemed to be liked, trusted to some degree.

  119. Don says:

    They had German POW’s in western NY. They built many of the
    Pavilion’s and structures in Hamlin Beach State Park and some of the bridges, buildings &a walkways in Letchworth State Park. Interesting local stories of the pow’s going shopping in the town and villages.

  120. Julia Lewis says:

    My father was a guard at a POW camp near Roanoke, VA but I don’t know the name of it. I wish I could ask him about it. He didn’t speak of his war experiences much and I didn’t know what to ask.

  121. sarah mccourt says:

    Does anyone know if there was a pow camp in north philadelphia around 22nd and lehigh sts. Someone said there was some kind of camp there.

    • Valerie von Mach Choudhury says:

      My cousin Niki surrendered to the Americans in Italy bec the Italians wanted to kill him and he had many American friends and relatives. His brother also very young died in Russia, weather shot or frozen to death or starved to death we will never know. Hitler sent them there in Spring uniforms and wouldn’t let them retreat and no one came with supplies or winter uniforms. There was only a year difference in age from Niki. Niki von Mach later became a general in NATO, a German diplomat in India and a representative for Germany in the European Market. He died in his 90s surrounded by his family in Belgium

  122. John Osborne says:

    I lived a half a block north of a national cemetery at Limekiln Pike and Haines St. Where POW’s we’re digging graves. The cemetery had a large iron fence around it and the prisoners did not approach. There were gun towers at the corners. I was 5 or six years old. This cemetery was in the West Oak Lane or Germantown neighbored section of Philadelphia, PA. God bless the fallen and the POW’s who learned to love the USA.

  123. Does anyone know about the camp at what was Fort Jackson, SC? I have only found a little info so far and I had a great uncle there. I sure is difficult to get info on German soldiers.

  124. Diane Sperling says:

    Where would someone go to find info on POW camps in Canada during the Second World War? My father worked at Kapuskasing, Ontario.

    • John Bracchi says:

      There were POW camps and there were also internee camps filled with alien Germans and alien Italians living in the UK. In 1940 Chruchill said, “Round ’em up!” and they were sent to Canada for the duration of the war. I have shirt-tail Italian relatives who were on the S. S. Arandora Star which was filled with over 1500 of those alien POWs and while on its way to Canada it was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland and nearly half of passengers and crew were drowned on 2 Jul 1940. This is resident alien “solution” was probably where FDR got the idea to round up the Japanese and send them off to camps.
      The survivors of the Arandora Star were sent to Australia a couple of weeks later. Stories by survivors from there reported that conditions on the ship and at the camps were very hard and corruption was rife among the keepers.
      I also have a family connection who was being sent to Canada and his brother was on the Arandora Star list. Gino got his brother transferred to his ship.

  125. William Phillips says:

    Many years ago I met an old guy in Phoenix who was a POW and ended up in a camp in the UP of Michigan. Upon their arrival to the camp they were marched into the dining hall for their first meal. Each table had a large cans of peanut butter and jam, and loaves of white bread. When the meal came out it was fried chicken and mashed potatoes. He said they were immediately concerned and fearful thinking this was a prelude to being executed, or that the food was poisoned. Then some of the other POWs who had been at the camp came in and said “No! This is the way we eat here. The food here is wonderful!” Back in the war they had been eating cold cabbage soup. He said he vowed then and there that he was going to live in the US after the war…and he did so.

  126. Katherine Janousky says:

    According to my father who immigrated from Germany in the early 30’s, one of his brothers who fought for the Nazi’s in WWII was captured and interred in a POW camp in Michigan. My dad has long since passed away and this is all the information I have. I have tried to find lists of the German POWs held in any of the Michigan camps to add to my father’s and uncle’s story, but haven’t had any luck yet. Where might I search for that information?

  127. Pete Siegel says:

    I think we treated the POWs better than the U.S. citizens of German and Japanese descent held in the internment camps.

  128. Floyd Ostrom says:

    The information that you have provided is quite interesting, although I do believe there are some important sites of POW camps missing, especially in Michigan. By my research, there were 5 POW camps in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in that era, the largest possibly being the one in Au Train. This is a harsh environment, especially in the winter. I did not even know this fact of any POW camps being anywhere in Michigan until reading a novel by John Smollens, entitled Wolf’s Mouth, which was quite good by the way. While not being a true Yooper, originally from Detroit and considered a troll by the Yoopers, I have managed to tour the whole UP of Michigan, and it is fascinating in it’s beauty. I wish I had known about the Au Train history prior to my last visit, as I would like to have explored the town, as I do not believe there are many remnants of the camp.

    • Floyd Ostrom says:

      Sherry Nash, Your president “bone spur” deserves more bashing than any President I can remember. I am 75 years old, and have never seen anything like this abomination in the Oval Office. As for the interment of American citizens of Japanese and German and Italian descent, just because of their heritage, denying the fact that they were American citizens, that is an offense that I am sure that even FDR would be regretting. I now live in Texas and discovered an interesting book entitled “The Train to Crystal City”, about an internment camp near the border area of Texas. Read it, as it is a very informative look at what was done to these American citizens during WWII. And now, what is being done to asylum seekers and immigrants in general along the border, is not what I believe America represents! Inhumane treatment of anyone is not what America should ever be exhibiting, and that is exactly what is happening to families and children on the border.

  129. Pat Mathews says:

    My family lived near a POW camp in Rillito, Az. It was near the railroad tracks where we lived. My older sisters remember it but I was too small. At first it was mainly Italians, but when Italy changed sides, they were sent home, then it was mainly Germans. My sisters were afraid to get too close. The prisoners would call out “Lif, Lif!” What they wanted was Life magazine or any kind of magazine.
    The prisoners would pick cotton like the locals did, but not in the same fields.

  130. Marsha Hartley Suzuki says:

    My husband’s family was interned in Tule Lake Internment Camp, CA in early 1942. They were fruit and rice farmers of Japanese descent and lost all their property and savings. They were considered to be “enemy aliens” even though they were born in the United States and were citizens. Tule Lake Camp was known to have agitators who staged many protests about their treatment. Those “No-No” boys were arrested and sent to the Tule Lake POW camp for Italian POW’s on the other side of town. While there, the status of these men changed from internees to POW’s. They built the barracks for the Italian POWs, cooked the food, cleaned the camp, had gardens. For some reason they were treated and fed better than their families at the Internment Camps. I did not learn of these camps in school. I am married to a Japanese-American son of former internees and have had many long talks with my mother-in-law and her relatives.

    • Jack LaPeer says:

      There is no question in my (74yr old) mind that the interment of Japanese – American citizens after Pearl Harbor, was a great injustice, but partly understandable given the times. As I understand it and to their honor and credit, some fought as GI’s in Italy later on during the war and maybe other European theaters, too. Their service to our country during that war has helped illuminate that injustice and I honor their memory just as well as my dad’s (Army Air Corp),his brother (Navy) and my father-in-law (Army).

  131. Dolores P Kauffman says:

    My husband was an MP during WW11. He was stationed at POW camp Weingarten, Farmington, Missouri. Some Italian POW’s were sent to my small home town along the Missouri River to work in the boat yards. This is where I met this tall, good looking young man (from California) who would become my husband. When we married in Feb 1945 one of the Italian POW’s gave us his rosery. We were not Catholic but, he was. It was his most prized possession & he appreciated his POW treatment that he was willing to give it up, just to show us of his appreciation I was impressed at how much the POW’s liked not only our country but, their treatment as POW’s. They constantly mentioned their wish to stay here after the war would end. It finally ended & my MP husband’s last service to our country ended when he was one of the POW’s that sailed the Ocean blue to return them to their home country,

  132. Penny says:

    My Mother remember the German coming to Kinsey, Montana to work on the farms. I do not see any of the camps in Montana. I was just wondering if they came to Kinsey where the POWs would have came from.

    • R W Patterson says:

      In MT history there are some articles about them. I was 9 years old when the war started. I know that Chinook and other places along the Milk River Valley where they raised sugar beets had them. They used them for hoeing the beets.

    • Harry House says:

      Thee were three satellite bases attached to Great Falls Army Air Corps. One in Lewiston, Cutbank and Glasgow MT.
      They may have come to your area from Glasgow. They worked around Nashua,Mt where my mother was raised.

  133. Truman Powell says:

    Camp Fannin, just north of Tyler, Texas was used to train an Army Division. When they left it was in a hurry. A tank, 50 cal MG and munitions have been found over the years.

    There’s a monument in the front of UT Health Center on Hwy 271 where it intersects with Hwy 155.

    When the Army left, it became a German POW Camp and the POWs lived in the barracks and used all the facilities the U.S. soldiers did.

    Some barracks still standing, some were sold and moved around East Texas and used for stores, warehouses and one home that I know of. The original laundry building became a refrigerated rose packing plant.

    Off he subject, but today I found that there were Japanese Americans interred in Arkansas during WWII.

    • Marsha Hartley Suzuki says:

      Truman Powell: FYI There were 10 WRA Concentration Camps, one WRA Prison Camp, 15 Temporary Concentration Camps, and 18 Department of Justice Interment Camps across the United States. Four of those DOJ camps were in Texas.

  134. Marsha Hartley Suzuki says:

    Jack La Peer: My husband and I are Viet Nam vets. We both were Physical Therapists. You might be interested to learn that my father was sent to Germany from Ft. Snelling in Mpls, MN. He was part of the liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. My father-in-law, a Japanese American from Northern CA, was DRAFTED by the US Army in March, 1941, nine months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was in a fully integrated Company (Asian/white) that was supposed to translate Imperial Army war memos and orders. When 7 Dec 1941 happened, the Army did not know what to do with these draftees so gave them a choice: take a honorable discharge and enter the camps with their families, or stay in the service, but be transferred to any place west of CA. He chose the second and was sent to Ft. Snelling. My husband’s parents and mine were married at Ft. Snelling. Thirty years later, I married and those two old-time vets had LOTS to talk about.

  135. Gerald Andrews says:

    Prior to Dec. 7, 1941, our family lived across the road from a Japinese family who raised carrots on their farm. I was 10 years old and remember having dinner at there house several times I suspect it was because we did not have food in our house. The house/ farm was located at the intersection of Lankershim Blvd. and Kittrige St. North Hollywood, Ca. I have never forgotten them and wonder what was there names and what happened to them.

    • CFG says:

      You might be able to find their names on old 1940 census records through Ancestry.com, Family Search or at the Library of Congress (which is usually available on line). Search for your family’s name for that location.
      Good Luck

  136. Daniel Wabaunasee says:

    My father was a prisoner of war twice once in 1942 were he escaped and again in 1944 and was beaten tortured starved and toward the end of the war was put on a force March where if you were to slow or fell 0ut you were shot he was freed by the pradazons whom he fought with until meeting up with Americas. Reading those stories disturbed me do on to others as you’d have done to you America should have treated them the same.

  137. Lola Purvis says:

    I heard there was a POW camp between Jena and Jonesville, LA near Whitehall. I have always wanted to know more about whether that is true.

  138. Pataman says:

    I understand there was a POW camp in the desert in Arizona. They didn’t have to worry about escapees as they were in the middle of the desert so couldn’t get very far before getting really thirsty and, in the summer, burned to a crisp.
    Just a story I heard.

  139. John f Bolz says:

    If anyone interested in POW Camp Papago in Phoenix Az It is the site of the Largest German POW escape on Xmas eve 1944 There is a book The Faustball Tunnel by John Hammond Moore Also a free article in Phoenix New Times written by Robert L. Pela , Called Flight From Phoenix

  140. ..R W Patterson says:

    Montana had POW Camps also during the war. Glasgow Air Base a B17 training base, which was just above a hill on the north side of the town. They used for farm labor, they were feed there noon meal by the farms used them. I bread that some of them feed them good and others didn’t. I’m not sure when the brought them in but it had to be about 1943. I understand that they had some radical Nazi that kept the POW’s in line making sure they didn’t get to friendly with Americans.

  141. Kenny Marshall says:

    The German prisoners were treated better than the black servicemen that were serving and fighting for our country.
    In the southern part of the country they were allowed to eat in restaurants that black servicemen were banned from eating.

  142. D Zook says:

    The barracks were still standing in Hoopeston Illinois when I was growing up in 60s and housed migrant labor to work in the asparagus, tomato and other fields.

  143. Anthony E Parr says:

    My great aunt was a Dr. in the Wehrmacht and after desertion was brought to the US where she met and married my Great Uncle, also a Dr. My father a young teenager during the war worked in the fields with German POWs.

  144. Clara Brock says:

    There was a German POW camp in Windsor, Sonoma County ,California. The local farmers would pick up a flat bed truck load usually with one or two guards and take them to work in the orchards picking fruit. The also picked hops. The Windsor Museum & Historical Society has a display with pictures and articles. There are some building foundations still visible but most of the area is now houses.

    • Cindy CS says:

      Thanks, Clara Brock, for this info. I live in Santa Rosa and I’m going to check this museum out. I had no idea!

  145. Patrick A Lowe says:

    Ft Lawton,, located next to an upscale residential area of Seattle, WA, held two barracks of Italian POWs during WW2. After Italy capitulated and switched sides, the Italian prisoners were given greater freedom and could romantically date U.S. females who lived near-by. A group of ‘negro’ soldiers, as the Army was segregated by race at that time, became emotionally upset about how they were treated by the same women (perhaps as 2nd class individuals), and physically assaulted one of the Italian barracks, killing two of the prisoners. The murdered Italian prisoners are now buried in Ft Lawton’s U.S. Army Cemetary at Ft Lawton in Seattle, WA.

  146. Joan Donohue says:

    While vacationing in Rome years ago, the hotel doorman told us he was an Italian prisoner of war in California, and that it was nice. I asked my mom later how could it have been nice, and she said “Oh, they weren’t treated badly”.

  147. Terrance Strater says:

    Ft. McClellan in Alabama was a German POW camp . I remember seeing the POW cemetery there.

  148. Susan Hood Tyra says:

    My uncle, capt. Charles Roydon Hood, was stationed at one of these German POW camps during WWII. I have several oil paintings presented to him by one of the prisoners hang proudly in my home. I have always wondered what camp my uncle so proudly served in. The oils are signed so I have a last name only. Any help available in my search would be appreciated.

  149. Ralph Cicora says:

    These comments are consistent with an experience I had in Germany in 1986. My wife and I were having a glass of wine in a wine cellar along the Mosel River, when two men approached our table. They asked if we were Americans, and if they could speak with us. We didn’t know what to think, but we said, “OK.” They told us that they had been POW’s in WWII. They were required to do farm work near a POW camp in Colorado. They said that they had been treated very well, and had no desire to escape. After the war ended, while they were waiting to be returned to Germany, they were invited to Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas. They kept in touch with their new friends and visited each other over the years. Even their children became friends, wrote back and forth and visited each other. I wrote an article about this which was published in the May, 2019, issue of Catholic Digest; it’s called, “Enemies No More.”

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      What a wonderful story. We lived in Germany for four years (1970-1974) while my husband was stationed there. The majority of Germans accept the U.S. and have learned to speak English with them. Of course, there are a few who are still very angry. We traveled with friends in Germany from Bitburg A.B. where we were all stationed to Weisbaden (she was a German who married an American G.I. years ago) and when we returned to base after the trip, we were informed that a German citizen had reported us to authorities for passing in a no-passing zone. The German woman who was with us on the trip said that it was not true. However, the military attorney told us to pay the fine and let it go, so we did. Aside from that incident, we really loved living in Germany and traveling throughout Europe.

    • Valerie von Mach says:

      I was in East Germany when the wall came down. Not all East Grmans were friendly to touring Americans even those like me, who was of German ancestry and whose cousins were in the German army, Oberleutenent and Oberst. 1st lieutenants and colonels and one admiral, whose ship went down and one 1st lieutenant died in Russia. One became a general in NATO.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      You must have some wonderful stories to tell about your relatives of the WWII era. I would love to hear them or read about them.

  150. Ralph Brandt says:

    I was born late 1943 but rememeber prisoners being marched past our home about 1/2 mile from the Hunters Run train station, Cumberland County PA about 20 miles from Harrisburg. They were marched about a mile up route 34, 7 miles on the Pine Grove Road and then about a mile up Miochaux Road to the camp. My dad worked at Adams Apple in Apsers PA, now Duffy Mott a subsidiary of Canteberry Schwepps. He was a mechanic at the plant but also drove a truck from our home to the camp, picked up prisoners each day, then returned them to the camp each night. One of those was a 38 year old prisoner Georg Hertig who worked with my dad. He was hanged by fellow prisoners and is burried at Camp Meade. The military called it a suicide in spite of his hands being tied behind his back The prisoners worked in farms, factories and forests, yes, they cut trees. I have done newspaper searches and some of this is from memory. The repartiation was started about 2/46 and most were gone by planting time. Local farmers were complaining of the loss of work force, that year was the beginning of migrants, mostly from Jamacia and Puerto Rica.

  151. ralph Brandt says:

    One of the Geneva requiements was the prisoner was to billited in a climate near to that of the point of capture. South Central PA was certianly close to that of France/Germany.

  152. ralph brandt says:

    The prison camps are open history although some like Michaux near Pine Grove Furnace in PA was almost systematically destroyed by the military. What is not well known are the internment camps, these were used by the government in both WW1 and WW2. In WW1 about 10,000 Americans of German origin and 3000 of Austrian origin and in WW2 about 11,000 of German origin and 3000 of Italian origin were interrred, note these were mostly AMERICAN citizens! And Oh, BTW, thw 110,000 of Japanese origin who were sent to the cold and hot of Kansas and Nebraska. Heil Hitler, heil Woodrow Wilson, heil FDR. I have studied this, it is covered in my book, Amassing Power, Oppressive Governments… These internments were done with no charges…. JUst suspicion.

    • John l. says:

      Well there was the “Niihau incident” that occurred immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, where a crash-landed Japanese pilot received help in escaping detention and in destroying sensitive documents from Japanese-Americans living on the small U.S. island of Niihau. It does not seem entirely unreasonable to me, in times of war, to want to head off bigger incidents before they occurred. I don’t deny that a serious injustice was done to many Japanese-Americans in being detained during the war, but I think we need to view things in context. We also need to consider what the alternative solutions might have been, had it actually been a case of “Heil FDR” as you say. How exactly could we have expected Hitler to have dealt with a problem of this nature? By temporary detention? Or by brutal and permanent extermination? Somebody needs to get real here… comparisons with Adolf Hitler are delusional.

    • Sherry Nash says:

      I couldn’t agree with you more

  153. Vincent E. Smith III says:

    My grand father used German POWs on his farm near El Paso during World War II. I remember him telling me they were grateful for the humane treatment and food.

    • Peter Wood says:

      I think food is something that people forget. Due to the blockade, by the Allied Navy, food (in Europe) was in very short supply.

      Even in the UK, with the help of the US, everything was rationed. This is one week’s strictly enforced ration for an adult in the UK:

      Bacon & Ham 4 oz
      Other meat value of 1 shilling and 2 pence (equivalent to 2 chops)
      Butter 2 oz
      Cheese 2 oz
      Margarine 4 oz
      Cooking fat 4 oz
      Milk 3 pints
      Sugar 8 oz
      Preserves 1 lb every 2 months
      Tea 2 oz
      Eggs 1 fresh egg (plus allowance of dried egg)
      Sweets 12 oz every 4 weeks

      You had to queue for everything. Remember that the Axis populace had even less. In Germany, bread was ‘bulked out’ with sawdust and the coffee substitute was made from acorns.

  154. Mary Pritchard says:

    During WWII, there was a German POW camp outside Childress, TX. The weather in the Texas Panhandle was different in the 1940s than that of today. Winters were colder longer; sandstorms raged off and on; and wind blew fiercely most of the time. Later, when I married and had children, we lived in Dallas, but my parents still lived in the Panhandle, and we visited often so our children experienced some of that extreme weather. One day I told my youngest daughter about the POW camp in Childress during WWII. “And they said we didn’t torture prisoners!” was her assessment.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      You can tell your daughter that the POW prisoners in American prisons were not tortured, but that they had been captured when they were shooting at Americans, so keeping them in a POW prison during the war simply made sure that they were not going to shoot any American soldiers. Also, at the end of the war they were sent back to their own country There were even some POW’s who did not want to return to their own country and some of them made friends with Americans while they were POW’s. The American POW camps were much different than the German POW or Japanese POW camps in other countries..

  155. Hoda Michael says:

    It’s not listed on here but there was a labor camp in Syosset N.Y. On Long Island.

  156. CAROL VANDERHOFF says:

    During WWII, German POWs lived on German speaking farms outside Louisville, KY. My mother said the POWs at the Arrowhead farm ate at the same table as the family.

    The farm families needed the help, and the POWs were happy for a good place to live.

  157. Rebecca Guy says:

    These first hand accounts are very interesting! Having been a small child during WWII I do recall the rationing. My father drove around all over the area to try to buy some tires for our one vehicle he drove to work. The tires were “may pops” but he could not get even one tire anywhere. I sensed his fears.
    My father drank Postum instead of coffee [I looked it up online and there it was, even in a jar similar to the one I remember from the early 1940s. I didn’t think it tasted good enough to survive the war!!! Also margarine instead of butter. It was my job to break the little color capsule and mix it up with the WHITE margarine because margarine could not be sold in the same form and color as butter. We were taught in school that there was “no difference whatsoever in margarine and butter.” We now know differently. But everything was geared toward support of the war effort. We even bought stamps for our savings bond book INSIDE the classroom. We pledged allegiance every morning and sang the “Star Spangled Banner.” There were LOTS of parades downtown featuring the military bases in our area: Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Patriotism was instilled and we carried out our part with PRIDE in our country.

    • Don Gardner says:

      You just described my memories of WWII deprivations. However, with one uncle in Army infantry, one in the Army Air Corps, and the other in the Seabees, we felt no real deprivation….just a commitment to support those willing to risk their lives to preserve freedom.

    • Sounds like my childhood old Baltimore but I lived in an ethnic German/Polish neighborhood near where the ships came in and I even went on a captured German sub. My mother’s cousins fought for Grmany and we felt sad when Hamburg and Dresden were fire bombed. We had family there and also 5 in the Consentraition camps.

    • ralph Brandt says:

      Few are aware of some of the things that were done. My dad was the senior maintenance in a food processing plant. His job was deemed critical to the war effort, he was 30 when we entered the war and his company was able to get him deferred. He could not leave the job, essentially it was like being drafted, he would have been picked up if he left the job. The company took this as a perk from them, in August 1945 he was at the same wage as on December 1941. They didn;t have to give him a raise, he didn;t get one. My mom, sewing canvass at Maslands in Carlisle Pa in 1944 was making about double an hour as he was as the senior maintenance. With the war inflation, we would have been in trouble without her pay. He had three brothers and 2 brothers in law fighting in France and North Africa, on KIA, 2 purple hearts and i with cluster. I mentioned Georg Hertig earler, a German prisoner, 38 years old with several kids in Germany, who was killed at the plant. My dad called him a mechanic and trouble shooter, and every reference i can remember was, indicated a friend. I can remember emotion when he talked about it later, the man was hanged in a closet with his hands behind his back, called a suicide. I have tried unsuccessfully to find his family. If anyone has a clue or a place to start, tell me. I could close a loose end. .

      A couple things, Prisoners brought here were well treated. Prosiners in Germany for the most part were not MISTREATED, the treatment was far worse for American prisoners in Germany but the resources were not as good, and the japanese just plain mistreated and killed prisoners.

    • Peter Wood says:

      Georg HARTIG – (note spelling) death by hanging (suicide) on 1st November 1944.

      Father Hartmann Hartig

      Mother Anna Kunigunde Hartig

      Copies of death certificate (by USA and Germany) are on Ancestry

    • Valerie von Mach choudhury says:

      My great grandfather committed suicide because he couldn’t go back to Germany bec he came to America to avoid the Franco-Prussian War. He left his widow with 8 children. She came from an old American family. Ancestor was Thomas Betts, an English sailor in Jamestown in 1519. Her father Orville Betts fought for the Confederacy with the S Carolina 1st Division and was imprisoned until 1873 for refusing to recognize the Union. He signed up in Nashville in 1861. My father’s side were Connecticut Yankees and fought in the American Revolution and the against the South. We no longer associated w them when I was 9.

    • Peter Wood says:

      My German isn’t great, sadly – but I can see Georg was married to Elisabetha Margarete Hartig and the couple lived in Wixhausen, Hessen (Hesse).

      Hopefully this helps move you forwards a bit.

    • ralph Brandt says:

      Thanks I have ancestry… I will start with it.

  158. Winnie Clements Begin says:

    During WWII an Italian Prisoner of War camp was established in Jesup, GA, I was a teen at the time, but I recall that the prisoners seemed to be glad to be there, & after the war some came back to visit. They found the locals to be very friendly. Jesup was a small town in South Georgia.

  159. John Clyburn says:

    Read a great true book ” Playing with the Enemy”. U-Boat crew held by US Navy to keep secret the German codes captured after their U-Boat was captured. Book is about a sailor who taught the German Crew BASEBALL to keep them occupied.

  160. Wallace Haynes says:

    My wife saw German prisoners in Idaho when she was young. I saw German prisoners in Maryland when I was young. All of the prisoners appeared to be happy and healthy behind the barbed wire. Occasionally, some German prisoners were mistreated by their American captors who didn’t obey the rules. Very occasionally, some American prisoners were treated kindly by their enemy captors who didn’t obey their rules. The lesson for our enemies in future wars is for them to surrender rather than fight. The lesson for our soldiers is to fight to the death rather than surrender.

  161. CHRISTA F LEBOEUF says:

    My grandfather was a German POW. All I know is that he arrived in Boston and the camp commander was a mean person. He was moved from that camp and sent across the northern states and back across the southern states to work in the fields. He mentioned picking various crops such as peas and cotton. After that first camp, he said all the other camps were fine. He and the other POWs were treated and fed well. My grandmother was surprised when he returned because he had gained weight during his imprisonment while POWs returning from other countries were thin and in ill health. He wanted to stay in the US but could not, as he would not be able to bring his wife and children (one was my mom) over to join him.

    • Peter Wood says:

      In the UK, in 1946, 25% of the agricultural labour were PoWs. It is small wonder that many complained they were being used as slave labour. Some PoWs went on strike, demanded more money, or refused to work.

      Today I found a newspaper article where a British man went into his pigeon coup and found a stray pigeon. Attached to the pigeon’s leg was a message from a group of PoWs who stated “We want to go home.” It was signed by a dozen of the prisoners – and actually led to a statement in the House of Commons, in 1947, by a Minister who replied, “We can’t let them [the PoWs] go home, as we need them on the farms.”

      Many UK farmers (and I suspect US farmers) made up, somewhat, for the poor pay, by feeding ‘their’ PoWs. It was frowned upon, by the authorities, but was widespread.

      The last of the UK’s PoWs were sent home in 1948.

      Russia kept their German PoWs for a LOT longer, as I am sure many are aware.

      I’m sorry, but I don’t know the statistics for the USA.

    • Mark Keyser says:

      Yes, one of my second cousins was captured by the Russians at Stalingrad at the beginning of 1943. He was released 13 years later and was lucky to have made it home.

    • Valerie von Mach says:

      Many German POWS were worked to death in Russia. I knew of the father of a friend, who was in the Luftwaffe, who committed suicide on his last bullet after shooting Asiatic Russian in East Prussia. They were the ignorant ones, who drank out of German toilets like the dogs they were. Unfortunately they raped even girl children. Abortion was justified and I am a Catholic.

  162. Dean Hawkins says:

    There was a POW camp in Ft. Worth,Tarrant Co, Texas in the southern part of the city next to the Kimbell Food Co. My aunt lived in a house next to the fence that divided the property. When we visited her, we would watch the guards marching around the fence with guns. I don’t have any information on the compound. I was about 8-9 yrs old at the time.
    Also, there was another POW camp in Cleburne, Johnson Co, Texas south of where we lived. You could see the compound driving down Highway 67. We lived in Burleson, Johnson Co, Texas which was between the two camps.

  163. Ann Marie Carlton says:

    When my husband worked with the US State Department and assigned to West Germany in the late 1960s, he would recount how many times he and his co-workers would go into a German bar and order a beer or whatever. Most of the time, like 9x out of 10, someone would come up to them and say, “American? I was prisoner of war in America. Let me buy your beer/meal (whatever)!” They were so grateful to have been POW in US and were pleased to run into Americans.

    • Thomas Young says:

      I was stationed at three different locations in Germany 1962-1965 while in the U.S. Army. We were not on military bases, but lived with the Germans. Met a German vet who had been a guest at a prison camp at Bastrop, LA, my hometown. He was very great-full for the treatment he received there. Numerous times, too many to remember, we were given free beer and/or meals when someone found out we were Americans.

  164. Theron P. Snell says:

    My father was a member of the 978th Engineer Maintenance Company trained at Camp McCoy, WI in late 1942-43. The Camp held both German and Japanese prisoners. He recalled how the Germans (Afrika Corps) really ‘milked’ their work details.

  165. WHITTIER says:

    There is the story of a German immigrant (Commercial Sea Captain) who lived in the Mobile, AL area. Before the war involved the USA, he wanted to make one last trip to Germany to see his family and possibly bring them to America. While in Germany, he was detained and forced into the German Submarine corps, a submarine captain. Because he was familiar with the many ports and waters in the Gulf of Mexico, he was assigned to blow up liberty ships leaving the ports along the US Gulf Coast headed for France and England.
    As the war turned around and Germany was losing, he beached his submarine on the shallow shoals near Mobile, AL. The crew surrendered dressed in civilian clothes, and when “frisked”, many of the crew had used theater tickets in their pockets. The admitted that they were frequently taking shore leave in Mobile. As it was later determined, the crew did, in fact, sink much shipping of supplies to Europe, but radioed to targeted ships that they would be given time to abandon their ship and go back ashore before their ship was torpedoed. Thus, the German Sub Captain radioed back to Germany their presumed “kills” but neglected to give the humanitarian details. Many of the crew had learned some conversational English, and had managed to even meet American girlfriends. After interrogated and it was learned how they managed to “do their duty” as German navy, but spared American Liberty Ship lives, they were well treated as POWs until released at the end of the war. We are told, most of these submarine crew members, applied and received American citizenship after the war and married American girls. The girls (old ladies now) commented on how handsome and well-mannered the POWs were on the POW work/prison trucks — some recall well groomed blonde hair blue eyes and hard workers. Just a happy ending for a horrible war.

    • Peter Wood says:

      Nice story – but completely rubbish. This did NOT happen for dozens of reasons. In fact you’ve even managed to further embellish an old wives tale – congratulations.

  166. Andrea Brown says:

    There was a POW camp in Hayward, WI for Italians. As a child I lived nearby and knew of it, but not many details. I do think the POWs worked for the WI Conservation Dept as the camp was on their land where they maintained a nursery for growing trees later to be planted thoughout Wisconsin. The Conservation Dept also allowed victory garden plots for the local people…my dad included.

  167. SG says:

    Captured German officers were kept at the Greenbrier in WV; Japanese officers at the Bedford Springs Hotel in PA. There were no guards because conditions were too luxurious to leave.

    • Nancy L Auclair says:

      Wow!! I’m sure the accommodations were better than they would have received in their home country. Thanks for this info.

    • ralph Brandt says:

      Based on what i have gleened from varous sources the camps for the most part were lightly guarded. Prisoners were in wire fences but the guard contingent was light except in camps that held the more militants. The one at Michaux, Pine Grove Furnace PA, that is about 30 miles from Harrisburg, supplied a work force in farms, factories and fields. My dad transported prisoners from there to the Adams Apple plant in Aspers PA (note, a plant that processed many farm products and located in Adams County). These were scattered over the plant in various jobs, certailly not under serious guard. Others were in fields, some were in forests cutting trees with saws and axes…. We lived at Hunters Run near the railroad statioin – initially prisoners were taken off the train there, marched up State Route 34 to pine grove road, then to Michaux road and then camp, about 10 miles. Later they stopped the train at the Pine Grove Crossing and took the prisoners off there, saving a 1 1/2 mile hike and avoiding passing the Beam boys who lived next door to me who went out and threw stones at the prisoners.

  168. ralph brandt says:

    One question out to anyone… The Carlisle PA historical society has a booklet that calls the Michaux PA camp a “Guntameno” – a secret prisoneer of war camp. Not so, no way. But there are rumors that there was a secret camp in the area, a place called Kings Gap, the old C H Masland estate, a lavish stone mansion on on the mountain near Carlisle. The story makes sense – high ranking prisoners were held there, as opposed to average soldiers at Michaux, and they were taken to the Army War College at Carlisle PA for ‘interrogation” which considted of good dinners with American Officers…. These were out of the war long enough to not have current information but what we beeing gleened was thought and strategy.. Has enyone heard about this?

    • Peter Wood says:

      Most of the prisoners were questioned in specialist places in the UK, prior to D-Day. After June 1944, they were initially questioned at bases in France and Germany (and other countries, depending on the theatre of war in which they were captured).

      Depending on the category of prisoner (cooperator to ardent fascist), it was then decided on which camp they would be sent. Remember that the majority of prisoners were first sent to, and held in, UK PoW Camps. Then they were shipped to the USA and other countries (Canada and Australia etc etc).

      As you state, by the time they reached the USA and other faraway countries, any useful information would be out of date.

  169. John Overby says:

    I attended 4-H camp for two summers at the POW site in Crossville, TN. The second year the grounds keeper led some of the campers on a tour of the POW grounds explaining how the camp worked and how the Germans despised the Italians after Italy surrendered. He told only one prisoner escaped and no one knew how. When we got back to the old gym, there was a former German POW present who came to visit the camp. He discussed the prison life and of course someone asked him if he knew how the one prisoner escaped. He said yes, it was a Lt. Colonel who had worked on local farms and gathered civilian American clothes. He spoke fluent English, hopped on the back of the garbage truck and rode out of camp saying see you all tomorrow.

  170. Larry Morphis says:

    around 1981 my wife and I were touring Ireland and went to visit the Great Skellig Island on a small fishing boat. The captain spoke Irish and the other passengers were a few kids from the continent and an older cpl who spoke German. We were left to explore the island we eventually shared our lunch with the cpl who had brought nothing. I had some German from college and he had some English so we conversed. I asked where he lived. Austria he replied. I said I had been there and really liked it. I asked him if he had ever visited the USA. He replied “Yes, I was a POW in Peoria, Illinois”.

  171. William J. "Bill" Getson says:

    Question/?? Was there a POW camp in the Pocono Mountains of PA, near TOBYHANNA, PA where either German or Italian prisoners were held?

    I always thought there was.

    What’s the truth?

    William J. “Bill Getson”
    Staff Sgt Korean War 1952 1955.