German WW II POW Camps in the U.S.

dilettante

dilettante

Well-known Member
Location
Michigan
We don't hear much about this, and I'm not sure I ever did. Over 500 POW camps. The prisoners were put to work.

 

When we went to East Germany when I was in high school, one of the employees at a hotel we stayed at told my mother he had been in a U.S. camp. He told her he was treated well. That's all I would know.
 
I remember my parents talking about German PWs doing farmwork for them, which was in the tobacco fields, etc. Apparently, the guard(s) simply sat down and slept most of the time.
 
My grandfather on my momā€™s side was a POW from 5 to 6 years. I never met him. He died before I was born. We werenā€™t allowed to talk about him.
 
While stationed at March A.F.B., in California, we lived in military housing called Arnold Heights.
If I stood in our backyard, we could see the concert roads and foundations of Camp Haan.
It housed 1,200 Italian POWs.
I walked our dog along the roads and the boys enjoyed exploring the site.
 
"Even as reports of the Nazisā€™ persecution of Jews began to make their way into American newspapers, Congress hesitated to take action to help refugees for fear of public backlash. Most American voters supported the immigration system. Allowing large numbers of refugees to enter the US would have required amending or circumventing the quotasā€”a politically risky proposition. Furthermore, during the first few years of the war, State Department officials under Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long purposely obstructed efforts to assist Jewish refugees."

And that's why the US seized the opportunity to help create a Jewish state as soon as it presented itself.

California put about 120,000 people of Japanese decent into concentration camps, and over 2/3 of them were US citizens, natural and immigrated. I knew one of the families that had to go into the camp in Stockton. They were neighbors who had a farm near ours, and I went to school with their son, Jay. We worked their farm for them, kept it going until they could come back. We even made as-needed structural repairs on their house and barns. When they came back, they sold their farm and moved to another state.

I'd have done the same.
 
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