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Joined: Nov 2005
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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My grandfather helped build the big POW facility at Lewisburg, PA. It later became a Federal prison which is still in use today.
"You can lead a man to logic, but you cannot make him think." Joe Harz
"Always certain, often right." Keith McCafferty
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Campfire Outfitter
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Very interesting read... Thanks for posting it. I knew there were a lot of German P.O.W.'s in the states during the war but never knew they shipped 'em halfway across the country. Thought they were all in the eastern U.S.. There were some in western NY state along Lake Ontario that worked in the orchards and other agricultural endeavors. Some were in Rochester NY performing miscellaneous labor for the city & county. Back then Rochester was predominately German; so much so that there was even a German language daily paper. My bi-lingual German grandparents were in Rochester then and growing up I heard stories of POW's clearing snow off downtown sidewalks. There were so many German speaking Americans around here in those days that city residents would pass the time speaking with POW's while they worked. Must have been a shock to most POW's to get shipped to such a German / American town.
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Joined: May 2003
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: May 2003
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There were German and Italian POW camps here in Ogden, Utah, and Utah also had several of the infamous Japanese-American internment camps. My late FIL was an Army JAG here and as an Italian-American, was able to speak fluently with the Italian POWs. He served in many roles due to that ability. At one point the POWs refused to work in the huge defense depot here, loading trains with munitions and such because they were convinced they were helping to kill their own countrymen. My FIL was able to prove to them that all war materials from here went only to the Pacific theater in the Japanese campaign. And the Italians didn't give a whiff about the Japanese, so they willing went back to work!
Not all German or Italian POWs wanted to go home after the war. Many had no living relatives any more, and they all knew what kind of devastation awaited them if they went back. Quite a few applied for naturalization and residence here. And got it.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
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Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
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My mother said there were prisoners at Camp Sevier, the base of Paris Mtn. here in Greenville, SC.
CO School of Trades, Gunsmithing, '76
Clemson University '74
Go Tigers
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Joined: May 2005
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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Dad was a guard at a POW camp in Louisiana after he got back from the Pacific. The Germans were all conscripts and enjoyed working on local farms even though it was for pennies. He said most of the conscripts were from farms. Dad said when a Nazi type ended up at the camp the senior NCOs would alert the guards and the guy would quickly get shipped out to a higher security camp. The Germans figured they had a good thing going and didn't want some true believer screwing things up. And they didn't like Nazis to begin with. One thing Dad mentioned is he was surprised the Germans spread lard on their bread and saved their butter ration. Mystery solved. He said the Germans made the most wonderful butter cookies.
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh
Which explains a lot.
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Joined: Feb 2006
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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Apparently they missed one because there was one near Crossville.
Camp Forrest near Tullahoma TN, held quite a number of German prisoners.
They left the post each day, working in the surrounding farms and nurseries, returned each night.
The story is that most were captured on the Eastern Front and POW life in the US of A had much better living conditions
It has been absorbed into the Arnold Engineering and Development Center (AEDC) operated for the Air Force
TN Army National Guard has facilities on the base and several former POWs have stopped by to show family and look at where they were housed Way Back When.
My step dad's family was from Crossville, TN....my grandfather had a 1300 acre farm and many POWs worked for him on it during the war.... When the war was over and the Camp Closed, my grand mother managed to buy a lot of pots and pans from the kitchen there... she raised 13 kids, so they were put to good use....every Thanksgiving I remember she used to cook Pinto Beans in a huge one, that sat on one of her stove tops covering 3 burners., another big one was always filled with mash potatoes...she even had a couple of little oar looking things to stir them.... Many of the Germans at the one in Crossville were treated well enough, after they went home to Germany and found all of their family was gone... the came back to Tennessee and settled in the local area... most had made many good friends with the local Americans.... From what I've heard, the National Cemetery in Chattanooga has more German POWs buried there than any other National Cemetery in the USA.... one the west coast here, I have visited Tule Lake, or what is left of it and also Manzanar off US Hwy395.....friends of the family were Neisei and were shipped there first after the war started.... two older siblings were sent to Camp Savage in MN.. they worked at Ft Snelling, translating documents into Japanese and translating intercepted Japanese communications...by 1944, they were allowed to find an apartment over in St Paul, in the upper Attic of a house there.... they visited family back in MN in the early 1990s, and they asked me to take them to where the camp was and they wanted to retrace the way to Ft Snelling from Camp Savage..... it was farms then, but is all built up now of course... Bloomington is a city of 80,000... that is where my wife grew up.. Mas and Ness weeped, seeing all these places 50 years later... they were complimentary of how well they were treated in MN.. several of their other married siblings spent the war in an Internment Camp in Mandon N.D. and also one some where in Wyoming.....their biggest memory of it all was how cold it was... them being from Los Angeles... having come to the USA during WW 1.... My wife's uncle lives in Bloomington, Mn. and there is one standing cabin left where a POW camp had been. It's been converted into a house, and Cathy's uncle had bought it at one point, fixed it up and sold it.
molɔ̀ːn labé skýla
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Joined: Feb 2006
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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If I'm not mistaken our very own Leighton, A.K.A. Kamo Gari had relatives interred at the Japanese American camps somewhere.
molɔ̀ːn labé skýla
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Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
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When I lived on the west side of Phoenix I drove past the site of a German/Italian POW camp every day. Nothing left now but a couple foundations I believe.
On the east side some Germans planned to escape and raft down to Mexico. Their plan was working okay until they reached the Salt River, which looked better as a fat blue line on a map than the reality of a dry bed.
Last edited by RufusG; 08/19/19.
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Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
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There were camps in our northern wilderness.
Met a veterinarian who was a POW here, went back after the war and got his veterinary degree, then came back and took two 1800's log cabins and combined them into a nice house in the wilderness. He was out in the middle of nowhere but provided services to the area farmers.
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
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We had one at Camp Swift just north of Bastrop. And another at Camp Bowie by Brownwood. And another at Hearne Tx. . One of my hunting pards, now deceased, was raised in Brownwood. Saidthey had a playmate with a little donkey cart. Said they would all ride it to the POW camp garden area and the prisoners would pass garden truck thru the fence to them! Said those POW’s kept em from starving to death during the war. Went on to say the guards didn’t care at all!
Founder
Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester
"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."
WS
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
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There's a watch repair and jewelry store here that was founded by a German POW. He'd been drafted at 16 by the Nazis during their last gasp. In his 1st fight, he was captured and sent to Idaho. After the war, he went to school in Germany and got a masters degree in clock repair. He then immigrated to the US and eventually opened his shop here. He died some years ago but his shop's still going. He trained one of his daughters to repair clocks and she and her sister now run the shop.
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell
It's not over when you lose. It's over when you quit.
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Joined: Nov 2007
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
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If I'm not mistaken our very own Leighton, A.K.A. Kamo Gari had relatives interred at the Japanese American camps somewhere. His father, and his grand parents.
God bless Texas-----------------------
Old 300
I will remain what i am until the day I die- A HUNTER......Sitting Bull
Its not how you pick the booger..
but where you put it !!
Roger V Hunter
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Joined: Nov 2003
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Nov 2003
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always felt we treated them far better than they deserved
Sam......
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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Had lots of camps in Minnesota. They loved it here, saw a show on pbs recently about it.
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Outfitter
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Back when i drove a bus for the Biolxi schools,had several times drove the cross country track team to Clinton MS.
Had more than a few minutes to look over the old buildings and walk the grounds.
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Campfire Tracker
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Probably would not be so well treated today. As it is, Americans can look back and feel good that, on the whole, they treated POW's well. My grandfather told me how the POW's who were working with him in Northern Idaho, were amazed that dynamite was accessible at the camp. Grandpa said he supposed they could have blown up a tree but that was about it. On the whole, he said they were decent folks and good workers. GD
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Campfire Outfitter
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I had long known that there were German prisoners who worked on farms with very little supervision and who became almost part of some of the families they worked for, but I had not realized that the same was true for some American POWS in Germany. I recently read an account from an American POW who did just that and saw some NAZI big wigs escaping at the end of the war as he was walking from his POW barracks to the farm where he worked. When he got there, the family insisted that he not go back to the barracks for a few days and stay with them because they were worried that he had seen something that he shouldn’t and that he might be in danger as a result.
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
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If the new immigrants we are getting now were like those folks---.
These premises insured by a Sheltie in Training ,--- and Cooey.o
"May the Good Lord take a likin' to you"
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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always felt we treated them far better than they deserved Why? We agreed to the Geneva Convention. Conscripted kids weren't the Nazi hierarchy.
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"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid." Han Solo
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