| Tango01 | 28 Feb 2014 11:11 p.m. PST |
…POWs in Wartime America. "When filmmaker Gregory "Scott" Porter first learned that German prisoners of war were held in America during the Second World War, he was speechless. "My grandmother told me an incredible story about how she had personally come to know several POWs on her family's Utah farm," says Porter. "At first she despised them, but soon she grew fond of them and realized that these so-called enemies weren't all that different." German prisoners learn that they will soon be returning home following the fall of Berlin in 1945.
Porter did some research and discovered that his grandmother's story was not at all uncommon. In fact, people all across Utah and 46 other states had similar experiences with the nearly half million German POWs that were held in America during the war…" Full article here. link Amicalement
Armand |
| Grizzly71 | 28 Feb 2014 11:23 p.m. PST |
Cool. I didn't realize how many camps there were or how spread out through the country they were. I'd though most were in the Southwest. |
| Crankee Doodle | 01 Mar 2014 8:21 a.m. PST |
I lived near Camp Atterbury, which was the POW camp in southern Indiana. The inmates constructed a small Catholic chapel that still stands to this day. It was renovated about 20 years ago and can be visited by the public. Interestingly, some POW's chose not to return to their home countries. My parent's were friends with a former Italian soldier who was a POW at the camp. |
 Legion 4   | 01 Mar 2014 9:52 a.m. PST |
Sounds like an interesting little known piece of history … |
| Tango01 | 01 Mar 2014 10:23 a.m. PST |
Glad you enjoyed it boys!. (smile). Amicalement
Armand |
| jgawne | 01 Mar 2014 4:29 p.m. PST |
In the 1980's the last "missing" POW in the US was located (he turned himself in). Thus every single Axis POW taken to the USA in WW2 was accounted for, either a buried body, or a man returned home. I love these people that discover something and decide it is a great unknown, just because they did not know about it. Heck, my mom used to work with them at the Fort Sheridan PX. Although if she even said help to them she'd get yelled at. |
| Cloudy | 02 Mar 2014 5:41 a.m. PST |
I find this quote particularly laughable: "When filmmaker Gregory "Scott" Porter first learned that German prisoners of war were held in America during the Second World War, he was speechless." Speechless…:-( |
| hagenthedwarf | 03 Mar 2014 2:54 p.m. PST |
Sounds like an interesting little known piece of history … May depend on how old you are. |
| Madmike62 | 05 Mar 2014 10:46 a.m. PST |
I remembering my grandfather telling me about Italian POWs in the Napa valley being used to pick fruit. Cannot tell you more about it since most of my family has past away. |
 Mserafin | 05 Mar 2014 11:07 a.m. PST |
An Italian-American friend of mine from Spokane told me that the Italian community there was formed by Italian POWs who worked on the farms. They liked it there and brought their families over after the war. |
| Triplecdad | 08 Mar 2014 8:59 p.m. PST |
My wife's family owned a cattle ranch in Arizona during the war. German prisoners lived and worked there. There were no guards posted. One day, my wife's uncle remembers, a US officer drove up in a jeep and was yelling at everyone because there were no guards. The prisoners worked on the ranch, building water tanks, windmills and cattle pens. The Germans had nowhere to escape to, so guards were not needed. The ranch is in the middle of nowhere even today. The uncle told me that the German prisoners were very, very nice and that they missed their wives and children, and were nice to him and his sisters (which included future Supreme Court Justice O'Connor). The Germans liked being around the kids because they missed their own families so much. He said the Germans would sometimes stop by the ranch years later, when they visited the United States after the war. |
