Pow Camps In Ww2 Essay

Improved Essays
During World War II the United states ran into an interesting challenge which they had to be creative to resolve. The challenge was regarding what to do with the prisoners of war (POW) that were being captured in Europe, Africa, and other places of the World. The United States did not have any POW camps and had not had to retain large number of prisoners in over 100 years. When the United States was compelled to enter World War II following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. They were forced to contemplate this situation. As the U.S. continued with the war, and as they began to capture prisoners they fully realized that the Allies and Great Britain’s POW camps were rapidly filling and accommodations to house them house them elsewhere. THESIS: Even though over 400,000 Prisoners of War were shipped to the United States during World War II, little is known about this part of our history. The decision to bring POW’s to the United States was not as easy as it appears now. With less than a …show more content…
"German Prisoners of War in the United States." Society for Military History. April 1976. Accessed March 22, 2018. http://studythepast.com/5388_spring12/materials/krammer_german_pows.pdf. (68)
5 Fleming, Barbara. "Fleming: German POWs Worked on Farm Camps in Greeley." Coloradoan. July 13, 2014. Accessed March 24, 2018. https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2014/07/13/fleming-german-pows-worked-farm-camps-greeley/12591293/.

The prisoners in Northern Colorado spent their days on a farm helping the local farmers. A typical day would find the prisoner being picked up by the farmer that he worked for. He would be provided a lunch and returned to the prison camp at the end of the day [6]. Often the midday meal was shared with the farmer’s family or a prison guard. Many friendships developed this way. There is even a story of a prisoner that would take lunch in town every day. He met a woman and they eventually married at the POW camp.

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    In “What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean?” originally published in 2000 by St. Martin’s Press, University of California’s assistant professor of history Alice Yang Murray illuminates the travesty of internment set upon Japanese Americans by the United States. Alice Yang Murray is a passionate humanitarian, historian and while her surname Yang tells us she is she is of Asian or more specifically Chinese decent she does not allow this supposed bias to detract from her factual analysis. If there is anything is to be said regarding the bias of Murray it that she has done a great deal of research to forgo it. This omitted bias is in stark contrast to the historians whom have covered the subject of internment in the past. According to Alice Yang Murray “..even as these works recount a history of strikes, riots, and mass demonstrations, they present resistance as an unfortunate product of miscommunication and misunderstanding rather than a legitimate response to incarceration”(21).…

    • 1374 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Explain the rationale for the internment of Japanese-American civilians in camps during World War II. Research and discuss the arguments in the Korematsu v. the United States case that went up through the high courts. (See the text, p. 696.) In 1941 the United States was on a slow recovery from the worst economic catastrophe in the nation’s history, The Great Depression. Additionally, European nations were once again engaged in a deadly war over expansion, power, and natural resources that would be later titled World War 11.…

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Logan Lee 2/22/2016 Ms. Long/Mr. Young 2nd/3rd Hour Japanese American Internment In 1941, the Japanese flew into the huge U.S. naval base Pearl Harbor and bombed it. The attack killed hundreds of Americans and destroyed several warships. After the attack, the U.S. declared war on Japan and joined the Allied forces in World War II ( The government then took all the Japanese Americans and sent all of them to internment camps.…

    • 684 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Japanese Internment Camps Many events happen around the world, but most of them aren 't taught in history. We all know about Stalin 's Russia, who sent people who opposed his rules and judgements to Siberia. Then there is Hitler 's Germany, who targeted Jews, Gypsies, and the handicapped for not being Arian. What about America?…

    • 1655 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The American prisoners of war, Japanese-Americans, and the Japanese in Hiroshima all suffered during World War Two. The American POWs were starved and beaten. Japanese Americans were forced from their homes to live in internment camps. Japanese in Hiroshima had a bomb dropped on them and their lives destroyed. Civil War Union General William Tecumseh Sherman stated "War is Cruelty."…

    • 862 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Executive Order 9066 issued the following Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to be imprisoned, taken away from their friends and homes. It was that very day on February 19, 1942 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zone making way for the deportation of Japanese Americans to internment camps. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, all backs were turned to those of Japanese descent; were they (the Japanese) with us or against us? Legion amounts of people questioned the loyalty of the Japanese. This negativity caused officials to conclude that the Japanese residing in the United Stated were untrustworthy and to be placed in internment camps.…

    • 910 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When comparing the Jewish Concentration Camps against the Japanese Internment Camps, most people would think there was no comparison. Obviously, the concentration camps were way worse than the internment camps, but there are some similarities. Here is some information on each camp and the similarities will be given at the end. During World War II, over 120,000, Japanese were rounded up and shipped to internment camps. The camps started on February 19, 1942, after the signing of Executive Order 9066, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.…

    • 881 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Japanese American Internment Camps The United States throughout history had many faults in their actions and mindset against minorities. During the era of World War II, there was much distrust and tension between the counties of the Axis Powers. Because of the conflict between the countries, many people of German, Italian and Japanese heritage were treated poorly and disrespectfully at the time.…

    • 1225 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During WWII the Japanese captured approximately “132,134 British, Dutch, Australian, American, Canadian and New Zealander POWs (Yap 318). The treatment of these captives was extremely poor, they experienced hard labor, lack of food and harsh punishments. Japanese soldiers were expected to never get captured because they expected that it would mean hard labor worse than death. The Japanese “utilized [the POWs] to the full and possibly to the death” (Yap 323). When the Japanese captured enemy soldiers they treated them how they expected to be treated if they were ever captured; hard labor was one thing the Japanese military found useful and thought happened to Japanese POWs in European hands.…

    • 250 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Effects Of The Chinese Exclusion Act

    • 1446 Words
    • 6 Pages
    • 8 Works Cited

    Specifically, the newly industrialized Japanese jumped at the chance. So instead of Chinese workers taking the jobs of iterant Californians, the Japanese were doing it instead. They came in such great numbers that the California legislature could not create an act quickly enough.[5] Because of this, quiet bitterness began to form in the place of public racism. While the Japanese and other eastern Asians were barred from entering the country in 1924, forty-two years of intense, bitter dislike for the Japanese did nothing but fan the flames of American Nativist policies. Denis Kearney stated that the Japanese and other East Asians, “Must Go.”…

    • 1446 Words
    • 6 Pages
    • 8 Works Cited
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    The U.S. prisoners of war had limited knowledge of the war inside the walls of detention camps; however, they received little snippets of information about the war, as shown in the movie. For instance, Louie found out from Fitzgerald that the U.S. had invaded the Marshall Islands. Historically, the United States was using a strategy called island hopping in order to get into the heart of Japanese territory. Lastly, the U.S. soldiers saw firsthand the devastation that the war caused. While being transported to a new detention camp, the prisoners of war saw demolished building, corpses in the streets, and the Japanese citizens mourning.…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Book Report: The Train To Crystal City By Jan Jarboe Russell The author Jan Russell through her book “The Train To Crystal City” explains how people were detained in crystal city camp and exchanged for allegedly important persons that were held by Germany and other US enemies during world war II. Russell wrote this book to inform people about the detention facility whose existence was known to very few people. Being a long-term journalist and a freelance writer Jan Russell has written several fictional and nonfictional books and articles. Writing the historical book wasn’t easy but her journalist skills came in handy and helped her unearth what transpired in the detention camps.…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    World War II was the war that was never expected; it was never supposed to happen nor was America supposed to join in. In the middle of our Great Depression Hitler began to gain popularity, similar to the way FDR gained his popularity; through promised hope and dreams of a better country. Hitler was making several promises to his people during his gain of power, so people were prone to accept his ideas, even if radical, because of his amazing promises of a great Germany. While all of the Hitler commotion was taking everyone’s attention, Japan was busy invading China.…

    • 1129 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Most would refer this place as the most horrible place on earth. The Auschwitz Concentration Camp was fully established on April 1940. The camp was built on a piece of land near the Polish City of Oswiecim and could hold about 150,000 prisoners at the same time. Many of the prisoners were sent to camp where they were forced labor then were eventually killed. These prisoners were put to work for long hours and were given no breaks.…

    • 1167 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Over 110,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were forced to leave their homes and be relocated into poorly constructed camps called "War Relocation Centers. " Most of these centers were poorly constructed military barracks with no plumbing of any type of cooking facilities. In addition, many families were so hastily forced out of there homes that families did not have sufficient time to pack and prepare for proper weather conditions, and some families were forced to leave with just the clothes on their backs. Some internment camps, such as the Heart Mountain War Relocation center in northwestern Wyoming, was just a portion of land with cramped military barracks, unpartitioned toilets, cots for beds, and a barb-wired fence surrounding it all. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that the holding of loyal American citizens unconstitutional, and by 1945 the government began releasing individuals to return to their previous lives, many of whom had no lives to return…

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays