Prisoner Of War Camps Essay

The United States established prisoner of war camps on its soil for the first time since the Civil War during WWII. 23,000 Axis prisoners were received in 1943 to live and work in military installations and branch camps throughout the state. POW camps were put in the U.S. thanks to a british request to help solve the problems with POW housing in Great Britain. In the beginning the government resisted the idea of POW camps. The numbers expected of Italian and German prisoners created problems for both the military and the government. The amount of prisoners were to many for the military which were undermanned and inexperienced. Most military that could actually speak the languages were overseas. Officials were scared that housing so many would …show more content…
Because of policies the U.S. reasoned that it would be a lot easier to keep POWs on U.S. soil. To help solve growing concerns of high end cities and other areas they housed the POWs in installations and facilities by the government in the south. Nearly 425,000 Axis troops were sent to the U.S. to be put into nearly 500 camps. 23,000 nearly were sent to Arkansas. Most were from Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The main camps were Camp Robinson in North Little Rock, which is in Pulaski county, Camp Chaffee in Fort Smith in Sebastian County and Camp Dermott in Dermott Chicot county. The camp Dermott was remote and great place for german officers, Italians were in Drew County. Both germans and italian POWs were in Stuttgart Army Airfield in Arkansas county. Camp Robinson was regarded as a model camp nationwide. It was a very well organized and supervised camp with many options and the conditions of living were nice under the circumstances. The Camp included Educational opportunities, recreational activities and housing barracks. Among the prisoners were theatrical plays and soccer games. They also did concerts. Amusing as that sounds it wasn’t fun and games all the time. They had to do work around the