At the peak of operation as many as twenty thousand German POWs occupied camps in Oklahoma. , What did Oklahoma do to prisoners of war? death. It first appeared in the PMG reportson May 23, 1945, and last appeared on March 1, 1946. We created allies out of our enemies. It had specific guidelines were set concerning the humane conditions that were to be required for prisoners of war - they Armories, school gymnasiums, tent encampments, and newly constructed frame buildings accommodated these detachments. Alien Internment Camps Fort Sill March 1942 to late spring 1943; 700. They established one branch camp south of Powell and the other one off of SH 99 between Madill and Tishomingo, both in Marshall County. and in July 1944 a guard fatally shot a prisoner during an escape attempt. injuries, suicide, or disease, took the lives of forty-six captives. The Geneva Convention of 1929, the international agreement prescribing treatment of prisoners of war, permitted use of POWs as laborers. There were six major base camps in Oklahoma and an additional two dozen branch camps. Reports seemto indicate that it opened in early July 1943, existing only for about one month. officials obtained use of vacant dormitories built for employees of the Oklahoma Ordnance Works at Pryor. Korps in Tunisia, North Africa. at the camp and one of them is still buried at Ft. Sill. The Geneva Convention of 1929, the international agreement prescribing treatmentof prisoners of war, permitted use of POWs as laborers. After the war, the personnel files of all POWs were returned to the country for which they fought. Seminole PW CampThiscamp, a work camp from the McAlester PW Camp, was located in the Municipal Building at the northeast corner ofMain and Evans streets in Seminole. This camp, a branch of the Ft. Reno PW Camp, was located at the Borden General Hospital on the west side of Chickasha. The five non-commissioned officers, the magazine says, "proudlyadmitted at their trial -- the first American court-martial involving a capital offense by German prisoners ofwar -- that they killed Cpl. By 1953 virtually the entire 1942 reservation was in federal hands. Seven posts housed enlisted men, and officers lived in quarters at Pryor. In 1943 the Forty-second Infantry "Rainbow" Division was reactivated at Gruber. and headstone of Tishomingo (originally a branch of the Madill Provisional Internment Camp Headquarters and later a branch of Camp Howze, Texas) April 1943 to June 1944; 301. It reverted back into a hospital for American servicemen on July 15, 1945. It was The POW camp at Tonkawa, about 50 miles northeast of Enid, was a branch camp that held a number of prisoners. Seminole (a work camp from McAlester) November 1943 to June 1945; Stilwell (a work camp for Camp Chaffee) June 1944 to July 1944; Stringtown July 1943 to January 1944; 500. Newsweek also says that two other German Prisioners of war, Eric Gaus and Rudolph Straub, were convicted June 13,1944 of the slaying near Camp Gordon, Ga., of Cpl. No part of this site may be construed as in the public domain. On November 4, 1943, Kunze gave a note to a new American doctor, acres. It had acapacity of 300, but usually only about 275 PWs were confined there. Most of the land was returned to private ownership or publicuse. Hospital PW Camp. Eight PWs escaped, and two died at the camp, one being Johannes Kunze whowas killed by fellow PWs. It was a branch camp of the Camp Gruber PW camp, and three PWs escaped at 2009 Williams Avenue in Woodward. About fifty PWs were confined there. A branch of theCamp Gruber PW Camp, it held about 210 PWs. Two PWs escaped. Minister Winston Churchill, decided to strike northern Africa, Corbett said. They selected Oklahoma because the state met the basic requirements established by the Office of the In autumn 1944 officials obtained use of vacant dormitories built for employees of the Oklahoma Ordnance Works at Pryor. John Witherspoon ErvinJulia Ervin Woods ErvinSubmitted to Genealogy Trails by Linda Craig, The above pictures are of the Fort Reno Cemetery and headstone of Johannes Kunze (German) and Giulio Zamboni (Italian). The United States then were left with 275,000 German POWsfrom this victory.. About forty PWs were confined at the work camp from the McAlester PW Location of Service: Fort Bliss, Texas (basic training); Bataan Peninsula . A base camp, its official capacity was1,020, but on May 16, 1945, there were 1,523 PWs confined there. Thiscamp was located on the far west side of the Ft. Sill Military Reservation and south of Randolph Road. They were forced into harsh labor camps. About 500 American soldiers were assigned to guard 3,600 Italians at the camp. camps in the area, including the ones at Powell and Tishomingo. Sources used: [written by Richard S. Warner - The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Between twenty and forty PWs were confined there, working Pitching camp. This camp was located adjacent to the town of Gene Autry, thirteen miles northeast of Ardmore.It first appeared in the PMG reports on June 1, 1945, and last appeared on November 1, 1945. About 20,000 German POWs were held in Oklahoma at the peak of the war. During the 1950s and 1960s most of Camp The camps were ringed with barbed-wire fences and patrolled by armed guards, and there were isolated cases of internees being killed. 16, 1944, and last appeared on October 16, 1944. Reports of three escapes andone death have been located. there; it did not hold any of the Japanese-Americans who were relocated from the West Coast under Executive Order It first appeared in the PMG reports on July16, 1944, and last appeared on October 16, 1944. Tonkawa PW CampThiscamp was located north of highway 60 and west of Public Street in the southeast quarter of Section 26 on the northside of Tonkawa. Richard S. Warner, indicate there were more than 30 active POW camps in Oklahoma from April 1943 to March 1946. the PMG reports on August 16, 1944, and last appeared on November 16, 1945. are buried in the National Cemetery at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. of three escapes have been located. America needed to accommodate about 275,000 POWs, with camps stationed mainly across the south because of the temperate climate. Some of the concrete and stone monuments that were built by the PWs are also still standing there. Please note that these records generally do not contain detailed . at an explosives plant, there was a fear that escaping PWs might commit sabotage. of commerce began writing their legislative officials, lobbying for the camps to be built in Oklahoma, for our Two of the At first most of the captives came from North Africa following the surrender of the Afrika Korps. Some of these farm families were of the Mennonite and Brethren church communities for generations, and many prisoners' lives . Eight base camps used for the duration of the war emerged at various locations. Camp. This It opened on October 30, 1943, and closed in the fall of 1945. a short distance south of Powell, a small community about three miles east of Lebanon and about eight miles southwest Stringtown PW CampThis Thiscamp was located at the Stringtown Correctional Facility, the same location of the Stringtown Alien InternmentCamp. The number of PWs confinedthere is unknown, but they lived in tents. Captured May 13, 1943 at Bone, Tunisia, he was shipped to the Tonkawa POW Camp,Oklahoma. South Carolina maintained twenty camps in seventeen counties, housing between 8-11,000 German (and to a lesser extent, Italian) prisoners of war. The first full-scale POW camps in the U.S. opened on Feb. 1, 1943 in Crossville, Tennessee; Hereford and Mexia, Texas; Ruston, Louisiana; and Weingarten, Missouri. MPs questioned the 200 German POWs, and five who had blood on their uniforms were arrested and charged with the The United States then were left with 275,000 German POW's from this victory. There were six major base camps in Oklahoma and an additional two dozen branch camps. In 1967 the Oklahoma Military Department, Haskell, Stilwell, Sallisaw, and Eufaula. 1. In the later months of its operation,it held convalescing patients from the Glennan General Hospital PW Camp. Corbett explained that around 1937, before the United States even entered the war, the government began to plan the articles of war the court had no choice but to pronounce the death sentence," the magazine adds. Branch camps and internments in Oklahoma included Waynoka, Tonkawa, Chickasha, Hobart, Tipton, Pauls Valley, Hickory, non-commissioned officers accused: Walther Beyer, Berthold Seidel, Hans Demme, Willi Schols and Hans Schomer. A few concrete ammunition bunkers are the last remnants of the POW camp. Mobile camps of POW operated at various sites around the state, following the harvest. By 1945 the state would be home to more than thirty prisoner of war camps, from The prisoner of war program did not proceed without problems. Subscribe Now. They were thengiven their files to carry with them wherever they went. Waynoka PW CampThis District. found. Between September 1942 and October 1943 contractors built base camps at Alva, Camp Gruber, Fort Reno, Fort Sill, McAlester, and Tonkawa. Several of them picked cotton, plowed fields, farmed, worked in ice plants 1, Spring 1986], Five Nazis Sentenced to Death For Killing Companion in State, Source: Daily Oklahoman Feb. 1, 1945 Page 1. In addition, leaders in communities across the state actively recruited federal war facilities to bolster their towns' economies. The non-commissioned Germans did not have to work if they chose not to - which most of them didnt because they In 1967 the Oklahoma Military Department,Oklahoma Army National Guard (OKARNG), acquired 23,515 acres to establish Camp Gruber as a state-operated trainingarea under a twenty-five year federal license from the Tulsa District of the U.S. The camps were essentially a little POW camps are supposed to be marked and are not legal targets. Part of the confusion also may be attributed to the fact that Japanese aliens from the central United States as well as Central and South America were held for about a year in internment camps before being shipped out of state. camp was located on the far west side of the Ft. Sill Military Reservation and south of Randolph Road. Five PWs died while interned there, includingEmil Minotti who was shot to death in an escape attempt. In 1952 the General Services Administration assumed Richard S. Warner, "Barbed Wire and Nazilagers: PW Camps in Oklahoma," The Chronicles of Oklahoma 64 (Spring 1986). town. New Plains Review started in 1986 as a student publication of the Liberal Arts . 1944, and last appeared on November 16, 1945. Units of the Eighty-eighth Read in June 1964 The dates of its existence arenot known, but it was probably a work camp similar to the one at Caddo. Corps of Engineers. About 270 PWs were confined there. of the Community building in what is now Wacker Park in Pauls Valley. About 300 PWs were confinedthere. In November 15, 1987 Article in the Daily Oklahoman It shows a map of Oklahoma with the location of some POW and Interment Camp Headquarters dotted across the state of Oklahoma during World War II. Ardmore Army Air Field (a branch of the Camp Howze, Texas, POW camp) June 1945 to November 1945; 300. It held primarilyGerman aliens, but some Italian and Japanese aliens also were confined there. in Morocco and Algeria. Konawa PW Camp Thiscamp, a work camp from the McAlester PW Camp, was located in the National Guard Armory, three blocks north of MainStreet on North State Street in Konawa. The house was demolished in the 1960s. captives to East Coast ports. start. These incidents, combined with war wounds, the vast majority of POWs confined in Oklahoma. Ultimately, more than 44,868 troops either served at or trainedat the camp, which also employed four thousand civilian workers and incarcerated three thousand German prisonersof war. To prepare for that contingency, officialsbegan a crash building program. Throughout the war German soldiers comprised Conditions at Japanese American internment camps were spare, without many amenities. New Plains Review is published semiannually in the spring and fall by the University of Central Oklahoma and is staffed by faculty and students. The German Stringtown Alien Internment CampThis camp was located at the Stringtown Correctional Facility, four miles north of Stringtown on the west sideof highway 69. 1982 2,560 acres and 6,952 acres, respectively, were added, for a total of 33,027 acres. It was a branch camp of the Ft. Sill PW Camp and held 276 PWs. FORT RENO POW CEMETERYData from the "Oklahoma Genealogical Society Quarterly", Vol. They were caught at The Pines cabins outside of Seney Michigan and gave themselves up without a struggle. Oklahoma made military history on July 10, 1945, when five German POWs were executed. Following are the various camps, dates they were in operation and the maximum number of aliens or prisoners held there. At Tonkawa the sixty-foot-high concrete supports for the camp's water tank still stand,and at Camp Gruber concrete and stone sculptures made by POWs are displayed.Article from the "Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture"from the OK Historical Society websiteSubmitted by Linda Craig, "Corbett presents historyof Oklahoma WW II Prison Camps", By Patti K Locklearpub. The Alva camp was a special camp for holding Nazis andNazi sympathizers, and there are accounts of twenty-one escapes. Units of the Eighty-eighthInfantry "Blue Devil" Division trained at Camp Gruber. All POW records were returned when the Germans were repatriated after the war. Eight PWs escaped from this camp, and four men died and are now buriedin the National Cemetery at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. Fearing a Japanese invasion, the military leaders, under authority of an executive order, defined (Mar., 1942) an area on the West Coast from which all persons of Japanese ancestry were to be excluded. Most lived in small camps of about 300 men and cut pulpwood or worked on farms. About 130 PWs were confined there. The capacity of the camp was 700, and no reports of any escapes have been located; two internees died that the United States was not what they had been told it would be like. A base camp, it had a capacityof 2,965, but the greatest number of PWs confined there was 1,834 on July 16, 1945. Sallisaw PW CampThis Data from the "Oklahoma Genealogical Society Quarterly", Vol. Tonkawa (originally a base camp but changed to a branch of Alva camp) August 1943 to September 1945; 3,280. In June 1942, Operation Torch - the invasion of Africa - began and in November of that same year, troops landed informed the guards that there was a riot going on and when they got into the camp, they found the man beaten to The other died from natural causes. opened on December 1, 1943, closed on December 11, 1945, and was a branch of the Camp Gruber PW Camp. The town of Tonkawa built the camp buildings north of town, and the camp was in . of Okmulgee. The government also wanted thecamps to be in rural areas where the prisoners could provide agricultural labor. Camp Tonkawa closed in September 1945 and the P.O.W.'s were returned to Europe. It was a branch of , Why did the Japanese treat POWs so badly? The prisoners were paid both by the government at the end of their imprisonment and alsoreceived an extra $1.80 per day for their work. Except at Pryor, German noncommissioned officers directed the internal activities of each compound. Oklahoma. nine escapes have been found. The Army kept the prisoners contained and started educational programs There were some suicides, but Arnold Krammer, writing in "Nazi Prisoners of War in America" suggests many of these might more accurately be described as induced deaths. And it was the Germans, Nazi and non-Nazi, who defined camp life more than any other group of captives. Fort Reno July 1943 to April 1946; 1,523. and closed on April 1, 1944. In December 1941, the United States entered World War II and President Franklin Roosevelt, along with British PrimeMinister Winston Churchill, decided to strike northern Africa, Corbett said. It wasa branch of the Camp Howze PW Camp. Beyer convened lawyer, selected from among their fellow prisoners." Stilwell PW CampThis It first appeared in the PMG reports on July16, 1944, and last appeared on October 16, 1944. They were Walter Beyer, Berthold Seidel, Hans Demme, Hans Schomer, and Willi Scholz. Except at Pryor, German noncommissioned officers directed the internal activities of each compound. Three of the men are still buried at McAlester. POW camps eventually were set up in at least 26 counties and at times an estimated 22,000 POWs were held in Oklahoma. the area prior to then, but they would have been trucked in daily from another camp in the area. In August Corbett said that the base camp in Alva was specifically unique because it was used as the maximum security camp- housing around 5,000 Nazi Party members. The first PWs arrived on October Reports of During World War II federal officials located enemy prisoner of war (POW) camps in Oklahoma. The large concrete water towers which doubled as guard towers at the camps at Alva, Ft. Reno, and Tonkawa This camp was located at the old fairgrounds east of Okmulgee Avenue and north of Belmont Street on the north side They included both guard and prisoner barracks, the two. About 200 PWs were confined It opened on October 20, 1944, and last appeared in the The Oklahoma National Guard's Camp Gruber Maneuver Training Center is located 14 miles southeast of Muskogee, Oklahoma, on Oklahoma Route 10 in the Cookson Hills. In November 1943 rioting prisoners at Camp Tonkawa killed one of their own. It last appeared in the PMG reports on august 1, 1944. Tonkawa was home to 3,000 German POWs, mostly from Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, along with 500 U.S. military personnel. It first appeared in the PMG reports on August 30, 1943, and last appeared on September 1, 1945.It started as a base camp, but ended as a branch of the Alva PW Camp. The PWs cleared trees and brush from thebed of Lake Texoma which was just being completed. However, camp school houses were crowded, with a student-teacher ratio of up to 48:1 in elementary schools and 35:1 for secondary schools. Manhattan Construction Company of Muskogee was awarded the building contract, and a work force of 12,000 men began construction in February 1942. 1943. Corbett said that the base camp in Alva was specifically unique because it was used as the maximum security camp Seventy-fiveto eighty PWs were confined there. Camp Perry - Site renovated; once used as a POW camp to house German and Italian prisoners of WWII. Thiswork camp from the Camp Chaffee PW Camp was located at Candy Mink Springs about five miles southwest of Stilwell.It first appeared in the PMG reports on June 16, 1944, and last appeared on July 8, 1944. : Scarborough House, 1996). It was a hospital for American servicemen until August 1, 1944, when it became In 1973 and1982 2,560 acres and 6,952 acres, respectively, were added, for a total of 33,027 acres. William P. Corbett, "They Hired Every Farmer in the Country: Establishing the Prisoner of War Camp at Tonkawa," The Chronicles of Oklahoma 69 (Winter 199192). Thiscamp was located one-half mile north of Waynoka in the Santa Fe Railroad yards at the ice plant. In autumn 1945 repatriation of prisoners of war began as federal officials transferred captives to East Coast ports. It is possiblethat it was used to house trouble-makers from the camp at Ft. Sill. Cemetery. Because of this, PWs were in great demand as laborers. , Why was Oklahoma so important to soldiers fighting in World War II? From 1942-1945, more than 400,000 POWs, mostly German, were housed in some 500 POW camps located in this country. It's located in Oklahoma, United States. camp was located north of highway 60 and west of Public Street in the southeast quarter of Section 26 on the north Scanning through the list of items, I found six that appeared to be relevant to my research questions. Initially most of the captives came from North Africa following In autumn 1944 It first appeared in the PMG reportson May 23, 1945, and last appeared on March 1, 1946. Oklahoma. Four men escaped. In autumn 1945 repatriation of prisoners of war began as federal officials transferredcaptives to East Coast ports. Not long after, it became one of the nation's first three POW camps designated for "anti-Nazis." A total of 7,700 German prisoners were housed at the camp during the war. OKLAHOMA OKLAHOMA CITY -- This camp site is now Will Rogers World Airport. Captured May 13, 1943 at Bone, Tunisia, he was shipped to the Tonkawa POW Camp,Oklahoma. The story of prisoner of war camps in Oklahoma actually predates the war, for as American At the end of the Camp Gruber PW Camp, it held about 210 PWs. This camp was located at the old fairgrounds east of Okmulgee Avenue and north of Belmont Street on the north sideof Okmulgee. Copyright to all articles and other content in the online and print versions of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History is held by the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS). Reportsof three escapes have been located. received an extra $1.80 per day for their work. (Bioby Kit and Morgan Benson). Bixby (a branch of Camp Gruber) April 1944 to December 1945; 210. The camps in Oklahoma varied in size: Fort Reno consisted of one compound, Camp Alva five. To prepare for that contingency, officials Most of the land was returned to private ownership or publicuse. Activated in January 1943, the post received its first P.O.W.s in August, German troops of the Afrika Corps captured in North Africa.
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