re: Did you know German & Italian WW2 POWs were imprisoned in the US?

Yes. On Sunday afternoons, my father and his family would drive to Fort Polk to watch the Germans play this game we now call soccer.

quote:

---

Yes. And after the war and they were released, many stayed in towns like Des Allemands, which means,” The Germans” in French.

---

Wow. And I thought Des Allemands were all cajuns.

Yeah, I've been going down the rabbit hole and found out most were repatriated back, but some either escaped/assumed new identities or some that requested asylum due to fear of Russian control.

They were all over the south. There are pics of uniformed Italian soldiers attending mass at St. Louis Cathedral.

Never heard of Operation Paperclip?

quote:

---

I knew we had the controversial Japanese internment camps in the US,

---

We also had internment camps for German and Italian recent immigrants who were deemed potential threats, but you don't hear much about that.

Every belligerent power in WWII interned enemy aliens. The US was BY FAR the kindest to its enemy alien internees.

In the case of the Japanese, we did go too far in interning families who had been here for a very long time, but you have to also consider that traditional Japanese culture centered on worship of their Emperor, who we were at war with. It was a tough moral balance to strike.

Post-war analysis did clearly show that we broke up some Japanese spy/espionage rings with the internment, which was the goal.

Getting back to the OP's discussion, some of the camps in the US even allowed the POWs to work offsite on farms and the like. A farmer would show up at the gates in his truck, and tell them how many men he needed, and the POWs would hop in and go work for a day. It was free labor, though the farmers did have to feed them.

YouTube Link

I found this great story of a German POW who was captured in Africa, taken as a POW to the US, and escaped. He went on to live the American dream and was the only POW escapee who was never re-captured. The FBI found him in the 80's but it had been so long they just let him go.

There was one in Memphis adjacent to the Shelby County Penal Farm. It housed prisoners from all over as it served as a medical facility for POW’s.

Some German POWs were very close to Baton Rouge. In Port Allen, POWs were housed in an encampment at Louisiana Ave. and Sixth Street. Many of these POWs were remnants of Rommel’s West African Campaign.

Several Plantations in WBR Parish and Pointe Coupee Parish housed and utilized German POWs, including Alma Plantation.

Louisiana had the third highest number of POW camps in the U.S.

quote:

---

I’ve always wondered if any stayed here after the war or would we even let them? I assume we’d send them back to Germany

---

Not much left to return to..... The german POWs in Harahan were working on plantations during captivity and most stayed in the US. The overflow of Harahan POWs were housed in west Baton Rouge near the museum.

In 1944 at Fort Lawton in Seattle, there was fight between Italian POWs and several black soldiers. One of the Italian POWs was lynched by a group of black soldiers. It was a national story with several black soldiers being court-martialed.