POW camps in American, insider story

[Bera]

Originally Posted by privateer

About 20 miles south of me, in Marion Ohio, there was a WWII POW camp.
I know where it was and thats about all I know about it.

What about the Guantanamo POW ("war"?) camp? How do the americans treat those prisioners?
Before anyone here shots me, I´m just asking this question because there´s a lot of talking about the horrible conditions and ill-treatment dispensed to those prisioners, altough USA is well-known for the extreme care and respect that they treated the german and the japanese during WWII...

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Bera

What about the Guantanamo POW ("war"?) camp? How do the americans treat those prisioners?
Before anyone here shots me, I´m just asking this question because there´s a lot of talking about the horrible conditions and ill-treatment dispensed to those prisioners, altough USA is well-known for the extreme care and respect that they treated the german and the japanese during WWII...

The reason no one is bringing that up is because it's pretty off topic for this thread.

[scalelokt]

My grandfather told me a lot of stories from the war. He was in Europe and was part of the Normandy invasion on D-Day. He's not alive anymore but I remember most of the stories. Some crazy stuff to be sure.

[IceGrog]

My dad was in the USN in ww2, on destroyer escorts fighting the Japanese, but he didn’t talk much about it when I was growing Most of the stories I head from him were the ones I overhead when him and buddies got together. I remember that right after Pearl Harbor his ship spent many weeks chasing phantom Japanese subs around the islands there. And his ship one time picked up some sailors that had suffered at the hands of the Japanese. But I remember him saying that bravest thing he did was crossing the ocean in a destroyer escort, as small as it is.
I just remember as a kid he would take my brother and I to fish off the beach, we would be there until the wee hours of morning. He didn’t catch a whole lot but he would just sit there drinking his beer and looking out over the surf. Hummmm wonder what he was thinking of?
Sorry a little bit of rattling on.

[bigboywooly]

Not rattling on at all Ice
Treasure those memories mate
Thanx for sharing
All of you

[mookiemookie]

As I'm too young to have stories of my own, I'm just relating ones that I liked from the various books I read. Here's another I liked:

"One day a group of prisoners [from the Galveston POW camp], dressed in their faded denim pants and jackets with a big white "P" on the back, were mowing and cleaning the grounds of the Army airfield. Across the road at the municipal golf course Dr. Edward Randall and friends were having a game of golf, and the doctor lobbed a ball over the fence into the airfield. "Das ball, das ball, bitte," he yelled at the prisoners, trying to remember a few German words. They looked at him, and one ran to pick up the errant ball. As he threw it back over the fence, the prisoner called, "Here it is, sir."

:rotfl:

[Ducimus]

Bera,

That's the type of question you should ask on the General forum. Not here.

[Zinmar]

One of the gentlemen I delivered heating oil to was a seabee. He was stationed to Pearl Harbor one before the attack. The stories he told me about what happened just before the attack, and our island hopping across the Pacific were just incredible!!! I have been talking to him and he has given me the ok to record our conversations. Now I am not a writer but I am sure that there are some guys out there that can do that.

[Heibges]

My mom's brother, Robert Davis, was a gunner in a bomber during WWII. He was shot down over Europe and spend several years in a German POW camp. The War really messed him up, and he was kind of ostracized by the family because of it. A very sad story actually.

My dad was in the Army National Guard in the 172nd Infantry Regiment. He joined in 1938 because he figured a war was going to start soon, and he wanted to make sure he was surrounded by the best soldiers possible, in this case Vermonters, who made up a large part of the Regiment. (Put the Vermonters Ahead! is a saying that goes back to Civil War). Also he wanted to get away from his old man, who was a real prig by all accounts.

My dad had great respect for the Japanese. He had very little for US Army Officers.

On the way do Guadalcanal, on the Presidential Liner Calvin Coolidge (the President from Vermont), they hit a mine, and the boat sunk, and the regiment was stranded, without any equipment, on an island.

They eventually made it to Guadalcanal, and fought with Big Mac across the Pacific all the way to the Phillipines. He won a Bronze Star, and his unit received a Presidential Unit Citation for the Battle of Ipo Dam in the Phillipines.

My dad never talked about his experiences in combat. He was very relieved when I didn't have to go to the First Gulf War, but I can't help but thinking he may have talked to me about combat if I had gone.

[mookiemookie]

Here's a great site I found on German POWs in America. It even includes some of the newspapers that the POWs put together for their camps. Very interesting read!

http://www.traces.org/germanpows.html