Jackson County
(Mo.) Historical Society
Portals to the Past by David W. Jackson
Among vets
stories are tales of POW camps
Veterans Day approaches and the Jackson County Historical Society
continues to march forward with the Veterans History Project in collaboration
with the Library of Congress. Volunteers working with the Society have
collectively gathered nearly 1,000 oral history interviews from local
veterans and civilians that supported wartime efforts. These stories are
permanently preserved in the Society’s Archives where they will remain
accessible for generations to come. Among an
infinite variety of personal stories collected is one that hits close to
home. Did you know that for a time during World War II Jackson County was
crawling with enemy soldiers? This was no invasion. Rather these Germans and
Italians were part of a national campaign that brought more than 400,000 Axis
prisoners of war (POWs) to the United States for internment. More than 15,000
POWs were dispersed between about 30 camps in Missouri between 1942-1945.
Though only one camp was located in Jackson County at Atherton, Missouri, POW
camps were established at Riverside, Orrick, and Liberty. POWs worked
at labor-intensive jobs for local farmers under light supervision. They were
housed in standard U.S. Army field tents inside a five-acre pasture ringed
with barbed wire. Overall, they enjoyed an unbelievably risk-free
containment. They arrived as enemies, but in many cases left as friends, or
at the least, with a more positive view of the United States. A secondary
benefit was that POWs in Jackson County replenished the drain on the American
work force during World War II, and in some cases, saved much-needed crops
from devastation. 50,000 one-hundred-pound bags of potatoes were produced by
Italian POWs in 1943, for instance. The 1944 camp consisted of German prisoners brought in to help with
potato crops. Atherton resident Gale Fulghum, said compared to the Italians,
the “Germans on the other hand were all business. They were the elite Aryans
from General Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Some were “dyed-in-the-wool” Nazis....”
“Nazis Arrogance Irks Atherton,” read the headline in one newspaper article
that went on to note the Germans were whistling at local girls. By 1945,
Jackson County potato growers relied on POW labor. The Germans at the
Atherton camp that summer had a special visitor one day: “One day we were
told to stay in camp and not go to the fields because we were going to have
one of the greatest visitors in the United States to see us,” said Walter
Meier, who worked at Atherton before being transferred to the camp at
Marshall, Mo. “It was President Truman, and we shined up our shoes - really.
He only spoke about a minute, but he said, ‘the war is over and you’ll be
going home soon.’” Shortly after that, the Germans left Jackson
County for eventual repatriation to Europe. Though their work was
significant--POWs helped harvest between 1,000 and 1,200 railcar loads of
potatoes from the 2,500 acres under cultivation in 1945--only faint memories
of their time here remain. David W. Jackson is archivist for the nonprofit, membership supported Jackson County (Mo.) Historical Society's Archives and Research Library at 112 W Lexington Ave, Suite 103, Independence, MO 64050. The Society collects donations and makes available original documents and photographs to the public. For more information, or to donate historical materials, visit www.jchs.org, call (816) 252-7454, or e-mail info@jchs.org. |
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