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. ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂA
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. |
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