Eight PWs escaped, and two died at the camp, one being Johannes Kunze who a hospital for the treatment of PWs and a branch of the camp Gruber PW camp. by many PWs inother camps, was located one mile south of Alva on the west side of highway 281 on land that is now used for theairport and fairgrounds. 1944, and last appeared on November 16, 1945. It hada capacity of about 6,000, but never held more than 4,850. The POW camps were all constructed with the same lay-out and design. He said that the Nazi Party member POWs caused the most problems andwere the greatest risk out of all the prisoners. a kangaroo court one night and found him guilty. Oklahoma POW Camps Played Significant Role During And After World War II Reports seemto indicate that it opened in early July 1943, existing only for about one month. The prisoners were paid both by the government at the end of their imprisonment and also Throughout the war German soldiers comprised the vast majority of POWs confined in Oklahoma. troops, and the enlisted men's quarters inside and outside the compounds varied little in quality. admitted at their trial -- the first American court-martial involving a capital offense by German prisoners of German POW fondly recalls his stay at Camp Gruber - Tulsa World 11, No.2, June 1966.Read in June 1964 by Mrs. John A, Ashworth, Jr.Mrs. By May 1943 prisoners of war began arriving. 6th and West Columbia streets on the north side of Okemah. There were six major base camps in Oklahoma and an additional two dozen branch camps. The non-commissioned Germans did not have to work if they chose not to - which most of them didnt because they in Morocco and Algeria. of the buildings at the Tonkawa PW camp are still standing, but they have been remodeled over the years. We are committed to publishing high quality poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction by established and emerging writers. They remembered how they had been treated and trusted There may have been PWs inthe area prior to then, but they would have been trucked in daily from another camp in the area. Confederate Prisoner of War Camps A few buildings at Okmulgee Tech were part of the Glennan GeneralHospital PW Camp. This The camp had About 500 American soldiers were assigned to guard 3,600 Italians at the camp. A branch of theCamp Gruber PW Camp, it held about 210 PWs. Prisoner of War camp: a place where soldiers who have been captured by their enemy during a war are kept as prisoners until the end of the war. By 1945 the state would be home to more than thirty prisoner of war camps, fromCaddo to Tonkawa, and each would have its own unique history. The other died from natural causes. At each camp, companies of U.S. Armymilitary police patrolled perimeters, manned guard towers, escorted work detachments, and periodically searchedbarracks. Unique Tulsa History - Bixby WW2 POW Camp Traditional Geocache Oklahoma. 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. It was a hospital for American servicemen until August 1, 1944, when it becamea hospital for the treatment of PWs and a branch of the camp Gruber PW camp. Oklahoma. In 1973 and1982 2,560 acres and 6,952 acres, respectively, were added, for a total of 33,027 acres. the Untied States, all of whom would have to be interned in case of war. All POW records were returned when the Germans were repatriated after the war. pub. Oklahoma History Academic Standards | Oklahoma Historical Society Vol 17, Iss 2 Oklahoma - Prisoner of War Camps in Oklahoma dot Oklahoma in WWII. The only word of its existence comes from one interview. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers to believe that surrender was dishonourable. area under a twenty-five year federal license from the Tulsa District of the U.S. They wanted to catch the German Army in the middle, said Corbett. The greatestnumber of these are in the Post Cemetery at Ft. Reno, but three are buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery at McAlesterand two more are buried at Ft. Sill. The Army kept the prisoners contained and started educational programs A newspaper account indicatesthat sixty German PWs were confined there. The German officers still commanded their soldiers and ran the camps internally - they cooked their own meals,assigned soldiers to specific tasks, etc. This In 1939, the German troops invaded Poland, said Corbett. No reports of any escapes have been denounced as a traitor. Camp Concordia at its peak had 304 buildings including a 177 bed hospital, fire Dept, warehouses, Cold storage, and officers club, and barracks, mess halls and . who did not understand the German writing or its purpose and returned the note to another German POW to give back A list at okielegacy.org show a total of 34 sites dotted across the state and three alien interment camps. of most of them would not give any hints of their wartime use. The Ft. Sill Cemetery holds one enemy alien and one German PW who died there. camp was located north of the railroad tracks between 2nd and 3rd streets on the southeast side of Tipton on a The Geneva convention entitled them only to court appointed counsel, but in addition they were permitted a German The capacity of the camp was 700, and no reports of any escapes have been located; two internees diedat the camp and one of them is still buried at Ft. Sill. The camps were essentially a littletown. Not all the seventy men buried at Ft. Reno were PWs who died in Oklahoma. The camp had a capacity of 600,but on May 1, 1944, there were only 301 PWs confined there. It opened on April 29, 1943, and last appeared in the PMG reports onSeptember 1, 1944. Desiring to stay in the US after the war, he began passing notes of information on German activities About 200 PWs were confined Warner said some internment camps actually predate the war because American leaders were anticipating World War II. twentieth century Camp Gruber still served OKARNG as a training base for summer field exercises and for weekend Chickasha actually had two separate camps. This may have been the mobile work camp from the Camp Chaffee PW Campthat moved across Oklahoma and appeared at several locations. This Many of these prisoners were housed in local buildings or in tents. The prisoners then became outraged with him and started throwing It was a hospital for American servicemen until August 1, 1944, when it becamea hospital for the treatment of PWs and a branch of the camp Gruber PW camp. of highway 69. A newspaper account indicates Five Nazis Sentenced to Death For Killing Companion in StateSource: Daily Oklahoman Feb. 1, 1945 Page 1New York. There may have been PWs in From 250 to 400 PWs were confined there. The camps were located all over the US, but were mostly in the South, due to the higher expense of heating the barracks in colder areas. camps in the area, including the ones at Powell and Tishomingo. This camp was located one mile north of Braggs on the west side of highway 10 and across the road from Camp Gruber. 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. Reports of two escapes and one PW death have been in the PMG reports on July 19, 1943, and last appeared on April 15, 1946. This Operational 1942-1945, Located South of Alva, Oklahoma, Woods County It was called Nazilager . There were no PWs confined there. This base Borden General Hospital, Chickasha, (a branch of the Fort Reno camp) April 1945 to May 1945; 100. The five men were hung at Fort Leavenworth Military It reverted back into a hospital for American servicemen on July 15, 1945. Conditions at Japanese American internment camps were spare, without many amenities. The other POWs were able to go outside ofthe camps and work for internments. Following are the various camps, dates they were in operation and the maximum number of aliens or prisoners held there. Hickory PW Camp Thiscamp was located four miles east of Hickory at the Horseshoe Ranch. one death have been located. All POWs returned to Europe except those confined to military prisons or hospitals. This may have been the mobile work camp from the Camp Chaffee PW Camp Johann Kunze, who was found beaten to death with sticks and bottles. Sparta, MI German POW Camp - Michigan Technological University It opened prior 11, No.2, June 1966. Glennan General Hospital PW CampThis camp was located on what is now the grounds of Okmulgee Tech, south of Industrial Drive and east of MissionRoad on the east side of Okmulgee. Five Nazis Sentenced to Death For Killing Companion in State The camp is but a memory, and the water tower is one of the . Workers erected base camps using standard plans prepared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. carried the first of thousands of prisoners of war who would spend all or part of the remainder of World War II This camp, a branch of the Ft. Reno PW Camp, was located at the Borden General Hospital on the west side of Chickasha.It first appeared in the PMG reports on April 16, 1945, and last appeared on May 1, 1945. The other died from natural causes. Five PWs died while interned there, includingEmil Minotti who was shot to death in an escape attempt. were confined there. 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 staff consisted of PWs with medical A base camp, its official capacity was1,020, but on May 16, 1945, there were 1,523 PWs confined there. The base camps were located in Alva, Fort Reno, Fort Sill, the Madill Provisional Internment Camp headquarters, McAlester and Camp Gruber. A branch of theCamp Gruber PW Camp, it held about 210 PWs. It first appeared in military. Many leaders in the state lobbied for defense funding to help create or enhance military bases and posts. Exploring Oklahoma History | Kay | Camp Tonkawa Prisoner of War Camp Bob Blackburn, director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, which produces "The Chronicles," said the term was used to define an architectural style rather than the nationality of the prisoners housed there. who died at Ft. Sill was removed form the cemetery after the war and was reburied in California. POW camps in Oklahoma were not uncommon during World War II. Chickasha (first a branch of the Alva camp and later of the Fort Reno camp) November 1944 to November 1945; 400. leaders anticipated World War II, they developed plans for control of more than 100,000 enemy aliens living in were confined there. It opened on October 20, 1944, and last appeared in the A few buildings at Okmulgee Tech were part of the Glennan General On November 4, 1943, Kunze gave a note to a new American doctor,who did not understand the German writing or its purpose and returned the note to another German POW to give backto Kunze. in the National Cemetery at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. streets, sidewalks, foundations, gardens, and a vault that was in the headquarters building can still be seen. OKH.5.9 Summarize and analyze the impact of mobilization for World War II including the establishment of military bases, prisoner of war installations, and the contributions of Oklahomans to the war effort including the American Indian code talkers and the 45th Infantry Division. After the war, the personnel files of all POWs were returned to the country for which they fought. Copyright to all of these materials is protected under United States and International law. Nazi sympathizers, and there are accounts of twenty-one escapes. It opened on October 30, 1943, and closed in the fall of 1945. PRISONER OF WAR CAMPS. Unique Tulsa History - Bixby WW2 POW Camp (GC84KVY) was created by Scott&Brandi on 3/12/2019. The men were foundguilty and sentenced to death. About 300 PWs were confinedthere. Itdid not appear in the PMG reports, but the fact of its use comes from interviews. At Tonkawa the sixty-foot-high concrete supports for the camp's water tank still stand, There were no PWs confined there. It first appeared inthe PMG reports on August 16, 1944, and last appeared on November 16, 1945. Tonkawa's POW Camp: Murder, Mass, Musicals, and Memories Remembering POWs | Archives | tahlequahdailypress.com On June 3, 1947, Camp Gruber was deactivated and soon became surplus property, with 63,920 acres placed It had a capacity of 3,000, but at one timethere were 3,280 PWs confined there. Tinker Air Force Base was one of the bases that benefited from funding. All POWs returned to Europe except those confined to military prisons or hospitals.By mid-May 1946 the last prisoners left Oklahoma. The other POWs were able to go outside of The POW camps adhered to the Geneva Conventions Missouri Digital Heritage The magazine adds Gunther also had beendenounced as a traitor. No Japanese prisoners were brought here, despite the fact that some buildings in the POW camps were called Japanese barracks. The United States then were left with 275,000 German POWsfrom this victory.. Some died of war wounds. Service History Note: The veteran is a Bataan Death March survivor and was a prisoner of war (POW) at Camp O'Donnell and camps in Cabanatuan, Philippines. LXIV, No. Minister Winston Churchill, decided to strike northern Africa, Corbett said. It was opened on May 1, 1942, and closed on May 22, 1943. Hobart (a branch of the Fort Sill camp) _October 1944 to the fall of 1945; 286. the United States after that. They found him guilty and beat him to death with clubs and broken milk bottles. began a crash building program. Oklahoma History Center Education Resources. 4 reviews of POW Camp Concordia Museum "A very quiet but important piece of Kansas' WW2 and agriculture history! It reverted back into a hospital for American servicemen on July 15, 1945. Kunze's note ended up with camp senior leader, Senior Sergeant Walter Beyer, a hardened Nazi. "The Nazis appeared entirely satisfied." The Army Corp of Engineers then began to determine sites for these camps, according to Corbett. It first appeared in the PMG reports on July16, 1944, and last appeared on October 16, 1944. They selected Oklahoma because the state met the basic requirements established by the Office of theProvost Marshal General, the U.S. Army agency responsible for the POW program. A branch of the A compound consisted of barracks, mess halls, latrines and wash rooms, plus auxiliary buildings. Records indicate eighty They established one branch camp south of Powell and the other one off of SH 99 between Madill and Tishomingo, both in Marshall County. Ft. Sill Alien Internment CampThis camp was located northwest of the intersection of Ft. Sill Boulevard and Ringgold Road on the Ft. Sill MilitaryReservation. It wasa branch of the Camp Howze PW Camp. McAlester June 1943 to November 1945, 3,000. All rights reserved. Eight PWs escaped, and two died at the camp, one being Johannes Kunze whowas killed by fellow PWs. At each camp, companies of U.S. Army it held as many as 401 PWs at one time. Haskell (a branch of Camp Gruber) December 1943 to December 1945; Hickory (a branch of the Camp Howze, Texas, camp) May to June 1944; 13. Johann Kunze, who was found beaten to death with sticks and bottles. later become the McAlester PW Camp. of 2,965, but the greatest number of PWs confined there was 1,834 on July 16, 1945. Submitted to Genealogy Trails by Linda Craig, The above pictures are of the Fort Reno Cemetery Boswell Ranch, Corcoran, Kings County, 499 prisoners, agricultural. They're either too gray or too grassy green". It was not an actual PW camp, but was the administrative headquarters for several During World War II, about 700 prisoners of war (POW) camps were set up across the United States. , How did Camp Gruber in Oklahoma support the war effort? Thiscamp, located at the Watson Ranch, five miles north of Morris on the east side of highway 52, opened on July 5,1943. training. 26, 2006 - Submitted by Linda Craig. thought working for the Americans was somehow aiding the war effort. According to Soviet records 381,067 German Wehrmacht POWs died in NKVD camps (356,700 German nationals and 24,367 from other nations). Until late 1946, the United States retained almost 70,000 POWs to dismantle military facilities in the Philippines, Okinawa, central Pacific, and Hawaii. Thiscamp was located one-half mile north of Waynoka in the Santa Fe Railroad yards at the ice plant. Armories, school gymnasiums, tent encampments, and newly constructed frame buildings accommodated these detachments. After the captives arrived, at least twenty-four branch camps, outposts to house temporary Between twenty and forty PWs were confined there, working MPs questioned the 200 German POWs, and five who had blood on their uniforms were arrested and charged with the McAlester POW Camp, Oklahoma, USA in the Second World War 1939-1945 During the 1929 Geneva Convention, One was the alien internment 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. "their doom in a federal penitentiary." It firstappeared in the PMG reports in February, 1944 and last appeared on April 15, 1946. In the later months of its operation,it held convalescing patients from the Glennan General Hospital PW Camp. For more information about this and other programs and exhibits, contact the museum at 256-6136, or visit themat 2009 Williams Avenue in Woodward. Thirteen PWs were confined there, and one man escaped. Most enemy prisoners were housed in base camps consisting of one or more compounds. Except at Pryor, German noncommissioned officers directed the internal activities of each compound. German POW graves, Fort Reno Cemetery(photo by D. Everett, Oklahoma Historical Society Publications Division, OHS). It had Woods Ervin There were two escapes, probably the reason for the closing of the camp. camp, a branch of the Camp Gruber PW Camp, was located in the National Guard Armory on the northwest corner of On the Research Trail: World War II Prisoners of War in Kansas (PDF) My Brother's Keeper: WWII POWs and the German and Italian Between September 1942 and October 1943 contractors built base camps at Alva, Camp Gruber, Fort Reno, Fort Sill, McAlester, and Tonkawa. aides and maintained the camp. The guards arrested the five men that had the most blood on them, according to Corbett, and the prisonerswere sent to Levinworth, where they were later hung. It last appeared in the PMG reports on May 1, 1946, the last PW campin Oklahoma. The Greenleaf Lodge area is under National Guard authority and is not part of Greenleaf Lake State Park. Richard S. Warner, indicate there were more than 30 active POW camps in Oklahoma from April 1943 to March 1946. escapes took place, but authorities recaptured all fugitives. This A machinist from the city of Hamburg, Germany, Kunze was drafted into the German Army in 1940 and sent to the Afrika Because many PWs with serious injuries or sicknesses were assigned there, twenty-eight Three separate internment camps were built at Ft. Sill. The most important thing about the post-war period was that many of the POWs went back to Germany and becameprofessionals, bureaucrats and businessmen, said Corbett. Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus - FEMA detention facilities. it held convalescing patients from the Glennan General Hospital PW Camp. It had a capacity of 600 and was usually kept full. Tonkawa was home to 3,000 German POWs, mostly from Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, along with 500 U.S. military personnel. It was opened on May 1, 1942, and closed on May 22, 1943. the area prior to then, but they would have been trucked in daily from another camp in the area. The series Subject Correspondence Files Relating to the Construction of and Conditions in Prisoner of War Camps, 1942-1947 in Record Group 389 contains 14 files related to POW camps in Oklahoma, and the series Decimal Files, 1943-1946 includes 8 files related to Oklahoma. The camp hada capacity of 500 and was generally kept full. The great credit to this program is how it was implemented and what it did, he said. Originally a work camp from the McAlester PW Camp, and Okmulgee (Glennan General Hospital) as well.