There’s been a lot of news lately about the immigrants being held in “camps” along our southern border. Many have compared them to the concentration camps of World War II. Although I was young when World War II ended, I was aware of people being incarcerated, although I didn’t actually understand why at the time.
I don’t remember any “concentration” camps, but at an early age I was aware of prisoner-of-war camps. There was a prisoner-of-war camp located in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma — that’s just 11 miles from Maysville, where I grew up.
During the War our Allies, such as Great Britain, were running short of prison space to house POWs, so from 1942 through 1945, more than 400,000 prisoners (German, Japanese, Italian) were shipped to the United States and detained. The POW camps were located all over the United States but were mostly in the south because of the expense of heating the barracks in the northern climate.
Growing up, I was aware that, in addition to Pauls Valley, POWs were being held in Chicasha, Okmulgee and a little town named Gene Autry (near Ardmore.) [Yes, that’s were Gene Autry — the singing cowboy — was “born.” The “town” is really small but is named after him. It’s not very far from Maysville.] All told, there were 19 POW camps in Oklahoma. Years later, when I was working for the Federal Aviation Agency, I learned that the site of the FAA, located at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, was also a prisoner-of-war camp until 1945.
Recently, the news has covered demonstrations in Fort Sill (site of another WWII POW camp) by a Japanese group protesting the current administration’s intention to “house” immigrant children on the base — the protesters say that it’s basically the same treatment they received at the facility during World War II.
Even though I was young, I remember some of the prisoners near Maysville working with local farmers to help them harvest their crops. There were guards, but never any kind of violence. I suspect that many were relieved to have been taken prisoner and were probably thankful they weren’t still fighting. The POWs probably received better treatment than the immigrants being held today. I did some extensive research and less than 1 percent of the tens of thousands of POWs ever tried to escape. By 1946, all prisoners had been returned to their home countries.
So how far we’ve come as a compassionate nation since World War II is debatable. If prisoners from a country actively at war with the US actually were treated better and enjoyed better living conditions than the immigrants being held today — and I don’t know if that’s a fact — it makes me a little sad.
We are all different — we shouldn’t judge, we should try to understand instead. There’s an Amish proverb that, if we could all adopt, would make things pretty simple….”Instead of putting others in their place, put yourself in their place.”
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