There\u2019s been a lot of news lately about the immigrants being held in \u201ccamps\u201d 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\u2019t actually understand why at the time.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember any \u201cconcentration\u201d 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 \u2014 that\u2019s just 11 miles from Maysville, where I grew up.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s were Gene Autry \u2014 the singing cowboy \u2014 was “born.” The \u201ctown\u201d is really<\/em> small but is named after him. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Recently, the news has covered demonstrations in Fort Sill (site of another WWII POW camp) by a Japanese group protesting the current administration\u2019s intention to \u201chouse\u201d immigrant children on the base \u2014 the protesters\u00a0 say that it\u2019s basically the same treatment they received at the facility during World War II.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n So how far we\u2019ve 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 \u2014 and I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s a fact \u2014 it makes me a little sad.<\/p>\n We are all different \u2014 we shouldn\u2019t judge, we should try to understand instead. There\u2019s an Amish proverb that, if we could all adopt, would make things pretty simple\u2026.\u201dInstead of putting others in their place, put yourself in their place.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s been a lot of news lately about the immigrants being held in \u201ccamps\u201d 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 … Continue reading
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n