Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/14/a-new-hampshire-pow-camp-in-wo.html
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Quite the opposite for Japanese-Americans by my parents account. Initially, the guards were raw recruits who hadn’t seen battle so they weren’t bad. Once they rotated out and were replaced by soldiers coming back from the front, it became a game of “give me any excuse to shoot you”. Like in the story, internees volunteered to work on locals farms because of the labor shortage (and to get the hell out of the camp which were mostly located in deserts) and of course, the 442nd “All Nisei”. You’ll have to draw your own conclusions on why the different treatment.
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The German prisoners were fairly sedate bunch. They were being fed better than soldiers in the field and German civilians, they had no place to escape to, and treated far better than the Soviets or they treated their own POW’s.
I have an great uncle who was was a POW camp in upstate NY during WWII. He took several prisoners into town to get haircuts. While they were getting the haircuts, he went to a chair, put down his rifle and took a nap. One of the prisoners woke him up to tell him it was time to go back to the camp. That only happened once. Once.
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