The idea of keeping POWs on US soil has come up with some frequency since Obamas election one year ago. Closing the detention center housed in the Guantanamo Bay military installation in Cuba was a promise made early on in President Obamas campaign for the Presidency. Housing detainees however has been one of the largest stumbling blocks for any move to close the center, as its closure would almost necessarily mean moving the prisoners to the continental US.
As we have learned in class however, housing prisoners in the United States during a war has happened previously. During World War II German POWs were housed throughout the US, but heavily in the Midwest. Many of these prisoners where conscripted to work as laborers for US civilians. Geneva convention requirements stated that a POW could not be forced to work without pay, and therefor the prisoners where paid, often to the tune of ninety cents per day, money which they where able to use to buy good in the camps. Civilians wishing to employ this inexpensive source of manual labor would pay the government around forty five cents per day which would go towards compensation for the costs incurred by their housing. The opinions presented in this article held by the citizens who interacted with these POWs are overwhelmingly positive. Holthus and Kerr recall the men as having been hard workers, and relieved to be out of the war, POWs are even listed who chose to return to US after the end of the war.
In closing, the author cites the reflections of one of the individuals with experience around the POWs, asking whether or not there might be something to be gained by interacting similarly with the detainees down in Cuba. It certainly makes you wonder, even with all of the ideological differences in todays war, if some of the same compassion towards prisoners might be to our own benefit.
-Jeff G.
Works cited:
Garcia, Malcolm. “German POWs on the American Homefront.” SmithsonianMag. Smithonian, 16 Sept. 2009. Web. 22 Nov. 2009. <www.smithsonianmag.com>.
This is a great and intersting article. “90 cents” per day is not a lot of money even for that time period; however, it is still enough for prisoners to buy goods with. I didn’t know that we paid prisoners for being war prisoners. Great tie in and point made about Guantanamo Bay and German POW camps.
John Thornton
Comment by jtku89 — December 3, 2009 @ 2:19 pm |