Bus provides history from WWII

By Tom Hintgen (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published 12:00 p.m., September 16, 2008

On Thursday, Sept. 11, a bus stopped in front of the Grant County Museum in Elbow Lake. This was no ordinary bus, but one that contained information about World War II not well known to many Minnesotans.

By the end of the war, in 1945, close to 425,000 German, Italian and Japanese prisoners of war were held at 660 POW camps across the nation. Their story was shared with Grant County residents last week in the bus that’s also a mobile museum.

The title is “Held in the Heartland.” Information comes from the TRACES Center for History and Culture in downtown St. Paul.

“This educational endeavor was created to gather, preserve and present stories of people from the Midwest who encountered each other during World War II,” said Grant County Museum Director Patty Benson. “Many of these stories, conveyed through the traveling exhibit, were left in the dust in the wake of a world war. Most of the information never touched the American heartland.”

On hand to answer questions while the bus was in Elbow Lake on Thursday was Irving Kellman of the TRACES Museum in St. Paul.

“We provide, through the traveling bus, some texts, artifacts and multi-media,” Kellman said. “We’re touring six Midwestern states this fall.”

German POWs, during World War II, were held in Army camps in various sections of the United States. Male POWs harvested crops, built roads, cut trees and worked on much of the infrastructure in the areas where they were held. Female POWs helped wash U.S. Army laundry and perform other tasks.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, repeatedly warned the American public about the dangers posed by escaped German prisoners. In reality, there was not a single recorded instance of sabotage or assault on an American citizen by an escaped POW. Any crimes committed were typically the theft of an automobile or of clothing needed for the getaway.

“Two escaped POWs were rounded up on the ferris wheel at a county fair,” Kellman said.

After the initial employment of POWs in the fall of 1943, Minnesota escalated its number of total camps to 21 in 1945. Close to 3,000 POWs worked in agriculture, logging and small-business labor in Minnesota.

“Using POWs for labor was a fairly common practice during the war,” Kellman said. “But the living conditions in camps throughout the country did raise some concern. Most camps were furnished similarly to the base camps for U.S. troops. The only noticeable difference was the presence of armed guards, barbed wire and high walls.”

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