The
1929 Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War established certain provisions relative to the treatment of prisoners of war. One requirement was that POW camps were to be open to inspection by authorised representatives of a neutral power. • Article 10 required that POWs should be lodged in adequately heated and lighted buildings where conditions were the same as their own troops. • Articles 27–32 detailed the conditions of labour.
Enlisted ranks were required to perform whatever labour they were asked and able to do, so long as it was not dangerous and did not support the captor's war effort. Senior
non-commissioned officers (sergeants and above) were required to work only in a supervisory role.
Commissioned officers were unrequired to work, although they could volunteer. The work performed was largely agricultural or industrial, ranging from coal or potash mining, stone quarrying, or work in saw mills, breweries, factories, railway yards, and forests. POWs hired out to military and civilian contractors and were paid $.80 per day in
scrip in U.S. camps. The workers were also supposed to get at least one day of rest per week. • Article 76 ensured that POWs who died in captivity were to be honourably interred in marked graves. Not all combatants applied the provisions of the convention. In particular the
Empire of Japan, which had signed but never ratified the convention, was notorious for its treatment of prisoners of war; this poor treatment occurred in part because the Japanese viewed surrender as dishonourable. Prisoners from all nations were subject to forced labour, beatings, torture, murder, and even medical experimentation. Rations fell short of the minimum required to sustain life, and many were forced into labour. After March 20, 1943, the
Imperial Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea. Japanese POW camps are found throughout south-east Asia and the Japanese conquered territories.
Escapes The
Great Escape from Stalag Luft III, on the night of March 24, 1944, involved the escape of 76 Allied servicemen, although only three were able to avoid recapture. The
Cowra breakout, on August 5, 1944, is believed to be the largest escape of POWs in recorded history and possibly the largest prison breakout ever. At least 545
Japanese POWs attempted to escape from a camp near
Cowra, New South Wales,
Australia. Most sources say that 234 POWs were killed or committed suicide. The remainder were recaptured. The
Great Papago Escape, on December 23, 1944, was the largest POW escape to occur from an American facility. Over 25 German POWs tunneled out of
Camp Papago Park, near
Phoenix, Arizona, and fled into the surrounding desert. Over the next few weeks all were recaptured. The escape of Felice Benuzzi, Giovanni ('Giuàn') Balletto, and Vincenzo ('Enzo') Barsotti from Camp 354 in Nanyuki, Kenya, on a lark to climb Mount Kenya is of particular note. The account is recorded by Benuzzi in
No Picnic on Mount Kenya. After their attempt to climb Mount Kenya, the trio "escaped" back into Camp 354.
Role of the Red Cross After
World War I, when around 40 million civilians and prisoners could not be saved, the
Red Cross was entrusted with more rights and responsibilities. In the course of
World War II, it provided millions of
Red Cross parcels to Allied POWs in Axis prison camps; most of these contained food and personal hygiene items, while others held medical kits. A special "release kit" parcel was also provided to some newly released POWs at the war's end. During the United States' call for war on Japan, the Red Cross stepped up to provide services for the soldiers overseas. A large number of provisions were needed for the soldiers in World War II over the 4 years that the Americans were involved. The American Red Cross and thirteen million volunteers had donated in the country with an average weekly donation of 111,000 pints of blood. Nurses, doctors, and volunteer workers worked on the front lines overseas to provide for the wounded and the needy. This program saved thousands of lives as plasma donations were delivered to the camps and bases. However, the Red Cross only accepted donations from white Americans and excluded those of Japanese, Italian, German and African Americans. To combat this, activists tried to fight such segregation back home with arguments that blood of Whites and blood of Blacks is the same. Believing it was shameful to be captured alive in combat, the Japanese ran their prisoner-of-war camps brutally, with many Allied prisoners of war dying in them. The Japanese field army code included a "warrior spirit", which stated that an individual must calmly face death. Those who disobeyed orders would be sentenced to death via
decapitation, usually carried out by the
katana of Japanese officers. The sword was seen as a symbol of wisdom and perseverance to the Japanese, and they perceived that it was an honor to die by it. Life in the POW camps was recorded at great risk to themselves by artists such as
Jack Bridger Chalker,
Philip Meninsky,
John Mennie,
Ashley George Old, and
Ronald Searle. Human hair was often used for brushes, plant juices and blood for paint, and toilet paper as the "canvas". Some of their works were used as evidence in the trials of Japanese war criminals. Many are now held by the
Australian War Memorial,
State Library of Victoria, and the
Imperial War Museum in London. The State Library of Victoria exhibited many of these works under the title
The Major Arthur Moon Collection, in 1995. In 2016, war historian
Antony Beevor (who had recently completed his book
The Second World War), said that the UK government had recently declassified information that some British POWs in some Japanese POW camps were subjected to being fattened, then cannibalised. Apparently,
Winston Churchill had been aware of this atrocity but kept the information secret; he reasoned families would have been too distressed to learn that their sons had been the victims of
cannibalism rather than
killed in action. More deaths occurred in Japanese POW camps than in any others. The Red Cross were not able to drop parcels into these camps because they were too well defended to fly over.
Canadian camps The Second World War was mainly fought in Europe and western Russia, East Asia, and the Pacific; there were no invasions of Canada. The few prisoners of war sent to Canada included Japanese and German soldiers, captured U-boat crews, and prisoners from raids such as
Dieppe and Normandy. The camps meant for German POWs were smaller than those meant for Japanese prisoners of war and were far less brutal. German prisoners generally benefitted from good food. However, the hardest part was surviving the Canadian winters. Most camps were isolated and located in the far north. Death and sickness caused by the elements was common. Many camps were only lightly watched, and as such, many Germans attempted escape. Tunnelling was the most common method. Peter Krug, an escapee from a prison located in
Bowmanville, Ontario, managed to escape along the railroads, using forests as cover. He made his way to
Toronto, where he then travelled to
Texas. Fighting, sometimes to the death, was somewhat common in the camps. Punishments for major infractions could include death by hanging. German POWs wore shirts with a large red dot painted on the back, an easily identifiable mark outside the camps. Therefore, escapees could be easily found and recaptured. ;
Japanese in Canada In the wake of the Japanese attacking Hong Kong, the Philippines and Pearl Harbor in which 2000 Canadians were involved, Canadians put a large focus onto Japanese-Canadians even though innocent. Japan seemed to be able to attack along the Pacific and Canada could potentially be next. Canadian Prime Minister
William Lyon Mackenzie King implemented the
War Measures Act and the
Defence of Canada Regulations; therefore, they could not get involved with Canadian services along with the Italians and Germans. The Nikkei (Canadians and Immigrants of Japanese origin) were stripped of possessions, which were later auctioned off without consent. The intense cold winters made it hard to live as the Nikkei were placed in camps; these campers were made of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Canadians. They lived in barns and stables which were used for animals, therefore unsanitary. It took 5 years after the war for the Nikkei to gain their rights. Compensation was given but was not enough to cover the loss of properties. Over 22,000 Nikkei were put into these camps.
Axis camps •
List of POW camps in Germany and German-occupied countries (Stalags) •
List of Japanese war ships •
List of POW camps in Italy •
List of POW camps in Japan •
List of POW camps in Switzerland Cigarettes as currency In many POW camps, cigarettes were widely used as currency known as '
commodity money'. They performed the functions of money as a medium of exchange because they were generally accepted among the prisoners for settling payments or debts, and the function of money as a unit of account, because prices of other goods were expressed in terms of cigarettes. Compared with other goods, the supply of cigarettes was more stable, as they were rationed in the POW camps, and cigarettes were more divisible, portable, and homogeneous. ==Korean War==