Posters and POW camp plans

Monday, April 21, 2003
A special drive poster from the Martin Bomber plant by W.K. Swanson

A picture of W.K. Swanson of McCook appeared in the May 1943 issue of "The Martin Star", a publication of the Glen L. Martin Co., operators of the Martin bomber plant in Omaha where he was employed at that time. Owner of the Swanson Sign Co. in McCook, Mr. Swanson went to Omaha in 1942 as a member of the staff in its photo-art department. Poster signs in the Omaha plant, many of them designed and executed by Swanson, were credited with boosting production, reducing absenteeism, encouraging greater safety and promoting numerous drives, such as the Red Cross or bond sales among the Martin plant employees.

It's so surprising to read these newspapers day by day and see the "what might have beens" such as the Prisoner of War camp articles I'm finding now. Of course, the local POW camp was eventually located just north of Indianola and contained mostly German prisoners. Several scenarios were in the making before the POW camp as-we-know it came to be.

The May 12,1943, Gazette had an article by Phil Ault of Allied Headquarters, North Africa about the 150,000 prisoners they would have on their hands in a few days. Final plans for moving them out of the theater of war were not complete but some German prisoners already had been sent to the United States and Canada.

"The Germans appear willing to go and the Italians are eager. As the Italians pace back and forth behind the barbed wire of the prisoner cages, they grin at Americans, hold their fingers aloft in the V-for-Victory sign and ask 'When do we go to America?'" The Germans especially were asking him what their chances were of being sent to the U.S. and remaining there after the war.

The prisoners were enamored with New York, regarding it, "as a fabled city with buildings towering into the clouds." Ault related an incident involving war-weary Italians, illustrating this belief. "A group of them was being herded into a prison cage when an American soldier passed by and grinned at them. One of the prisoners shouted: "What are you laughing at us for? You are going to Italy, but we are going to New York.'"

Sending the POWs to the other side of the Atlantic would help the Allies solve two problems -- it would reduce the number of persons to be fed in the war-torn areas and would help lessen the shortage of manpower in the United States and Canada. Ault assumed that prisoners captured by the Americans would be sent to the United States and the ones taken by the British would be sent to Canada.

Of course, to Gazette publisher Harry Strunk, this potential glut of workmen could mean only one thing ... building dams to protect the Republican River valley from another disastrous flood such as we had in 1935.

M.O. Ryan, executive secretary for the Republican Conservation Association had been working on the project in Washington since mid-January, 1943. On March 14th A.J. Howard, architect and P.K. DeVoe, sanitary engineer with the U.S. Army Engineers at Omaha, in company with officers of the Republican Valley Conservation association at Cambridge, went over a site near Cambridge, checking and rechecking work which had been done previously by engineers when the site was proposed a year ago for a Japanese camp. A March 12 Gazette article described the site originally planned for Japanese prisoners as, "north and east of Bartley, approximately five miles north of highway No. 6 and within a few miles of the Medicine reservoir site."

"Development of plans for that camp was halted about a year ago when it became impossible to secure priorities on copper wire to extend power lines. Upon their return to McCook Thursday afternoon, the officers told the Gazette they were very favorably impressed with the camp location and would make a favorable report to their superiors."

The same Gazette article said that a second site, also considered was on the lowlands between Bartley and Cambridge as a retention camp for (Japanese) aliens many of who were American citizens. This project was one in which it was proposed to assemble some 5,000 aliens where they might do intensive farming on a basis of two acres for each alien family. Both projects failed to develop on account of absence of priorities on necessary materials.

The camp proposed as of March 14, 1943, would be "strictly a prison camp for Italian soldiers, where they would be located under heavy guard for the duration of the war and where their labor would be available either on individual farms, in small groups on irrigation and flood control work, or on the actual construction of the Medicine Creek reservoir. Personnel of the camp would probably be between 2,000-3,000 prisoners, who would be permitted to work under guard within 50 miles of the camp."

It will be interesting to see how the camp evolves from Italians northwest of Cambridge to Germans north of Indianola ... now that we have determined for sure that we aren't going to have 5,000 Japanese anywhere around Bartley.

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