Long Hard Road: American POWs During World War II

3: Guards and Escape

Guards and Escape P RISONERS CAME INTO frequent, daily contact with guards who patrolled the camps and inspected the individual barracks. For the POWs, once behind barbed wire in a permanent camp, this was the face of the enemy. Depending on location, experiences were drastically different. From the German camps come accounts of guards, many in their forties and even fifties, with whom the POWs sometimes could converse and also barter for various goods. Former prisoners even displayed a certain empathy for particular guards, some of whom discussed their families , shared rumors about the war, and stopped for a cigarette on cold evenings. Treatment generally was consistent, and accounts of abuse are the rare exception.1 The situation in the Pacific was entirely different. Prisoners held by the Japanese uniformly described treatment by guards as erratic, brutal, and even sadistic, with physical punishment a common occurrence. Beatings were meted out for seemingly trivial infractions. More serious “crimes,” like smuggling food into camp or stealing from one’s captors, would bring more systematic punishment, even torture; here broken bones or even death could, and did, ensue.2 Allied POWs, products of western military training, were shocked by this physical abuse. But corporal punishment was commonplace in the Japanese Army: a senior officer could slap a junior officer, who in turn could hit a noncommissioned officer, who could beat a private. POWs, considered by their Japanese captors to have dishonored and shamed themselves by surrendering, were at the very bottom of this hierarchy. The guards, most simple enlisted men, took out their frustrations on the prisoners.3 77 H H H H H H 3 H H H H H H from the german camps come numerous reports of escape and attempted escape. Idleness gave abundant time to think, plan, and dig. Mostly of European stock, Americans could visually blend in outside the prison camp; some men understood or even spoke German, increasing the chance of success. Importantly, the Geneva Convention offered a modicum of protection should an escapee be recaptured: “Escaped prisoners of war who are recaptured . . . shall be liable only to disciplinary punishment.” For most of the war, official German policy was to respect this article. Still, films like The Great Escape (1963) notwithstanding, few men thought seriously about escaping and only a handful ever participated in an organized attempt. Most men were content to remain in camp.4 In spite of hard labor, abusive treatment, and near-starvation rations, there are but a handful of documented escape attempts from Japanese camps, the majority of them unsuccessful. Multiple factors worked against escape. The isolated location of many camps would have meant long journeys through unknown and inhospitable terrain—for sick and weakened men, nearly impossible. In addition, as historian Gavan Daws writes, “Any white captive was a prisoner not only in a Japanese camp, but in Asia. His skin was a prison uniform he could never take off.” Tall Caucasians would find it impossible to blend in, and, because of Japanese threats, locals were far more likely to turn in fleeing POWs than assist them.5 But the most important factor explaining the paucity of escapes is more basic: life and death. The Japanese threatened to execute prisoners caught trying to escape—and on more than one occasion they carried out this threat. At times they did so publicly, to maximize the deterrent effect . To further reduce the possibility of escape, the Japanese instituted self-policing among the POWs. Thus, in some camps ten-man groups were formed, with remaining members threatened with punishment, even execution, if one or more escaped. In sum, Pacific prisoners were in for the duration, and they knew it.6 Guards in German Camps Some POWs shared positive memories of their German guards, even empathized with them. Paratrooper Earle Bombardier provides one example, 78 long hard road when he was on a work detail near Augsburg in late 1944 or early 1945, an instance where he believes his life was spared. We had one young soldier that came in there. Not knowing his real name, we called him Africa because he had been in the Afrika Korps, in Rommel’s force over in Africa, and he was wounded and sent back to Germany to the hospital. While he was recuperating, then they put him in there [at Augsburg] as a guard. He was only about eighteen years old. One of the finest people...