Photo By Scott Sturkol | A small, wooden keepsake box adorned with carvings and the inscription,...... read more read more
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A small, wooden keepsake box adorned with carvings and the inscription, “Gefangenschaft Amerika 1944,” was donated in late January to the Fort McCoy Public Affairs Office for inclusion in the Fort McCoy History Center.
Rosanna Laude, who operates the Upscale Rummage store in Libertyville, Ill., came across the artifact made by a German prisoner of war (POW) from World War II in donations to the shop. In lieu of selling it, because she knew what she had, she contacted the Fort McCoy Public Affairs Office and offered to donate it to the post — which it was.
After further inspection and research with staff and archaeologists at Fort McCoy, it was determined the inscription reads, “Imprisonment America 1944.” The lingering question after that was did the German POW make the box at then-Camp McCoy or elsewhere?
Ryan J. Howell, staff archaeologist and cultural resource manager with the Fort McCoy Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch, said German POWs were not only located at Camp McCoy during World War II, but they were also in areas all throughout Wisconsin and northern Illinois, including near Libertyville.
“There were a series of small canning and farm camps scattered across southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois,” Howell said. “That might be a more likely provenance for Libertyville as those camps ran out of Camp Sheridan and Camp Joliet in northern Chicago, not Camp McCoy. But there was a lot of transfers of prisoners back and forth between the two.”
So, was the box made at Camp McCoy during World War II? Maybe, according to Howell. But there’s no concrete evidence to prove otherwise.
But Howell said at the Fort McCoy POW camp areas, which were located on today’s South Post of Fort McCoy, included ways for the POWs to create such keepsakes.
“The German POWs had a wood shop, and the POWs were encouraged to do arts and craft projects in their spare time,” Howell said.
Archaeologists Tyler J. Olsen, Miranda Alexander, and Bill Thompson with the Colorado State University’s (CSU) Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands who work in partnership with Fort McCoy also all found the artifact interesting and contributed to researching its origins.
All of the members of the Fort McCoy archaeology team have spent decades piecing together history of POWs at Fort McCoy through working with local and regional scholars as well as a number of research institutions.
In 2023, Aaron R. Schmidt, Carey L. Baxter, and Kayley R. Schacht with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center and the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory released information from a study in a report about Camp McCoy’s former POW mission.
In their report, they give a summary about German POWs at the installation.
“German POWs comprised the largest group of prisoners at Camp McCoy from December 1943 to June 1944, when there was an average of three to four times as many Germans as Japanese,” the report states. “The tide shifted dramatically from July 1944 to October 1945 when a wave of Japanese POWs entered the camp. During this period, German prisoners only represented a small fraction of the total POW population. The tide shifted again in October 1945 when the War Department removed all of the Japanese POWs from Camp McCoy. Due to this exodus, Germans once again represented the largest (and only) nationality of POWs from October 1945 until June 1946 when the POW program ended.”
The report also mentioned some things about how POWs spent their off-work time while in camp.
“When work was done for the day, or for those POWs not required to work, off-duty hours were spent in a variety of physical, social, artistic, and intel-lectual pursuits,” the report states. “Camp administrators made sure the prisoners were supplied with the materials they needed to keep them acceptably occupied in their free time. …
“At Camp McCoy, all of the POWs enjoyed a variety of recreational activities,” the report states. “Organizations like the YMCA provided supplies and equipment for hobbies, sports, and religious services. … The POWs also enjoyed participating in fine arts. The Japanese regularly created arts and crafts projects from the items they found at camp. The most popular materials included cigarette paper and rice water, which the Japanese used to make paper flowers for the mess hall tables. They also enjoyed watercolor painting, using brushes, inks, and paints supplied by the YMCA. The Koreans also enjoyed arts and crafts and even planned to make small Korean flags that the POWs could wave when they returned home.”
The donated wooden box will make its way to the POW display at the Fort McCoy History Center at a later date. The Fort McCoy History Center, located in the Fort McCoy Commemorative Area, has numerous items recalling the POW experience of World War II at McCoy. Also, throughout several areas of Fort McCoy, there are posted placards where the POW encampments were once located.
Read more about the Camp McCoy history about POWs by visiting https://www.dvidshub.net/news/462304/fort-mccoy-artifact-reviewing-prisoner-war-camp-history-world-war-ii-camp-mccoy, or https://www.dvidshub.net/news/451703/fort-mccoy-artifact-new-research-fort-mccoys-world-war-ii-era-prisoner-war-camp.
Fort McCoy’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.” Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortmccoywi, and on X (formerly Twitter) by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the My Army Post app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”
| Date Taken: | 02.15.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.15.2025 01:42 |
| Story ID: | 490871 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 2,315 |
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