"They Wore the Varnish Right off the Floor"
POWs Among Us
There’s a rather steep embankment on the west side of U.S. highway 218 between Blooming Prairie and Owatonna, Minnesota (specifically, between the villages of Bixby on the south and Pratt on the north). Maybe five decades ago, Dad pointed to this overlook and recalled seeing German prisoners of war (POWs) working on area farms, taking a break, watching cars travel by… a memory of his from spring, 1945, the year he turned 16.
Eighty years ago, in 1945, the U.S. held 425,000 German, Italian, and Japanese POWs in camps across the country. Most camps were in the South; milder climate reduced construction costs. But camps were also located in places where prisoners could help meet farm labor shortages and could address the need for canning factory workers.
Algona, Iowa, less than 100 miles west of our home, was a POW hub, a camp built to accommodate 3,000 prisoners. The Algona site was also responsible for distributing as many as 10,000 POWs throughout Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. A hub in Clarinda, Iowa, 200 miles south of Algona, served a similar function.
Algona and Clarinda camps were identical, built to Army Corps of Engineers specifications: 186 buildings for prisoners plus 500 American soldiers serving the camp. Camps also included a church, theater, fire station, icehouse, machine shop, barn, hospital, electric distribution system, and water/sewage facilities.
Locations where POWs were dispatched include Charles City and Waverly in North Iowa and Hollandale and Owatonna in Southern Minnesota. There were approximately 66 POWs in Charles City, 110 in Waverly, 117 in Hollandale and 200 in Owatonna. My focus is on the Charles City location, with indebtedness to Mckenna Lloyd, Museum Director, Floyd County Museum in Charles City for her assistance. POW information can be hard to come by, for as Lloyd notes, “It seems it might have been something (the government) wanted to keep somewhat secret.”
In a Charles City Daily Press article, October 24, 1944, Captain K. F. McClintic, commanding officer of the Algona Branch Camp, suggested prisoners of war were not to be conversed with or bothered. They were in Charles City to furnish labor lost to the war effort by working at Sherman Nursery under a contract the nursery had with the federal government to employ POWs.
According to Lloyd, POWs in Charles City “Stayed only at the Wildwood Clubhouse, one of the few remaining buildings where German prisoners of war were housed. Even the camps at Algona and Clarinda are no more… no buildings used by the prisoners remain there. Sherman Nursery was located right by Wildwood Park so that’s most likely why prisoners stayed there.”
The contract with Sherman Nursery concluded November 30, 1944, although prisoners remained in the community and, according to Captain McClintic, were “pouring concrete for the company in charge of the defense housing project” in Charles City. On November 1, it was announced that 25 homes (on 5th, 6th, and 7th Avenues between E and G Streets) would be constructed, a Federal Housing Administration project to alleviate Charles City’s “critical housing shortage.”
Lloyd notes, “While they stayed at Wildwood, the prisoners were fairly self-sufficient. About their life as prisoners in Charles City Captain McClintic reported ‘They do their own cooking, laundry, etc. Their favorite recreation is soccer, a few play table tennis. They have a radio which is in use most of the time.’” An Iowa PBS program from 2003 quotes the late Charles City resident Tracy Sweet, “Everybody in town got along with them. They were good workers. They were clean. I heard the floor in this room (at Wildwood Clubhouse) they kept so clean they had to refinish it afterwards… they wore the varnish right off the floor.”
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, less than half of one percent of World War II veterans are still living. POW statistics are probably comparable, meaning of the 10,000 processed through Algona, maybe fifty men are still alive. Nevertheless, as I drove past that embankment south of Owatonna last weekend, I swear I could see a group of young Germans relaxing there… talking, laughing, watching traffic pass for a few minutes before returning to work.
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I’m pleased to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. These are my colleagues:
German POWS were also held in Wells Mn, where they helped in pea and corn harvesting for the local canning company and also worked on many area farms. The Wells Depot Museum has individual stories from several of these families.
Betsy Hermanson, Director, Wells Depot Museum