American Prisoner of War Camps in Montana and Wyoming describes the impact of the large number of prisoners of war on the populations of Montana and Wyoming, as well as the impact of the people of Montana and Wyoming on those imprisoned there. Providing detail on the care and employment of prisoners of war according to the Geneva Convention of 1929, the lives of POWs in these states are illustrated, along with the details of camp locations in Montana and Wyoming and the deaths and burials that occurred among them. Some prisoner names are included, as well as references to source materials at various repositories. Historical photographs serve to provide depth to the story.

An American soldier dispatched to a detention center located in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies learns he is to head up a group of translators for German POWs, some of them dedicated Nazis. The soldier was Kurt Landsberger, a Jewish refugee, who three years prior had barely escaped the clutches of the very men with whom he now had to deal. Arriving at a virtually empty camp, still under construction, along with four other translators, Kurt soon realized that the Army had neglected to prepare the camp staff for the tasks they had to undertake. Faced with daring escape attempts and brutal prison beatings, the inadequately trained guards struggled to maintain order. As tensions rose, the unthinkable happened: two German POWs were shot dead and the unlucky American guard was put on trial. Landsberger has amassed an impressive collection of court records, letters, declassified documents and photographs to tell this virtually unknown story.--From publisher description.

Four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Mildred McClellan Melville, a member of the Denver Woman’s Press Club, predicted that war would come for the United States and that its long arm would reach into the lives of all Americans. And reach it did. Colorado women from every corner of the state enlisted in the military, joined the workforce, and volunteered on the home front. As military women, they served as nurses and in hundreds of noncombat positions. In defense plants they riveted steel, made bullets, inspected bombs, operated cranes, and stored projectiles. They hosted USO canteens, nursed in civilian hospitals, donated blood, drove Red Cross vehicles, and led scrap drives; and they processed hundreds of thousands of forms and reports. Whether or not they worked outside the home, they wholeheartedly participated in a kaleidoscope of activities to support the war effort. In Colorado Women in World War II Gail M. Beaton interweaves nearly eighty oral histories—including interviews, historical studies, newspaper accounts, and organizational records—and historical photographs (many from the interviewees themselves) to shed light on women’s participation in the war, exploring the dangers and triumphs they felt, the nature of their work, and the lasting ways in which the war influenced their lives. Beaton offers a new perspective on World War II—views from field hospitals, small steel companies, ammunition plants, college classrooms, and sugar beet fields—giving a rare look at how the war profoundly transformed the women of this state and will be a compelling new resource for readers, scholars, and students interested in Colorado history and women’s roles in World War II.

Comprehensive look inside Wisconsin's 38 branch camps that held 20,000 Nazi and Japanese prisoners of war during World War II.

Between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government wrongfully imprisoned thousands of Japanese American citizens and profited from their labor. Japanese American Incarceration recasts the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II as a history of prison labor and exploitation. Following Franklin Roosevelt's 1942 Executive Order 9066, which called for the exclusion of potentially dangerous groups from military zones along the West Coast, the federal government placed Japanese Americans in makeshift prisons throughout the country. In addition to working on day-to-day operations of the camps, Japanese Americans were coerced into harvesting crops, digging irrigation ditches, paving roads, and building barracks for little to no compensation and often at the behest of privately run businesses—all in the name of national security. How did the U.S. government use incarceration to address labor demands during World War II, and how did imprisoned Japanese Americans respond to the stripping of not only their civil rights, but their labor rights as well? Using a variety of archives and collected oral histories, Japanese American Incarceration uncovers the startling answers to these questions. Stephanie Hinnershitz's timely study connects the government's exploitation of imprisoned Japanese Americans to the history of prison labor in the United States.