PORT CITY N.C. MUSEUM OF HISTORY FRANCIS M. MANNING COLLECTION, JOYNER LIBRARY, EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY
IN 1943, The Allied North African Campaign of World War II
was successfully concluding.
Following victories versus the Axis powers, the British
and Americans took more than 500,000 German and
Italian prisoners. Without room in England for the massive num-ber
of prisoners, camps to house the sudden influx were hastily
established throughout the United States. Most states had prisoner
of war (POW) camps during World War II, but the southern U.S.
was preferred since less money had to be spent for land, labor,
and heating costs. As a result, thousands of German soldiers were
sent to camps throughout North Carolina, including the port
city of Wilmington. From 1943 to 1946, Wilmington was home to
three prison camps. In all, Wilmington housed more than 500 Axis
prisoners.
In February 1944, the first group of 250 German prisoners
arrived and was housed in the city’s original camp, located at what
is today the corner of Shipyard Boulevard and Carolina Beach Road,
near the Port of Wilmington. The port, at the time, was the location
of the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company. By September 1944,
declining sanitation was becoming an issue for the 500 prisoners
being held, and employers were asking for a camp location closer
to farms, mills and factories where POWs worked. Army and city
officials agreed to relocate the prisoners to a new camp. The first
camp closed in September 1944, replaced by a larger, second camp
that covered a four-block area in Wilmington, including the space
where the Martin Luther King Center is presently located.
“The peak number of POWs was 550 in 1945 in the main site
at 10th and Ann streets,” says Wilbur D. Jones Jr., a World War II
historian and author who lives in Wilmington. This second, larger
camp is noted on a historic marker that reads: “Our sites held only
Germans, no Italians. They were members of Gen. Erwin Rommel’s
famed Afrika Korps captured in Tunisia in 1943.”
As the residents of Wilmington absorbed the idea of living with
POWs, they grew interested in them. What were they like? Were
they Nazis who had completely bought into Hitler’s beliefs? Or
were they just boys, like our kids over there?
Apprehension also grew among the townspeople. Afraid some
residents might grow too bold, the local paper, The Wilmington
ALLISON POTTER
february 2019 28
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