Our local PBS station (Montgomery, Alabama) had a special on a couple of years ago about the PoW camp located in Aliceville, Alabama. I remember seeing still and "video" of German PoWs arriving in Aliceville and marching to the PoW camp.
The railroad that ran through Aliceville was the Frisco, and I did see pictures of the train. To me, they looked like standard heavyweight coaches. I don't recall seeing any bars or wire on the windows, but I didn't record it, so I can't say for sure.
Aliceville does have a PoW museum. Their website is at http://www.cityofaliceville.com/MuseumMain.htm. They may be able to provide more information, or possibly pictures, of the trains that PoWs arrived in.
I also remember reading a short story in Trains (or was it Classic Trains) about a unit of black servicemen that had to travel in uncomfortable Jim Crow cars while in the south during World War II. What really burned them up was that German PoWs were traveling in the standard coaches - the enemy was being treated better then our own GIs!
Warren
GN_Fan The US did a lot of things that do not make the history books. One biggie is the cutoff of oil to Japan just before Pearl harbor. Japan has NO oil reserves, and the US gave them 2 options...(1) get out of Indochine, which was unacceptable to japan, or (2) take oil by force. In effect, FDR provoked the Japanese. Also, the US had NO merchant marine before WW II.
The US did a lot of things that do not make the history books. One biggie is the cutoff of oil to Japan just before Pearl harbor. Japan has NO oil reserves, and the US gave them 2 options...(1) get out of Indochine, which was unacceptable to japan, or (2) take oil by force. In effect, FDR provoked the Japanese. Also, the US had NO merchant marine before WW II.
Which came first, the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, or U.S. Merchant Marine (in war service)? The Merchant Marine was first. On June 12, 1775, a party of Maine mariners, armed with pitchforks and axes, inspired by the news of the recent victory at Lexington, Massachusetts, used an unarmed lumber schooner to surprise and capture a fully armed British warship, HMS Margaretta, off the coast of Machias, Maine. The men used the captured guns and ammunition from the ship to bring in additional British ships as prizes. American privateers soon disrupted British shipping all along the Atlantic coast.
The Revenue Cutter Service was founded on Aug. 4, 1790, by Alexander Hamilton as a fleet of cutters to prevent smuggling and that is the usual date used for the beginning of the United States Coast Guard. The Coast Guard is made up of several "component" services: the Revenue Cutter Service, the Lifesaving Service, and the Lighthouse Service. The name Coast Guard was not used until the 20th Century, when the components were combined. However, the other two components were around long before 1775, especially the Lighthouse Service.
The Continental Navy was founded in 1775, but ended operation at the end of the Revolutionary War. The last warship was sold in 1785 and the Navy disbanded. The launching of the United States in 1797 marked the birth of the United States Navy.
http://www.usmm.org/usms.html
In 1938, when a second World War was imminent, President Franklin D. Roosevelt realized that winning the war would require many ships to carry war supplies to the fronts. He ordered mass-production of Liberty ships and established the U.S. Maritime Service (USMS) to train the men needed to operate these ships. Joseph P. Kennedy, (father of President John F. Kennedy) was appointed as the first Chairman of the new Federal Maritime Commission in 1937 during which he laid the groundwork for the U.S. Merchant Marine. Kennedy became the United States Ambassador to Great Britain in 1938. Retired Admiral Emory Scott Land, USN, succeeded Kennedy as Chairman, and who also headed the War Shipping Administration. Admiral Land is the genius who put together the ship production, training of the men in the USMS, and operation of the vast fleet.
The U. S. Maritime Service was set up in 1938 under provisions of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. Its purpose is to train officers and men for an adequate Merchant Marine. From July 1, 1941 to March 1, 1942 jurisdiction was under the U.S. Maritime Commission. From February 28, 1942 the U. S. Coast Guard, under Executive Order 9083, administered the training under the direction of the U.S. Maritime Commission. In July 11, 1942, Presidential Executive Order 9198 transferred operation of the Maritime Service to the War Shipping Administration, Admiral Emory Land, Administrator. A Division of Training was established under Admiral Land.
bedell Sorry to be a nit-picker, but Amtrak and Metro North both use the former NYCRR main line on the East bank of the Hudson. There has been no passenger service on the former West Shore line on the West bank for many years. There is some talk of reviving commuter service on the West Shore line but nothing definite yet.
Sorry to be a nit-picker, but Amtrak and Metro North both use the former NYCRR main line on the East bank of the Hudson. There has been no passenger service on the former West Shore line on the West bank for many years. There is some talk of reviving commuter service on the West Shore line but nothing definite yet.
When did that change?? I remember being in New York and taking Metro North up the old NYC line to Poughkeepsie. This was about 10 years ago, at that time Amtrak only used the west bank and I believe had done so for some time.
wjstix bedell Sorry to be a nit-picker, but Amtrak and Metro North both use the former NYCRR main line on the East bank of the Hudson. There has been no passenger service on the former West Shore line on the West bank for many years. There is some talk of reviving commuter service on the West Shore line but nothing definite yet. When did that change?? I remember being in New York and taking Metro North up the old NYC line to Poughkeepsie. This was about 10 years ago, at that time Amtrak only used the west bank and I believe had done so for some time.
If you have access to old Amtrak timetables, please look at them and see what cities Amtrak has served between New York City and Rensselaer.
Johnny
Deggesty [snipped] Stix, from the beginning of Amtrak, service to Rensselaer and points north and west was operated out of Grand Central. [snip] If you have access to old Amtrak timetables, please look at them and see what cities Amtrak has served between New York City and Rensselaer. Johnny
Confirming what Johnny said above: One day in late winter / early spring 1975 I took Amtrak round-trip NYC to Albany & return to interview with the D&H for an engineering dept. position (construction inspector). Ate breakfast & dinner on the train, watching the Hudson River go by - esp. Bannerman's Castle - from the east bank, and stopping at all the major cities & towns on that side. Every 5 years or so since then I get up that way for a few days - my aunt, and her son/ my cousin & his family live about equally close to to Hudson & Rensselaer - and look for Amtrak, which still runs on the east bank all the way north from Spuyten Duyvil to just north of the Albany-Rensselaer station (recently rebuilt and modernized). They like to ride it to NYC for shopping and shows, etc.
- Paul North.
Paul_D_North_Jr Deggesty [snipped] Stix, from the beginning of Amtrak, service to Rensselaer and points north and west was operated out of Grand Central. [snip] If you have access to old Amtrak timetables, please look at them and see what cities Amtrak has served between New York City and Rensselaer. Johnny Confirming what Johnny said above: One day in late winter / early spring 1975 I took Amtrak round-trip NYC to Albany & return to interview with the D&H for an engineering dept. position (construction inspector). Ate breakfast & dinner on the train, watching the Hudson River go by - esp. Bannerman's Castle - from the east bank, and stopping at all the major cities & towns on that side. Every 5 years or so since then I get up that way for a few days - my aunt, and her son/ my cousin & his family live about equally close to to Hudson & Rensselaer - and look for Amtrak, which still runs on the east bank all the way north from Spuyten Duyvil to just north of the Albany-Rensselaer station (recently rebuilt and modernized). They like to ride it to NYC for shopping and shows, etc. - Paul North.
B. My first trip between NYC and Rensselaer was in 1969, when I had a single slumbercoach room to Detroit on the schedule that had replaced the Century and the Wolverine. My second trip was in 1984, when I rode from Rensselaer to Grand Central in Custom class (I was the only passenger in the car). In 1997, my wife and I rode from Penn Station to Montreal, and we again rode, twelve days ago, from Rensselaer to Penn Station. Paul, thank you for naming Bannerman's castle. We noticed it, and I was unable to recall the name of the man who started to build it and had to leave off building because he ran out of money. We missed seeing the facility at Ossining; we don't know anyone there, so our failure was not fatal.
C. Paul, was your interview profitable?
Well...this has gone on for so long I forgot what I asked about. From all of the discussions and comments, it is obvious that US prison trains were a pretty well guarded secret some 60+ years ago as absolutely no one can shed any light on them. As with some threads, the subject matter wanders off topic, and this happened almost from the start on this one. How we got to the NYC and Rensseelaer is beyond me, but I'm just glad I found out I'm not the only one in the dark on this subject.
Last weekend I finally unboxed my Trains from the 1960s - and skimmed through the articles by C. Grattan Price, but I couldn't quite remember just why it was that I wanted to retrieve them - and didn't, until just now - the German POW trains through Pennsylvania, etc. (see my 03-02-2009 post on Page 1 of 3 here). I've got to be out most of the next couple of evenings, but within the next week I'll try and remember to look them up again and see if that's where they are - and either way, I'll post the results here.
Have you tried researching the various military history sites or resources ? Including the US Archives - NARA, I think it's called ? I'm amazed at the level of detail that is kept and published in some of those, esp. by units that were in combat. Also, the geneaology people - this might not be common, but it can't be unheard of, I'm sure, esp. in the aeas where the POWs were kept and might have setleld post-war.
- PDN.
Johnny -
B. Glad that my mention of Bannerman's Castle was of interest. I had kind of forgotten it until I was typing the post, then threw it in there in for those who also know the vicinity. One of my college acquaintances who was from the area - John Atherton, where are you now ? - was pretty much obsessed with the history and condition of the place, so at the time I was very well aware of it. It turns up from time to time in the darndest writings and shows - would be hard to believe, almost like an "urban legend" - if it wasn't so well documented.
C. Yes, the interview was profitable, in that I was offered the position. However, I declined because I had another offer closer to home with an industrial railroad trackwork contractor - W.E. Yoder, Inc., still in business - that was much smaller and had more opportunities for hands-on kinds of things and professional advancement. It was - and is - one of those "road not taken" kinds of things, and I still wonder what might have been. But I have no huge regrets, because the D&H went through some hard times in the next couple of decades, and even the people I knew there then mostly didn't stay on. For example, my would-be mentor then went to the Rock Island, then the P&W, then back to the D&H & CPR, then to the G&W, now the WPa & NY, with a couple of stints in private consulting engineering practice in between. I probably could have done something like that at that age - not sure that I really would have wanted to, though . . .
German POWs arriving by train are mentioned on this website for Camp Marion, Ohio:
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3R34
Here's a link to the 1st "Abstract" webpage (of 7 total webpages) of a scan of a 1973 Baylor University Master's Thesis paper by Robert Warren Tissing, Jr.:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txrober2/TissingAbstract.htm
Although the thesis appears to have been written around the Texas aspects of that experience - as it is titled: "UTILIZATION OF PRISONERS OF WAR IN THE UNITED STATES DURING WORLD WAR II: TEXAS, A CASE STUDY" - most of it appears to have nationwide application except for part "III - POWs in Texas".
If you read through it and pay attention to the footnotes, there are a couple of post-war U.S. Government reports that apparently were his chief sources - they may be worth getting. Notably, he claims that there were over 400,000 POWs in the U.S. in something like 450+ camps - wow ! from my cursory review, it appears to be a very workmanlike study.
I also found another website and an article by a Gary North (no relation that I know of) titled "America's WW II Prison Camps" (not dated) at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north71.html
This article appears to reference the above study, and - more to the point of the Original Post here - at about the middle of the article mentions the sailors on German ships who were taken prisoner in the early days of WW II.
- PDN.D U R I N G W O R L D W A R I I : T E X A S , A C A S E S T U D Y
And a few more:
Oklahoma: "For the Duration: Behind Fences in Oklahoma" at http://rebelcherokee.labdiva.com/powcampinfo.html
Note this quote: "One small group [of German POWs] operated the ice plant for the Santa Fe Railroad . . . ".
A short article titled "Nazi Prisoners on American Soil" with 2 books referenced at the end, at:
http://militaryhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/nazi_prisoners_on_american_soil
Arkansas, again with a list of sources at the end (mostly - but not all - for Arkansas, though):
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2398
A. I don't remember how it came up now either, although I guess one connection would be that guys found guilty in New York City courts back in the Thomas Dewey / Gangster / Prohibition days would be sent to SingSing prison on New York Central trains. Since they were going north up the east bank of the Hudson to the prison (the tracks still run into a covered platform where the prisoners were detrained) they were said to be being "sent up the river" which is where that slang term for being sent to prison came from.
Paul_D_North_Jr There was a smiliar account in Trains 20 years or so ago (well, maybe 40 years !?! - see below), except that the train went via the PRR and Horse Shoe Curve. As I recall, the prisoners were rather happy and boisterous at their good treatment by the U.S. However, as they rolled west through the central Pennsylvania valleys that reminded them of home, they grew quieter and sadder as they realized what they were missing. [snipped]
Paul_D_North_Jr [snipped] . . . [It] was an article by Al Rung, then a PR guy with BN. He worked directly for the PRR as a military "MAIN" train liason officer for a few months towards the end of World War II - very similar to Conductor Moedinger, who however was directly employed by the Pullman Co. instead - and hence the confusion, at least in my mind. Here's the citation: "Love those diesels! - a manuscript in file for 24 years" by Rung, A. M., from Trains, April 1977, p. 26 The article related his experiences during that time, such as how the diesels would not cover the passengers with smoke and soot during the night, obtaining ice for the air conditioning in the cars, etc. He too greatly admired the GG1's, and thought that the PRR's electrification had helped to end the war sooner. That was the context for the comments, despite the title. If anyone wants more details, let me know - I could retype a few words of it, I suppose. - Paul North.
The article related his experiences during that time, such as how the diesels would not cover the passengers with smoke and soot during the night, obtaining ice for the air conditioning in the cars, etc. He too greatly admired the GG1's, and thought that the PRR's electrification had helped to end the war sooner. That was the context for the comments, despite the title. If anyone wants more details, let me know - I could retype a few words of it, I suppose.
GN_Fan wrote the following post on Sunday, March 01, 2009:
[snipped] "...Also, the US had NO merchant marine before WW II..." [snipped]
Admittedly, this post is an old post, but seems to be in erro, based on the above statement.
The website @ http://www.usmm.org/ [ If you scroll down to the section] "A Mismatch at Sea" Indicates Merchant Marine activities back to the Revolutionary War"
I grew up in Memphis,Tn. and from time to time the local newspapers The Commercial Appeal carried stories of German's who had been held as POWs at the Defense Depot in Memphis, apparently they were used in the community for various civic projects and monitored by guards.
The on-going stories were have they had returned after the war, and their tails of how the incarceration within the USA(specifically,Memphis,Tn) had altered their outlook about America and the Mid-South area. They returned as toursits, and friends to see people that had befriended them and had helped make them appreciate their time in the POW system.
Within the following linked site there : http://www.traces.org/index.htm is a lot of information referencing both WWII Geraman and Italian prisoners in the US. There is also a mention of some 500 different locations where POWs were kept in USA
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