Prisoner-of-war camp
[1] This, coupled with the relatively small size of armies, meant there was little need for any form of camp to hold prisoners of war.
This is generally considered to mark the point where captured enemy fighters would be reasonably treated before being released at the end of the conflict or under a parole not to take up arms.
Following General John Burgoyne's surrender at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, several thousand British and German (Hessian and Brunswick) troops were marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The remaining soldiers (some 2,000 British, upwards of 1,900 German, and roughly 300 women and children) marched south in late 1778—arriving at the site (near Ivy Creek) in January 1779.
[3] Lacking a means for dealing with large numbers of captured troops early in the American Civil War, the Union and Confederate governments relied on the traditional European system of parole and exchange of prisoners.
In total, six prisoner-of-war camps were erected in South Africa and around 31 in overseas British colonies to hold Boer prisoners of war.
The concentration camps were generally poorly administered, the food rations were insufficient to maintain health, standards of hygiene were low, and overcrowding was chronic.
The main combatant nations engaged in World War I abided by the convention and treatment of prisoners was generally good.
The unexpectedly large number of prisoners captured in the first days of the war by the German army created an immediate problem.
[21] From autumn 1920, thousands of captured Red Army soldiers and guards had been placed in the Tuchola internment camp, in Pomerania.
Over 25 German POWs tunneled out of Camp Papago Park, near Phoenix, Arizona, and fled into the surrounding desert.
[citation needed] After World War I, when around 40 million civilians and prisoners could not be saved, the Red Cross was entrusted with more rights and responsibilities.
In the course of World War II, it provided millions of Red Cross parcels to Allied POWs in Axis prison camps; most of these contained food and personal hygiene items, while others held medical kits.
During the United States' call for war on Japan, the Red Cross stepped up to provide services for the soldiers overseas.
A large number of provisions were needed for the soldiers in World War II over the 4 years that the Americans were involved.
In 1942, after they had captured Hong Kong from the British, the Japanese established several prisoner-of-war camps in Kowloon to house Allied prisoners of war.
[30] Believing it was shameful to be captured alive in combat, the Japanese ran their prisoner-of-war camps brutally, with many Allied prisoners of war dying in them.
The Japanese field army code included a "warrior spirit", which stated that an individual must calmly face death.
[30] Allied prisoners-of-war in Japanese camps were forced to engage in physical labour such as building bridges, erecting forts, and digging defence trenches.
At the end of the war, when the camp inmates were released, many had lost body parts, and many were starved and faced extreme emaciation.
The brutality of the guards caused traumatized prisoners to suffer mental illnesses that persisted for decades afterward.
Or the guards would tie a prisoner on a tree by their thumbs, with their toes barely touching the ground, and leave them there for two days without food or water.
[31] Life in the POW camps was recorded at great risk to themselves by artists such as Jack Bridger Chalker, Philip Meninsky, John Mennie, Ashley George Old, and Ronald Searle.
Apparently, Winston Churchill had been aware of this atrocity, but kept the information secret; families would have been too distressed to learn that their sons had been the victims of cannibalism rather than killed in action.
[33] The Second World War was mainly fought in Europe and western Russia, East Asia, and the Pacific; there were no invasions of Canada.
Peter Krug, an escapee from a prison located in Bowmanville, Ontario, managed to escape along the railroads, using forests as cover.
German POWs wore shirts with a large red dot painted on the back, an easily identifiable mark outside the camps.
[37] The International Red Cross visited United Nations-run POW camps, often unannounced, noting prisoner hygiene, quality of medical care, variety of diet, and weight gain.
[40] The United States of America refused to grant prisoner-of-war status to many prisoners captured during its War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) and 2003 invasion of Iraq.
This was mainly because it classed them as insurgents or terrorists, which did not meet the requirements laid down by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 such as being part of a chain of command, wearing a "fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance", bearing arms openly, and conducting military operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
