Prisoners of War

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PRISONERS OF WAR

PRISONERS OF WAR This entry includes 7 subentries:
Overview
Exchange of Prisoners
Prison Camps, Confederate
Prison Camps, Union
Prison Camps, World War II
Prison Ships
POW/MIA Controversy, Vietnam War

Overview

Throughout the colonial wars, French authorities imprisoned British and American colonial soldiers in Montreal. During the American Revolution, no accurate count was ever recorded, but it is estimated that more than 18,000 American soldiers and sailors were taken as POWs, with the majority kept aboard British prison hulks near New York City. Captured American privateers were kept in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Since the British never recognized the Continental Congress as a sovereign government, citizenship became a serious issue when the British captured American soldiers. The prisoners the British took faced severe conditions in captivity. Although the British continued to use prison hulks to some extent during the War of 1812, American POWs were treated humanely until their repatriation following the Treaty of Ghent (1814).

During the Mexican-American War (1846–1848),very few Americans fell into Mexican hands, but treatment was fair and humane. The U.S. Army paroled captured Mexicans in the field. During the Civil War (1861–1865), both Union and Confederate forces were unprepared for the enormous numbers of POWs: 211,400 Union prisoners in the South and 220,000 Confederates in the North. Exchanges took place regularly under the Dix-Hill Cartel until 1864, when General Ulysses S. Grant stopped them in order to further tax Confederate resources and bring the war to a swift conclusion. Thereafter, the South was glutted with huge numbers of starving Union prisoners it could not support.

By the time the United States entered World War I in April 1917, it had become a signatory to the Hague Convention (1899 and 1907), and of its 4,120 POWs, only 147 died in captivity, most from wounds received in combat. Treatment was fair and humane. World War II POW issues were covered by the 1929 Geneva Convention, which protected the 93,941 American POWs in the European theater. Only 1 percent died in captivity. Japan signed the Geneva Convention, but refused to ratify it at home. Japanese treatment of Allied POWs was criminal at best. Of the 25,600 American POWs captured in Asia, nearly 45 percent, or 10,650, died from wounds received in battle, starvation, disease, or murder. More than 3,840 died in unmarked transports, called "Hell Ships," sunk by American submarine attacks. Beginning in 1945 and lasting through 1948, the Allied international community conducted military tribunals to seek justice against those Japanese officers and enlisted men who deliberately mistreated POWs in the Pacific.

The captivity experience in Korea continued the kinds of savagery experienced by Allied POWs during World War II. More than 7,140 Americans became documented POWs; at least 2,701 died in enemy hands. After the Chinese entered the war in 1951, they took control of United Nations' POWs whenever possible, introduced a political reeducation policy, and attempted to indoctrinate prisoners with minimal success. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10631, prescribing the Code of Conduct for Members of the Armed Forces of the United States, a set of principles that bound prisoners together into a POW community through a unified and purposeful standard of conduct.

In 1964, when the situation in Vietnam evolved into a major war, the International Red Cross Commission (ICRC) reminded the warring parties that they were signatories to the 1949 Geneva Convention. The Americans and the South Vietnamese affirmed the convention without reservations. The North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF or Vietcong) refused to consider the convention, citing their reservation to Article 85 that permitted captors to prosecute prisoners for acts committed prior to capture. Between 1964 and 1972, 766 Americans became confirmed POWs, of whom 114 died in captivity. After the Paris Peace Accords (1973), 651 allied military prisoners returned to American control from Hanoi and South Vietnam.

In January 1991, hostilities erupted between a coalition of nations, including the United States and Iraq over the invasion and occupation of oil-rich Kuwait. In the one-month Gulf War, Iraq took twenty-three American POWs. In captivity, POWs suffered physical abuse that ranged from sexual abuse, electric shocks, and broken bones to routine slaps.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baker, C. Alice. True Stories of New England Captives Carried to Canada during the Old French and Indian Wars. Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1990. Originally published in 1897.

Doyle, Robert C. Voices from Captivity: Interpreting the American POW Narrative. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994.

———. A Prisoner's Duty: Great Escapes in U. S. Military History. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997.

Robert C.Doyle

See alsoAndersonville ; Exchange of Prisoners ; Geneva Conventions ; Hague Convention ; Prison Camps, Confederate ;Prison Camps, Union ; Prison Camps, World War II .

Exchange of Prisoners

Derived from the medieval custom of holding prisoners for ransom, the exchange of prisoners of war was an established practice by the American Revolution. Shortly after the battles at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts authorities arranged for the exchange of captured British soldiers for Massachusetts militiamen, a precedent that other states soon followed. In July 1776 the Continental Congress authorized military commanders to negotiate exchanges, and in 1780 it appointed a commissary general of prisoners, thereby assuming from the states the responsibility for exchanging prisoners of war. British refusal to recognize American independence prevented agreement on a general cartel for exchanges, but American commanders used the authority vested in them by Congress to make several exchanges. In March 1780 a separate cartel arranged for the trade of American prisoners confined in Britain for British prisoners interned in France. In 1783 a general exchange of prisoners occurred after the cessation of hostilities and recognition of American independence.

During the War of 1812, battlefield exchanges happened under a general British-American cartel for exchanging prisoners. The United States and Mexico failed to negotiate a cartel during the Mexican-American War, but the United States released many Mexican prisoners on parole on the condition that they remain out of combat. The Mexicans released some American prisoners in "head-for-head" exchanges that occasionally took place during the war, but most American prisoners of war remained incarcerated until the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

During the Civil War the unwillingness of the federal government to enter into an agreement recognizing the Confederacy complicated the exchange of prisoners. The Dix-Hill Cartel provided for parole of captured personnel. The cartel became ineffective as the tide of battle changed, however, and commanders resorted to the traditional battlefield exchange of prisoners. At the end of the war, the North exchanged or released most Confederate prisoners. Except for the exchange of a few Spanish soldiers for American sailors, no exchange of prisoners occurred during the Spanish-American War.

Prisoner exchange during World War I followed the signing of the armistice. Throughout World War II the United States negotiated through neutral nations with the Axis powers for the exchange of prisoners. The United States and Germany never arranged a general exchange, but they traded sick and wounded prisoners on one occasion. Repatriation and exchange of prisoners took place after the defeat of the Axis nations.

During the Korean War the vexing issue of voluntary repatriation delayed the exchange of prisoners. Exchanges began after the Communist side accepted the principle of nonforcible repatriation. Operation Little Switch witnessed the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners, while a general exchange occurred during Operation Big Switch.

Each side occasionally released prisoners during the Vietnam War, but the North Vietnamese released the majority of American prisoners during the sixty days between the signing of the Paris Agreement and the withdrawal of all American military personnel from South Vietnam. A total of 587 Americans held in captivity in North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and Laos gained their freedom. American forces turned over North Vietnamese military prisoners to South Vietnamese authorities, and the responsibility for exchange of Vietnamese prisoners of war fell to the Vietnamese participants.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foot, Rosemary. A Substitute for Victory: The Politics of Peacemaking at the Korean Armistice Talks. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Gruner, E. G. Prisoners of Culture: Representing the Vietnam POW. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993.

Lech, Raymond B. Broken Soldiers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Whiteclay, John et al., eds. The Oxford Companion to American Military History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Vincent H.Demma/a. e.

See alsoPrisoners of War .

Prison Camps, Confederate

Approximately 200,000 prisoners were taken by the Confederates in the Civil War. Inadequate resources and no preparation for the task produced a severe drain on both the material and human resources of the South. An exchange of prisoners, arranged in 1862, was ended in 1863, and captives were held in scattered prison camps until near the end of the war. The larger prisons were, for officers, in Richmond, Va., Macon, Ga., and Columbia, S.C.; for enlisted men, in Andersonville, Millen, Florence (all in Georgia), and Charleston, S.C. Andersonville was by far the most infamous; over ten thousand prisoners perished there. Its commander, Capt. Henry Wirz, was later tried on charges of murder and conspiracy and was hanged. Deserters, spies, and political prisoners were incarcerated at Castle Thunder in Richmond or in Salisbury, N.C. Throughout most of the war the provost marshal of Richmond exercised a general but ineffective supervision over the prisons. The majority of the prisons consisted of either tobacco warehouses or open stockades. Poor quarters, insufficient rations and clothing, and lack of medicines produced excessive disease and a high death rate, which were interpreted in the North as a deliberate effort to starve and murder the captives. In retaliation, northern authorities reduced the allowances for rations and clothing to the prisoners they held. Some relief was obtained when southerners permitted the Union authorities to send food, clothing, and drugs through the lines, but conditions remained bad and the Confederate prisons became the major "atrocity" in northern propaganda.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hesseltine, William B. Civil War Prisons. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1930.

Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

W. B.Hesseltine/a. r.

See alsoAndersonville Prison ; Civil War ; Prisoners of War ; Prison Camps, Union ; Prisons and Prison Reform ; andvol. 9:Prisoner at Andersonville .

Prison Camps, Union

Most captured Confederate soldiers were released on parole in the first year of the Civil War, but federal authorities confined captured officers and civilian prisoners in temporary prisons scattered across the North. Lt. Col. William Hoffman became the commissary general of prisoners on 7 October 1861. He hoped to consolidate the prisoners at a central depot for 1,200 inmates on John-son's Island in Lake Erie, but the capture of 14,000 Confederates at Fort Donelson rendered the depot inadequate. Soon the already chaotic collection of prisons expanded to include four training camps across the Midwest. Compounding the confusion, guards and medical personnel changed frequently, so there was little continuity in administration.

Hoffman tried, but only partially succeeded, to regulate the disarray. An agreement to exchange prisoners in June 1862 cut the number of inmates from 19,423 to 1,286, enabling Hoffman to consolidate prisoners at three locations. When the prisoner exchange broke down in early 1863, the number of inmates increased and camp conditions deteriorated. Scarce clothing, unsatisfactory sanitation, overcrowded quarters, inadequate medical attention, and inclement weather contributed to widespread sickness. To consolidate and regulate facilities Hoffman established large permanent prisons at Fort Delaware, Del., Rock Island, Ill., Point Lookout, Md., and Elmira, N.Y., although the same problems that had plagued their more temporary counterparts continued to beset the newer prisons.

Starting in February 1865, when the Union prisons held over 65,000 inmates, the federal government began to return large numbers of soldiers to the Confederacy. After the surrender at Appomattox the Union prisons were closed quickly, so that by early July only a few hundred prisoners remained.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hesseltine, William B. Civil War Prisons. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1972.

McAdams, Benton. Rebels at Rock Island: The Story of a Civil War Prison. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000.

United States. War Dept. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Prepared under the direction of the Secretary of War by Robert N. Scott. Series 2. Pasadena, Calif.: Broadfoot, 1985.

Leslie GeneHunter

ChristopherWells

See alsoExchange of Prisoners ; Prison Camps, Confederate ; Prisoners of War .

Prison Camps, World War II

The experiences of the Allied troops held captive in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps during World War II varied according to time, place, and nationality of captor. For the first time in history, combatants captured by American troops were brought to U.S. soil and used as laborers in one of 155 POW camps. Japan held the majority of its war prisoners on the Asian mainland. Most of the German POW camps were located in the Third Reich and in western Poland. The Soviet Union probably administered some 3,000 camps. Most of the POWs captured by the British were held in England, with a small percentage held in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. While 15 million POWs were held at some point during World War II, by the war's end 220,000 Allied prisoners were in Japanese camps, and 260,000 Allied troops remained imprisoned by Germany.

The Third Reich administered concentration camps for political and minority prisoners and separate camps for military prisoners of war; POW camps were further subdivided into camps for officers and camps for nonofficers. Sometimes Allied troops were sent to concentration camps.

The treatment of POWs in Japanese camps was grueling. POWs were subjected to starvation diets, brutally hard labor, and sometimes execution. It is possible that as many as 27 percent of the 95,000 Allied troops taken prisoner by the Japanese died in captivity. By contrast, 4 percent of the 260,000 British and American POWs in German captivity died.

The imprisonment of POWs on U.S. soil was ordered by the U.S. Department of War and administered by the Army. At first POW labor in the U.S. was restricted to military installation service jobs, but by summer of 1943 it was contracted out to civilian projects, especially on farms.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dear, I. C. B., and M. R. D. Foot, eds. The Oxford Companion to World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Laqueur, Walter, and Judith Tydor Baumel, eds. The Holocaust Encyclopedia. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001.

Monahan, Evelyn M., and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee. All This Hell: U.S. Nurses Imprisoned by the Japanese. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Martha AvaleenEgan

See alsoWorld War II .

Prison Ships

Americans and the British both used prison ships during the Revolution to confine naval prisoners. Conditions on the prison ships varied greatly, but the British vessels moored in Wallabout Bay, Brooklyn, particularly the Jersey, became notorious for the harsh treatment accorded the captives. Provisions were poor. Fever and dysentery prevailed and the guards were brutal. George Washington and the Continental Congress protested against this treatment, and Vice Adm. John Byron of the Royal Navy labored to better conditions. At least thirteen different prison ships were moored in Wallabout Bay or in the East or North rivers from 1776 to 1783. Up to 11,500 men may have died on these ships.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Gardner W. A Naval History of the American Revolution. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913.

Louis H.Bolander/f. b.

See alsoAtrocities in War ; Jersey Prison Ship ; Revolution, American: Military History .

POW/MIA Controversy, Vietnam War

POWs and MIAs are an important legacy of the Vietnam War, with ramifications for both American domestic politics and U.S. relations with Vietnam. By the terms of the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, which ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) agreed to release all American POWs that it was holding. North Vietnam had acceded to the Geneva Convention of 1949, which classified prisoners of war as "victims of events" who deserved "decent and humane treatment." Nonetheless, North Vietnam insisted that the crews of U.S. bombers were guilty of "crimes against humanity," and returning POWs told stories of mistreatment by their captors. Evidence of mistreatment stirred emotions, which reports that North Vietnam had not returned all POWs and was still holding Americans captive only magnified. The plight of "boat people" fleeing Vietnam and Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1978 reinforced these impressions of an inhumane Vietnamese government, officially called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam following the North's victory of 1975. These events helped to solidify public and congressional support for nonrecognition of Vietnam and a trade embargo.

The United States made "full accountability" of MIAs a condition of diplomatic recognition of Vietnam. At the end of the war, 1,750 Americans were listed as missing in Vietnam, with another 600 MIAs in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The United States also insisted that Vietnam assist in the recovery of remains of MIAs who had died in Vietnam and in the return of any individuals who might have survived the war. Of particular concern were the "discrepancy cases," where individuals were believed to have survived an incident, such as bailing out of an aircraft and having been reportedly seen later, but were not among the returning POWs.

The POW and MIA controversy triggered a rigorous debate and became a popular culture phenomenon in the late 1970s and 1980s, despite Pentagon and congressional investigations that indicated there were no more than 200 unresolved MIA cases out of the 2,266 the Department of Defense still listed as missing and about a dozen POWs unaccounted for. By contrast, Vietnam still considers approximately 300,000 North and South Vietnamese as MIA. President Ronald Reagan, speaking before the National League of POW/MIA Families in 1987, stated that "until all our questions are fully answered, we will assume that some of our countrymen are alive." The Vietnam Veterans of America, which sent several investigating groups to Vietnam in the 1980s, helped renew contacts between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments. Accordingly, Vietnamese authorities and representatives of the Reagan administration reached agreements that resulted in cooperation in recovering the remains of American casualties. Beginning in the late 1980s, Vietnam returned several hundred sets of remains to the United States. In addition, progress occurred in clarifying "discrepancy cases." The question resurfaced in the 1990s about whether President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had done all they could during peace negotiations to free servicemen "knowingly" left behind or whether they both were so desperate to get out of Vietnam that they sacrificed POWs. Both Nixon and Kissinger maintained that it was the "doves" in Congress at the time who prevented any effective military action to find out the truth about POWs when it was still possible to do so in the summer and spring of 1973. On 3 February 1994, with the approval of the Senate and business community, President Bill Clinton removed the nineteen-year trade embargo against Vietnam, and the Vietnamese government cooperated with veterans groups in locating the remains of U.S. soldiers and returning remains to the United States for burial, including those of nine soldiers in October 1995. As of June 2002, just over 1,900 Americans remained unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Howes, Craig. Voices of the Vietnam POWs: Witnesses to Their Fight. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Keating, Susan Katz. Prisoners of Hope: Exploiting the POW/MIA Myth in America. New York: Random House, 1994.

Philpott, Tom. Glory Denied: The Saga of Jim Thompson, America's Longest-Held Prisoner of War. New York: Norton, 2001.

Stern, Lewis M. Imprisoned or Missing in Vietnam: Policies of the Vietnamese Government Concerning Captured and Unaccountedfor United States Soldiers, 1969–1994. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1995.

Gary R.Hess/a. e.