Movies, German POWs, and Interment Camps
March 31, 2008 – 6:00 amLast night I had the pleasure of speaking at the Barker House B & B in the pleasant town of New Oxford, Pennsylvania, where we had a spirited discussion on a variety of subjects. I continue to hear first-hand accounts of people’s lives during World War II.
Again, I heard that children could be admitted to the movies with a certain number of tin cans for the scrap metal drive instead of paying money. Also, one of the men told how his father occasionally came home with a tire he had found along the road, which he would give to his son. As a boy, he would roll it to the local garage for the rubber collection, where he would receive a coupon for admittance to the movies plus a package of candy.
Other recollections include one from a woman who told of German POWs being brought to their farm every morning to do farm chores and then being returned to the POW camp in the late afternoon. Another told of a large company that was building a new facility across from their family’s farm. The company asked the family to rent them rooms for the construction workers, which they did. When the facility was completed, the company continued to rent two rooms for their regular workers. I have heard other stories of men leaving their families during the war and renting an apartment or room in order to work in a defense factory.
Questions came up about how news was handled during World War II. We surely didn’t know what was going on in the war the way we do today. There was no television and no Internet, only radio and the weekly News of the Week reviews at the movie theaters. Prominent newscasters were Lowell Thomas, Ernie Pyle, and, of course, Edward R. Morrow broadcasting from London during the bombings.
Additionally, the internment of Japanese-Americans was questioned. For more on that subject and the internment of Germans and Italians, see my blogs of February 27 (Japanese), March 3 (Germans), and March 11 (Italians).
For more on World War II, please go to www.peggeorge.com.
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