by Suzanna Molino
During World War II (1941–45), the U.S. Army had captured and shipped to the states almost 500,000 Italian, German and Japanese prisoners of war and housed them in 650 camps across the forty-eight states.
Camp Meade (now Fort Meade) in Maryland, located between D.C. and Baltimore, was both a training center and headquarters for the Enemy Prisoner of War Information Bureau; it first hosted POWs in September 1943—1,632 Italians and 58 Germans—and kept records on all POWs throughout the United States.
