Prisoners (Military History)

Introduction

How to deal with captured combatants is a problem as old as warfare itself. Execution, slavery, conscription, imprisonment, and even assimilation have historically all been means that societies have utilized to deal with warriors taken in arms. Some societies held prisoners for ransom, while others brought them into their societies to increase their numbers. The ancient Greek and Roman empires both used captured foes for labor or sold prisoners into slavery. The first formal call for the humane treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) came in 1625 from the Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius in The Laws of War and Peace. Drawing on Greek and Roman philosophy, Grotius sought to convince European nations to treat prisoners mercifully, often arguing that it was in their own interest to spare the lives of their captives, who could be used for labor or exchange. While Grotius’s appeals for a uniform code of prisoner treatment were not enacted, his work did provide the basis for later models on the treatment of POWs. Beginning in the mid-18th century, there were numerous attempts among nations to standardize protections for soldiers taken in combat. During the Seven Years’ War, the British and French established cartels in order to deal with the exchange of prisoners, although no formal treaty establishing rules for exchange or the treatment of prisoners was developed. The first formal treaty among nations to codify treatment of enemy prisoners was the Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1785 between the United States and Prussia; the two nations agreed not use the infamous “prison hulks” that British held Americans in during the War for Independence. In 1863, at the behest of President Abraham Lincoln, Francis Lieber, a professor of international law, developed a set of rules for both the Union and Confederate forces to adhere to regarding the treatment of captured soldiers. Influenced by Lieber’s work, during the 19th and 20th centuries, European nations came together numerous times to try to develop international agreements on the treatment of enemy prisoners, most notably at Geneva in 1864, 1906, 1929, and 1949. The Geneva Accords created standard protocols for the treatment of incapacitated men in the field of battle, at sea, and in prison camps and for the protection of civilians during wartime; they remain the standard rules of war to which most of the world’s nations adhere. While this bibliography deals mostly with the experiences of POWs, that is, armed combatants captured by an enemy force during battle, attention is also given, in some cases, to noncombatants imprisoned during wartime.

General Overviews

There is little historiography on the treatment of POWs before the 19th century. Keeley 1997 devotes a small section to the treatment of captives and prisoners in ancient war, while the brief article Webb 1948 argues that there is ample evidence that knights were bound to treat their defeated enemies humanely. More recently, an excellent essay by Peter H. Wilson on prisoners in early modern Europe appears in Scheipers 2010. Garett 1981, a broad study, also traces the history of captured combatants back to the Hundred Years’ War. In the wake of World War I, Fooks 1924 undertook the first full-length study of POWs, and since then the study of POWs has expanded rapidly to examine all aspects of the POW experience—capture, imprisonment, abuse, escape, release, repatriation, and psychological effects. Doyle 1994 examines the similar experiences of American POWs, and Dean 1997 compares the psychological effects that captivity had on prisoners from different wars. The focus of many historians in recent years has dealt with the debates over balancing the needs of national security with the established legal rights of POWs, especially in nonconventional wars, such as the “War on Terror,” in which combatants are not identified by a uniform, rank, or military or even a sovereign nation, including Carvin 2010 and Springer 2010.

Carvin, Stephanie. Prisoners of America’s War: From the Early Republic to Guantanamo. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
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A legalistic approach to examining American war policy from the colonial era to the present. Carvin focuses on the ways that the US government and military have tried to abide by international laws of war, especially as such laws relate to the treatment of prisoners, and the difficulties that the changing nature of war has presented in dealing with prisoners.
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Dean, Eric T. Shook over Hell: Post-Traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
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Dean takes a comparative approach to studying the postwar effects of captivity on POWs by looking at the experiences of veterans from both the American Civil War and the Vietnam War.
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Doyle, Robert C. Voices from Captivity: Interpreting the American POW Narrative. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994.
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In the now-classic study of the POW experience, Doyle examines the narratives of American POWs from the colonial era through the end of the 20th century, finding similar experiences—such as a capture, “death marches,” escape, and release—among prisoners across the centuries. Doyle also provides an excellent historiographical account of American POWs.
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Fooks, Herbert C. Prisoners of War. Federalsburg, MD: J. W. Stowell, 1924.
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The first major work to study POWs, Fooks takes a topical approach to examining the treatment of prisoners throughout history, starting with defining who POWs were and ending with liberation.
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Garett, Richard. P.O.W.: The Uncivil Face of War. Newton Abbot, UK: David and Charles, 1981.
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A broad, chronological study that examines the status of POWs from the Hundred Years’ War to Vietnam.
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Keeley, Lawrence. War before Civilization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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One of the only works to deal with subject of wartime prisoners in the ancient world, Keeley examines the treatment of captives in a number of early societies from around the globe, including Africa, the South Pacific, and the Americas.
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Scheipers, Sibylle, ed. Prisoners in War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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A collection of essays from some of the world’s leading POW scholars, including Allen Kramer and Bob Moore, which examine issues from the status of prisoners in the Crusades and early modern Europe to current issues such as the status of prisoners in irregular conflicts and extraordinary rendition.
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Springer, Paul J. America’s Captives: Treatment of POWs from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010.
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In this broad overview of the history of POWs held by the United States, Springer focuses on how American policy toward POWs compares to the actual practice the nation has shown to its captives. His introduction contains an excellent bibliographical essay as well.
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Webb, Henry J. “Prisoners of War in the Middle Ages.” Military Affairs 12.1 (Spring 1948): 46–49.
DOI: 10.2307/1982524Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the few significant works to deal with the status of POWs before the 19th century, Webb argues that a number of authors of the Middle Age—lawyers, priests, and poets—all asserted that captured men should be dealt with honorably and humanely by knights.
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American Indian Wars

Captivity narratives, as they came to be known, are some of the first popular accounts of POWs, and were ubiquitous in colonial American literature. The most famous of all the captivity narratives dates to 1862. The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (originally The Soveraignty & Goodness of God), cited here under Rowlandson 1997, is the New Englander’s memoir of her capture during King Phillip’s War. Her eventual release sparked a host of similar narratives of colonists captured by Indians in colonial America. Analysis of captivity narratives is found in both Derounian-Stodola, et al. 1993 and Namias 1993. In addition to the narratives and histories of those held by Native Americans, there has been an increased attention by historians to the plight of Amerindians captured and imprisoned by Europeans and Euro-Americans, including Fickes 2000 and Santiago 2011. During much of the American colonial period, there was an unwillingness of Euro-Americans to take Native Americans prisoner. In the early colonial period, Spanish conquistadores did enslave captured Amerindians, but as African slavery replaced Amerindian labor, Indian land, not labor, became the main goal of European, and later, American conquerors who often fought wars of extermination against native peoples, killing combatants and noncombatants alike. Following the American Civil War, “Indian removal” became the main focus of the US Army, and the US government began treating captured Indian leaders as POWs. Lookingbill 2006 and Turcheneske 1997 both examine the fate of Indian warriors captured in the late 19th century, while the treatment of the legendary Geronimo is described in Stockel 1993. Pope 2010 gives an account of the Sioux leader Sitting Bull’s two years of imprisonment by the US Army.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, and James Arthur Levernier. The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550–1900. New York: Twayne, 1993.
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A collection of essays that explore captivity narratives as both history and literature, including the use of the narratives to explore gender issues.
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Fickes, Michael L. “‘They Could Not Endure That Yoke’: The Captivity of Pequot Women and Children after the War of 1637.” New England Quarterly 73.1 (March 2000): 58–81.
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In a twist of the traditional “captivity narrative,” Fickes examines the treatment of Native Americans held by colonists in early New England.
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Lookingbill, Brad D. War Dance at Fort Marion: Plains Indian War Prisoners. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.
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Lookingbill explores the efforts by the US government to educate seventy-five Plains Indians imprisoned in Florida in the late 19th century in an attempt to “Americanize” them.
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Namias, June. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
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A gender-based analysis of the colonial captivity narratives that focuses on the specific experiences of three women—Jane McCrea, Mary Jemison, and Sarah Wakefield—who all meet different fates at the hands of their Native American captors.
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Pope, Dennis C. Sitting Bull, Prisoner of War. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society, 2010.
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An account of the Sioux leader’s almost two-year incarceration at the hands of the US Army following his surrender in 1881.
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Rowlandson, Mary. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. Boston: Bedford, 1997.
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The classic account of the capture and treatment of an English settler by Native Americans in colonial New England, Rowlandson’s memoir established the “captivity narrative” genre. Originally published in 1682.
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Santiago, Mark. The Jar of Severed Hands: The Spanish Deportation of Apache Prisoners of War, 1770–1810. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011.
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Santiago chronicles Spanish attempts to subdue and Christianize the Apache of their northern colonial frontier, and the treatment of those who resisted Spanish control, including a brutal death march to Mexico City.
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Stockel, H. Henrietta. Survival of the Spirit: Chiricahua Apaches in Captivity. Reno: University of Las Vegas Press, 1993.
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An examination of Apache culture—especially those aspects relating to medicine and healing—through the story of 519 prisoners deported to the eastern United States.
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Turcheneske, John Anthony, Jr. The Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War: Fort Sill 1894–1914. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1997.
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Chronicles the twenty-seven year imprisonment of more than four hundred Apache following the capture of Geronimo.
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American Revolution

There was no standard of care agreed upon between the American and British forces regarding the treatment of captured soldiers, and the treatment varied greatly depending on time, place, rank, and commander. The treatment—or mistreatment—of prisoners has been the main focus of most of the historiographical debates regarding POWs during the American Revolution. The standard work on the subject remains Metzger 1971, which surveys the policies of both British and American officials toward prisoners during the war. A number of personal narratives of imprisoned Revolutionary War soldiers were published; some of the better ones include Blatchford 1971 and Allen 1930. Prisoner exchanges, as explored in Knight 1991, proved to be both difficult and inconsistent during the war. Some captured soldiers were paroled almost immediately as cartels were set up, while others spent years in confinement. Initially, the British refused to acknowledge Americans as soldiers, but rather as traitors who were often placed in civilian prisons. Later, thousands of American soldiers and sailors taken prisoner by British forces ended up in “hulks”—prison ships in both America and Britain—facing brutal treatment, disease, and death. The treatment of Americans in British hands is examined in Bowman 1976, Cohen 1995, and Cogliano 2001. On the other side, British and German soldiers captured by the Americans often fared better, as many were kept not in prison camps, but in towns where they enjoyed relative freedom, as explored in Becker 1982 and Sampson 1995.

Allen, Ethan. Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity Containing His Voyages and Travels, Written by Himself. New York: Georgian Press, 1930.
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The memoir of one of the American Revolution’s most famous military leaders, Allen recounts his time as a prisoner of the British following his part in the failed American assault on Quebec, where he describes brutal treatment of the Americans by their British captors, including mass executions of prisoners. Originally published in 1807.
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Becker, Laura L. “Prisoners of War in the American Revolution: A Community Perspective.” Military Affairs 46 (December 1982): 169–173.
DOI: 10.2307/1987609Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Without the capacity to build large prison camps, the US government designated towns throughout the country to serve as “prison centers” to detain captured soldiers during the American Revolution. Becker’s article focuses on one of these prison centers—Reading, Pennsylvania—and how its citizens coped with the challenge of caring for the prisoners assigned to their town.
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Blatchford, John. The Narrative of John Blatchford. New York: Arno, 1971.
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Blatchford’s memoir recounts his being taken prisoner on the high seas as a teenager, imprisoned in England, and then pressed into service in the British West Indies. He escaped, made his way to Philadelphia, but was captured by the British again, and imprisoned on a prison hulk in New York City. Originally published in 1865.
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Bowman, Larry G. Captive Americans: Prisoners during the American Revolution. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1976.
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Argues that while British treatment of American prisoners was indeed very poor, it was because of lack of planning on the part of the British, and not as a result of any deliberate cruelty. Bowman asserts that the British were loath to grant freedom to Americans, fearing that such distinction would help legitimize American claims as an independent nation.
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Cohen, Sheldon S. Yankee Sailors in British Gaols: Prisoners of War at Forton and Mill, 1777–1783. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1995.
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An excellent study of not only the individual experiences of American sailors held captive in Britain during the Revolutionary War, but also the legal debates within the British government about their status and how they should be treated. Cohen’s comprehensive study includes exploration of prison administration, prisoner behavior, and escape attempts.
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Cogliano, Francis D. American Maritime Prisoners in the Revolutionary War: The Captivity of William Russell. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001.
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Through the story of William Russell, an American privateer who was captured and imprisoned not once but twice by the British during the American Revolution, Cogliano explores the conditions American prisoners endured at both Mill Prison in England the prison hulk Jersey in New York Harbor.
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Knight, Betsy. “Prisoner Exchange and Parole in the American Revolution.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 48 (April 1991): 201–222.
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Knight explores why prisoner exchanges and paroles proved to be so difficult for the Americans and British to agree upon, arguing that as the war dragged on, both sides sought to use negotiations regarding prisoners to pursue other agendas.
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Metzger, Charles H. The Prisoner in the American Revolution. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1971.
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Categorizing prisoners by a variety of conditions, including German, American, British, and Canadian; Patriot and Tory; regulars and irregulars; and those taken on land and at sea, Metzger argues that British in American hands fared better than American rebels captured by the British, who deliberately mistreated American prisoners.
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Sampson, Richard. Escape in America: The British Convention Prisoners, 1777–1783. Chippenham, UK: Anglo Books, 1995.
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The five thousand British and German troops captured by American forces in 1777 were incarcerated in numerous towns in the American colonies as the American and British governments struggled to provide for prisoner exchanges. Sampson explores the overall experience of these “Convention Prisoners” and focuses on escape attempts by the prisoners, including some who joined the American army.
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Napoleonic Era

As it had during the American Revolution, the British government kept thousands of enemy prisoners in its wars with France and the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Prisoners were kept on massive prison ships, but the British also constructed a number of prison camps in Britain and its dominions to house its captives, most notably at Dartmoor and Norman Cross. The “hulks,” as the floating prisons were known, are explored in Lloyd 2007, while Garneray 2003 provides the author’s memoir of a French soldier imprisoned on a British hulk. The histories of the camps have been also examined. Andrews 1852 and Fabel 1989 focus on Dartmoor Prison, while Cuthbertson 2009 examines the British prison in Nova Scotia. Dye 1987 provides an overview of the experiences of American naval and merchant seamen imprisoned by the British, and the journal of Benjamin Waterhouse (Waterhouse 2010) offers a primary account of an American sailor captured by the British and imprisoned in a number of different locales. Also during this era, the new United States found itself at war with the so-called Barbary pirates of North Africa, where it was confronted with the difficulties of conducting diplomatic negotiations to secure the release of its captured soldiers and sailors with pseudo-states that did not always have the authority to guarantee their treatment or order their release. Barnaby 1966 examines diplomatic relations regarding prisoners in the struggle against the Barbary pirates.

Andrews, Charles. The Prisoners’ Memoirs, or Dartmoor Prison: Containing the Complete History of the Captivity of the Americans in England. New York: printed for the author, 1852.
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More than five thousand Americans were held in England’s Dartmoor Prison during the War of 1812. This memoir of an American imprisoned at Dartmoor gives a very hash assessment of his British captors, describing cruelty and privation. Originally published in 1815.
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Barnaby, H. G. The Prisoners of Algiers. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.
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Soon after the conclusion of its war for independence, the United States found itself at war in North Africa with the so-called Barbary pirates. Barnaby focuses his study on the diplomatic negotiations between the new US government and the Dey of Algiers to free American sailors captured in the Mediterranean by North African pirates.
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Cuthbertson, Brian. Melville Prison and Deadman’s Island: American and French Prisoners of War in Halifax, 1794–1816. Halifax, Canada: Formac, 2009.
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This short book explores the history of the British prison on Nova Scotia where more than twenty thousand American, French, and Spanish captured seamen were held during the conflicts of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
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Dye, Ira. “American Maritime Prisoners of War 1812–1815.” In Ships, Seafaring and Society; Essays in Maritime History. Edited by Timothy J. Runyan. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987.
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About fourteen thousand American naval and merchant seamen were held prisoner by British forces at some time during the War of 1812. Dye explores the diplomatic maneuverings of both the American and British governments in regard to maritime POWs, and argues that the United States was at a distinct disadvantage in negotiating with the British over prisoner issues during the war.
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Fabel, Robin F. A. “Self-Help in Dartmoor: Black and White Prisoners in the War of 1812.” Journal of the Early Republic (Summer 1989): 165–190.
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Focusing on the more than three hundred African American prisoners held at Dartmoor, Fabel describes not only the difficult living conditions for all of the men incarcerated in the infamous prison, but also the unique challenges that the black prisoners faced.
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Garneray, Louis. The Floating Prison: The Extraordinary Account of Nine Years Captivity on the British Prison Hulks during the Napoleonic Wars. London: Conway Maritime, 2003.
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The memoir of a French soldier’s experience as a captive of the British during the Napoleonic wars. Originally published in 1851.
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Lloyd, Clive. Napoleonic and American Prisoners of War, 1756–1816. Vol. 1, Hulk, Depot and Parole (Napoleonic Wars). New York: Antique Collectors Club, 2007.
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An examination of both the men from around the world who found themselves as POWs during this era and the “hulks”—the boats, usually old warships—that were used to keep them imprisoned.
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Waterhouse, Benjamin. Prisoner of the British: The Journal of a Prisoner of War in the War of 1812. Tucson, AZ: Fireship, 2010.
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Originally rereleased in 1816 as A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, Late a Surgeon on Board an American Privateer, Who Was Captured at Sea by the British, this memoir describes the experiences of an American sailor imprisoned by the British at a number of locations during the war. Its authorship, while credited to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, is still in dispute.
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American Civil War

More than 400,000 American soldiers from both the Union and Confederate forces were held in a host of prison camps in both the North and South during the Civil War. During the first two years of the war, very few prisoners were held in camps, as exchanges and paroles were common. However, following the introduction of African American troops into the war in 1863, the Confederate government refused to exchange captured black soldiers; the Union government then ceased all prisoner exchanges until captured black soldiers were treated equally with whites by Confederate authorities. The impasse resulted in the accumulation of tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides, most of whom lived (and often died) in deplorable conditions in hastily created camps. As historian James McPherson, in his one-volume history of the war, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), noted, “The treatment of prisoners during the Civil War was something that neither side could be proud of” (p. 802). Following the war, POWs from both sides of the conflict wrote memoirs of their confinement, but it was not until 1930 that a major academic treatment of Civil War prisons was produced, with the publication of Hesseltine 1998. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in Civil War prisons and prisoners, most notably in excellent works by Lonnie Speer (Speer 1997, Speer 2002) and Charles Sanders (Sanders 2005). A wonderful study of how the Civil War has been remembered through the exploration of Civil War prison camps is provided in Cloyd 2010. Finally, any serious examination of the condition of Civil War prisons and prisoners must include the primary materials located within the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (US War Department 1880–1901).

Cloyd, Benjamin G. Haunted by Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010.
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The memory of the American Civil War, perhaps more than any other war in human history, has been fought over for decades along sectional, racial, and ideological lines. In this excellent study, Cloyd explores the memory of prisoners and prison camps from the immediate aftermath of the war to the present day.
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Hesseltine, William B. Civil War Prisons: A Study in Prison Psychology. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998.
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The first major academic treatment of Civil War prisons, Hesseltine provides a balanced treatment of prisons in both the North and South by focusing on common prisoner experiences, such as capture, treatment, exchange, escape, and release. Still a relevant work more than eighty years after its publication. Originally published in 1930.
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Sanders, Charles. While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
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Sanders focuses on the leadership of the prison systems in both North and South, and how both sides manipulated prisoners for political gain.
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Speer, Lonnie. Portals of Hell: Military Prisons of the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1997.
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The first major evaluation of Civil War prisons since Hesseltine’s 1930 work (see Hesseltine 1998), Speer examines each prison, North and South, in exquisite detail.
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Speer, Lonnie R. War of Vengeance: Acts of Retaliation Against Civil War POWs. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2002.
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In his follow-up to Speer 1997, Speer details a number of examples from both the Union and Confederacy of mistreatment of prisoners and examines how acts of retaliation against POWs fit within overall war strategies.
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US War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.
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The Official Records is filled with a myriad of invaluable primary resources regarding the treatment of POWs on both sides of the Civil War.
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Prisoners of the Confederacy

More than 210,000 Union troops were captured during the Civil War, more than 30,000 of whom died in Confederate prison camps. The most infamous prison in the American Civil War was located in the southwestern Georgia town of Andersonville (Fort Sumter), where more than 13,000 Union prisoners died. Not surprisingly, works on Andersonville have dominated the historiography of not only Confederate prison camps, but also the war itself. Many survivors of Andersonville wrote memoirs of their confinement; one of the best prison memoirs is that of John Ransom (Ransom 1988), who was held in camps in both Georgia and Virginia. Another firsthand account into the lives of imprisoned soldiers is Robins 2011, the edited diary of Sergeant Lyle Adair, a white officer of a colored unit imprisoned at Andersonville. Overall, scholarship on African American POWs is thin; the most recent work on the subject is Ward 2011. The most important scholarly work on Andersonville is Marvel 1994. However, though Andersonville was the largest camp, the conditions there were rivaled by those at lesser known camps in Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia, on which an increasing amount of scholarship has focused, including Bryant 1990 and Wheelan 2010. In a different approach, Genoways and Genoways 2001 explores the conditions prisoners faced by focusing exclusively on the experiences of men from just one unit, the 12th Iowa, who were held in numerous camps throughout the South. Finally, two official reports (US House of Representatives 1869, United States Sanitary Commission 1864) provide vital primary resources for anyone doing serious research on the conditions of Union prisoners held in the Confederacy.

Bryant, William O. Cahaba Prison and the Sultana Disaster. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990.
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A study of the Confederate prison camp near Selma, Alabama, where death rates were markedly lower than in most prisoner camps in the South, and the subsequent disaster on the Mississippi River when the Sultana, a steamboat carrying paroled prisoners from Cahaba and Andersonville, sunk, killing hundreds.
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Davis, Robert S. “Escape from Andersonville: A Study in Isolation and Imprisonment.” Journal of Military History 67.4 (October 2003): 1065–1081.
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Davis explores both the myths and realities of escape attempts from Andersonville, as well as an analysis of how men coped with their imprisonment.
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Genoways, Ted, and Hugh H. Genoways, eds. A Perfect Picture of Hell: Eyewitness Accounts by Civil War Prisoners from the 12th Iowa. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001.
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By focusing on the experiences of the men from just one regiment, the 12th Iowa, who were captured (mainly in the western theater), the editors explore a series of Confederate prison camps, from the most notable at Andersonville and Belle Isle to lesser-known prisons in Alabama and Mississippi.
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Marvel, William. Andersonville: The Last Depot. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
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Through an examination of soldier diaries and contemporary accounts, Marvel does an excellent job of describing the horrific conditions that prisoners endured at the most notorious Civil War prison, but also defends the camp commander Henry Wirtz for being a scapegoat, blaming much of the hardship of the Union soldiers at Andersonville on the Union’s decision to halt prison exchanges.
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Ransom, John. John Ransom’s Andersonville Diary. New York: Berkley, 1988.
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Perhaps the most complete diary of an Andersonville prisoner, Ransom, who was also held at Virginia’s Belle Isle prison, describes the wretched conditions in the camp, and is particularly critical of fellow prisoners who preyed upon their fellow inmates. Originally published in 1881.
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Robins, Glenn, ed. They Have Left Us Here to Die: The Civil War Prison Diary of Sgt. Lyle Adair, 111th U.S. Colored Infantry. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2011.
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The diary of Sgt. Lyle Adair, a white Ohio soldier put in command of US Colored Troops, chronicles his experiences in battle and his imprisonment at Andersonville, and provides tremendous insights into the ways that soldiers viewed race.
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United States Sanitary Commission. Narrative of Privations and Sufferings of United States Officers and Soldiers While Prisoners of War in the Hands of the Rebel Authorities. Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1864.
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The official report of the US Sanitary Commission detailing its investigations of the Confederate prison camps. Includes depositions taken of prisoners of war. An invaluable resource.
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US House of Representatives. Report on the Treatment of Prisoners of War by the Rebel Authorities during the War of Rebellion. Report no. 45. 40th Congress, 3d session, serial no. 1391. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1869.
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Contains affidavits from soldiers about their experiences in Confederate POW camps.
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Ward, Thomas J., Jr. “Enemy Combatants: Black Soldiers in Confederate Prisons.” Army History 78 (Winter 2011): 32–41.
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Despite the fact that the Confederate government refused to acknowledge African Americans as legitimate soldiers and pledged not to afford them prisoner-of-war status, hundreds of black Union soldiers did end up in Confederate prison camps, where they often found themselves not only at the mercy of their captors, but also isolated from their fellow prisoners.
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Wheelan, Joseph. Libby Prison Breakout: The Daring Escape from the Notorious Civil War Prison. New York: PublicAffairs, 2010.
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The story of 103 Union prisoners who escaped from Richmond’s Libby Prison and the subsequent manhunt for them by Confederate forces.
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Prisoners of the Union

While much of the historical focus of Civil War prisons has centered on the Confederacy, and most notably Andersonville, Union prisons have increasingly come under scrutiny from historians. Many of the accounts focus on the studies of individual prisons, such as McAdams 2000 and Horigan 2002. The best work of this genre is Levy 1994. Like the unbalanced accounts of mostly Union soldiers who provided harsh assessments of their Confederate captors, Confederate memoirs tended to give a very negative view of both their conditions and their captors, while Brown 1963 describes the experiences of Confederate prisoners who joined the Union army rather than stay in prison. The most significant, and balanced, treatment of the Union’s POW camps is Gillispie 2008.

Brown, Dee Alexander. The Galvanized Yankees. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963.
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Both Union and Confederate officials offered prisoners the opportunity to join their ranks rather than languish in a prison camp. Here, the history of the six Union regiments made up of Confederate prisoners is described in detail.
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Gillispie, James. Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2008.
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Gillispie examines not only the POW camps in the Union, but also how both sides portrayed the treatment of Confederate soldiers in Yankee prisons. He concludes that while many of the conditions in Union prisons were indeed deplorable, the poor conditions were not the result of a retaliatory policy against Confederate soldiers.
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Horigan, Michael. Elmira: Death Camp of the North. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2002.
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Alleges deliberate mistreatment of Confederate soldiers by their Northern captors.
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Levy, George. To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglass, 1862–1865. Evanston, IL: Evanston Publishing, 1994.
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Levy’s excellent account of the Union prison camp outside Chicago examines the contradiction of why the best-equipped prison camp on either side of the line still had a horrific death rate. He concludes that the deliberate ill-treatment of prisoners—including beatings and the denial of food and medical care—led to the unnecessarily high death rates.
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McAdams, Benton. Rebels at Rock Island: A Story of a Civil War Prison. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000.
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McAdams’s study of the Illinois prison camp that housed more than twelve thousand Confederate prisoners during the last two years of the war seeks to debunk other accounts that he argues sensationalize the cruelty inflicted on prisoners by their Union captors.
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World War I

Eight and a half million men were held in captivity as POWs at some time during the First World War, providing the first great test of the international accords. While the Hague Convention of 1907 was not legally binding, most of the warring nations in World War I agreed to abide by its provisions regarding POWs, although, in practice, the treatment of POWs varied tremendously during the war. Considering the wider historiography of World War I, scholarship on prisoners during the war is surprisingly thin, especially as compared to the tremendous amount of material on POWs in World War II. In the immediate wake of the war, Dennett 1919 provided the first accounting of its POWs, but little scholarship on the subject followed. The most significant overviews of the subject are Speed 1990 and Rachamimov 2002. A number of recent works have focused on specific issues regarding the POW experience. Jones 2011 examines the abuse of prisoners, including forced labor, while Spoerer 2006 compares the experiences of POWs by nationality, and Cook 2006 deals with the difficulties of surrender. Finally, a number of first-person accounts of imprisonment during the war do exist, including the memoirs Connes 2004 and Ölçen 1995 and the edited diary of William Spackman (Spackman and Spackman 2009).

Connes, George. A POW’s Memoir of the First World War: The Other Ordeal. Oxford: Berg, 2004.
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The memoir of a French soldier who spent three years as a German captive.
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Cook, Tim. “The Politics of Surrender: Canadian Soldiers and the Killing of Prisoners in the Great War.” Journal of Military History 70.3 (July 2006): 637–665.
DOI: 10.1353/jmh.2006.0158Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of the difficult, and dangerous, moments when soldiers attempt to surrender to their enemy.
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Dennett, Carl P. Prisoners of the Great War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919.
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Published in the immediate aftermath of the war, Dennett argued that American prisoners in Germany fared better than those of other nations because, unlike America’s allies, the United States held more German prisoners than there were Americans in German hands, so that the Germans treated Americans POWs relatively well out of fear of retaliation against their own troops.
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Jones, Heather. Violence against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France, and Germany, 1914–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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An examination of the abuse of prisoners on both sides of the conflict, including the use of prisoners for forced labor. Jones asserts that the abuses of prisoners during World War I helped pave the way for later international agreements on the creation of prison camps and the treatment of POWs.
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Ölçen, Mehmet Arif. Vetluga Memoir: A Turkish Prisoner of War in Russia, 1916–1918. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995.
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Ölçen, a Turkish lieutenant, describes his two years as a Russian POW during which he was held in the town of Varnavino. Ölçen writes of being free to mingle with the local population and makes many insightful observations of the Russian army as revolution began to rock the nation.
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Rachamimov, Alon. POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front. Oxford: Berg, 2002.
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Rachamimov examines the experiences of the often-ignored prisoners of the eastern front by examining the experiences of Austria-Hungarian prisoners held in Russia, focusing on both the treatment they received from their captors and their attempts to turn the captives’ loyalties.
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Spackman, William, and Tony Spackman. Captured at Kut, Prisoner of the Turks: The Great War Diaries of Colonel William Spackman. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword, 2009.
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The edited diary of William Spackman, a British military officer captured by the Turks following the siege of Kut in 1916. He describes a thousand-mile death march to his Turkish prison, and his treatment in captivity.
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Speed, Richard B., III. Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity. New York: Greenwood, 1990.
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An examination of the conditions of World War I prison camps; Speed asserts that the camps were not as bad as reported by returning POWs, and that there was a genuine attempt by the warring nations to provide for the treatment of captured soldiers.
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Spoerer, Mark. “The Mortality of Allied Prisoners of War and Belgian Civilian Deportees in German Custody during the First World War: A Reappraisal of the Effects of Forced Labour.” Population Studies 60.2 (July 2006): 121–136.
DOI: 10.1080/00324720600597969Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
By comparing the experiences of Russian, British, French, and Italian POWs, along with the detained Belgian civilians, Spoerer rejects earlier claims that German authorities mistreated Russian POWs to a greater extent than POWs from western European nations.
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World War II

In part because of the enormous number of prisoners taken during World War II, there are hundreds of personal accounts and memoirs from POWs from all sides of the conflict, and the literature on the treatment of prisoners is enormous. This bibliography therefore provides only a small insight into the vast amount of work on the subject. The vast majority of historical literature on POWs from World War II is skewed toward personal accounts, escape attempts, and histories of individual prisons. Some works, like Bird 1992, have examined the conditions of POWs from one nation, but comprehensive studies, such as Moore and Fedorowich 1996 and MacKenzie 1994, or comparative works, such as Carlson 1997, have been rare.

Bird, Tom. American POWs of World War II: Forgotten Men Tell Their Stories. London: Praeger, 1992.
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A collection of essays and oral histories that focuses on the psychological impact that captivity had on American POWs held in both Asia and Europe during World War II.
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Carlson, Lewis H. We Were Each Other’s Prisoners: An Oral History of World War II American and German Prisoners of War. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
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This classic work of oral history compares the experiences of German POWs held in the US with their American counterparts held in Germany. Carlson finds while men from both sides shared many common experiences in their struggle to survive imprisonment, the German prisoners lived under much better conditions than their American counterparts. Originally published in German in 1996.
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MacKenzie, S. P. “The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II.” Journal of Modern History 66.3 (September 1994): 487–520.
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An excellent overview of how all the major warring nations grappled with the treatment of POWs. MacKenzie argues that in terms of the treatment of POWs, World War II should be viewed as a transitional event, as although there were often tremendous efforts made by the belligerent nations to provide humane conditions for prisoners, widespread abuses of POWs also occurred, which foreshadowed the later wars of the 20th century.
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Moore, Bob, and Kent Fedorowich, eds. Prisoners of War and Their Captors in World War II. Washington, DC: Berg, 1996.
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A collection of essays that deals with a broad range of POW experiences in World War II, including a number of previously neglected issues and subjects, such as how race and ethnicity affected one’s POW experience.
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Prisoners of the Axis

The stories of Allied POWs have long been fodder for popular histories such as Pau Brickell’s The Great Escape (1950) and Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken (2011), films like Hart’s War (2002) and The Great Escape (1963), and even the television series Hogan’s Heroes (1965–1971). However, the lives of POWs were rarely as exciting or benign as portrayed in these popular works. There are a vast amount of numerous personal accounts, memoirs, and oral histories of POWs who were held by the Axis powers. Most, as is normal for the genre, tend to provide a very harsh assessment of their captors and focus on the resiliency of the prisoners, but some of the better memoirs include Beebe 2006 and MacCarthy 2005 (both cited under Prisoners of the Japanese), and Fledermen 2008 and Jefferson 2005 (both cited under Prisoners of the Germans and Italians). One of the significant discrepancies between World War II POWs was whether they were captured and held by the Germans or the Japanese. While prisoners of the Nazis certainly faced hardships, especially as rations became strained near the end of the war, for the most part, the Nazi government abided by the Geneva Accords in its treatment of captured prisoners. The Japanese, however, for whom surrender was viewed as dishonorable, were notoriously brutal to their prisoners, resulting in a significantly higher death rate for those imprisoned in the Far East as compared to Europe; 4 percent of Allied prisoners held by the Germans and Italians died in captivity, while 27 percent of the 140,000 prisoners held by the Japanese perished in their custody.

Prisoners of the Japanese

One of the best treatments of the Japanese camps is Daws 1994, which provides an excellent overview of the POW experience in the Far East, while Roland 2001 offers an excellent medical history of the POW camps in the Pacific. Knox 1981 provides one of the better oral histories of war, while Beebe 2006 and MacCarthy 2005 also give personal insights into the lives of POWs in the East through their memoirs, and Tanaka 1996 provides a unique view of Allied POWs from a Japanese observer. There are also a number of histories of individual camps, such as Havers 2003, and of escape attempts and rescue missions (Sides 2001 and Lukacs 2010).

Beebe, John M. Prisoner of the Rising Sun: The Lost Diary of Brig. Gen. Lewis Beebe. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
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One of the more remarkable personal accounts of a POW during World War II, Beebe’s wartime diary was confiscated by his Japanese captors but found after the war in a Korean warehouse and returned to him. As a senior officer, Beebe was treated differently from the majority of POWs, but his diary still provides valuable insights into the conditions of prisoners held by the Japanese.
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Daws, Gavan. Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. New York: William Morrow, 1994.
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A broad examination of Japanese POW camps during World War II that does an excellent job of describing the brutal experiences of American, British, Dutch, and Australian prisoners at camps throughout the Far East. Dawes also explores the postwar reception that POWs faced back home.
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Havers, R. P. W. Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience: The Changi POW Camp, Singapore, 1942–45. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
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Examination of the Changi POW camp in Singapore, where POWs were held until being dispersed to prisoner work projects, including the Burma Railway.
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Knox, Donald. Death March: The Survivors of Bataan. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1981.
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Oral history collection of survivors of the Bataan Death March and numerous Japanese POW camps.
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Lukacs, John D. Escape from Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring Prison Break of the Pacific War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.
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The story of ten American and two Filipino prisoners who escaped from a Japanese POW camp, and the subsequent attempts by the US government to squelch any information about the escape.
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MacCarthy, Aidan. A Doctor’s War. Cork, Ireland: Collins, 2005.
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The memoir of a British doctor captured in Java and held as a POW of the Japanese.
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Roland, Charles G. Long Night’s Journey into Day: Prisoners of War in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941–1945. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001.
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A medical history of the disease and starvation that afflicted the thousands of Allied prisoners captured following the fall of Hong Kong.
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Sides, Hampton. Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II’s Most Dramatic Mission. New York: Random House, 2001.
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An examination of the massacre of American prisoners by Japanese forces on Palawan Island, and the rescue of five hundred Allied prisoners from the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines.
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Tanaka, Yuki. Hidden Horrors Japanese War Crimes in World War II. 3d ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996.
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A Japanese perspective of the Allied POWs held in Borneo.
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Prisoners of the Germans and Italians

MacKenzie 2006 and Clutton-Brock 2003 refute many of the popular perceptions of the life of a prisoner in a Nazi camp, instead describing conditions that were indeed harsh, while Vourkoutiotis 2003 explores the treatment of Allied POWs from the perspective of the German High Command. Jacobs 2003 examines resistance movements by POWs, as does Frelinghuysen 1990. There are also a number of excellent primary accounts of Allied prisoners, including memoirs by Alan Fledermen (Fledermen 2008) and the Tuskegee Airman Alexander Jefferson (Jefferson and Carlson 2005), as well as the fascinating collection of photographs by Angelo Spinelli (Spinelli and Carlson 2004).

Clutton-Brock, Oliver. Footprints on the Sands of Time: RAF Bomber Command Prisoners-of-War in Germany, 1939–1945. London: Grub Street, 2003.
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Challenging the popular image of Allied airmen constantly plotting escape from the German stalags, Clutton-Brock exposes a much more mundane and sometimes brutal existence for the POWs.
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Fledermen, Alan John. And Direction Was Given: A Daring Escape from a POW Camp and a Dramatic Journey to Neutral Switzerland. London: Athena, 2008.
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The memoir of an American POW in Italy who described his journey with other escaped POWs though the Italian countryside in the last days of World War II.
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Frelinghuysen, Joseph S. Passages to Freedom: A Story of Captivity and Escape. Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1990.
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Frelinghuysen, captured in North Africa, recounts both his treatment by his Italian captors and his criticism of his fellow prisoners to form a resistance movement.
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Jacobs, Susan. Fighting with the Enemy: New Zealand POWs and the Italian Resistance. Auckland, NZ: Penguin, 2003.
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The Vatican underground helped shelter escaped Allied POWs in Italy, many of whom then fought with the Italian resistance against the Italian fascists.
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Jefferson, Alexander, with Lewis H. Carlson. Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: The Memoirs of a World War II Tuskegee Airman and POW. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.
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The memoir of one of the famed Tuskegee Airmen who was shot down over Germany. Jefferson recounts his period as an African American officer held in a Nazi camp for downed airmen.
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MacKenzie, S. P. The Colditz Myth: The Real Story of POW Life in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
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In his examination of British POWs held by the Nazis (and not just those at the famous Colditz Castle) MacKenzie refutes the popular image portrayed in movies and novels of Allied prisoners constantly working to escape, asserting instead that most prisoners held by the Germans reached an accommodation with their captors, as the Germans, for the most part, complied with the Geneva Conventions.
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Spinelli, Angelo, and Lewis H. Carlson. Life behind Barbed Wire: The Secret World War II Photographs of Prisoner of War Angelo Spinelli. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004.
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Captured in North Africa in 1943, Angelo Spinelli was able to photograph his twenty-two-month incarceration in Stalag IIIB. His photographs provide rare images of prison life and conditions through the eyes of a POW.
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Vourkoutiotis, Vasilis. Prisoners of War and the German High Command: The British and American Experience. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2003.
DOI: 10.1057/9780230598300Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In a study of the treatment of British and American prisoners from the perspective of the German High Command, Vourkoutiotis asserts that the German High Command did attempt to comply with the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of Allied POWs, but as the war continued, violations, including prisoner abuses and atrocities, increased as Nazi leadership began to exert more authority over the prison camps.
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Prisoners of the Allies

The historiography surrounding prisoners of the Allies has centered on not just their treatment, but also the use of prisoners for labor and attempts at the “re-education” of enemy POWs in the camps. One of the major historiographical disputes that arose regarding the treatment of POWs by the Allies emerged with the publication of the controversial work Bacque 2011, which asserted that up to 1 million German POWs died at the end of the war as part of a policy of retribution by the United States and France. Bischof and Ambrose 1992 counter this accusation. Because of its isolation from the front lines, many Allied prisoners captured in western Europe and the Pacific were sent to the United States, where over 400,000 POWs were held in the more than 700 POW camps set up throughout the United States during World War II. Krammer 1979, the definitive work on the subject, argues that the United States was unprepared to properly handle the number of POWs it had to house. Recently, a number of accounts by POWs in certain states have appeared, including Fielder 2003 on Missouri and Powell 1989 on Utah. Other works have instead focused on the treatment of prisoners based on their nationalities, such as Keefer 1992 on Italian prisoners and Straus 2004 on Japanese POWs. Finally, while most of the prisoners of the Allies were held in the United States, Moore and Fedorowich 2002 examines British policies and Carr-Gregg 1978 explores the camps established in Australia and New Zealand to house Japanese prisoners.

Bacque, James. Other Losses: An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II. 3d ed. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2011.
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Accused General Dwight D. Eisenhower of withholding food, shelter, and medical attention from German prisoners in an act of revenge, causing upward of a million German casualties at the end of World War II. Originally published in 1989.
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Bischof, Gunter, and Stephen E. Ambrose. Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood. Papers presented at a symposium held November 1990 at the Eisenhower Center, University of New Orleans. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
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In response to allegations by James Bacque (and others) that Eisenhower orchestrated a policy of revenge against German prisoners, Bischof and Ambrose both refute Bacque’s arguments and defend Eisenhower’s legacy.
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Carr-Gregg, Charlotte. Japanese Prisoners of War in Revolt: The Outbreaks at Featherston and Cowra during World War II. New York: St. Martin’s, 1978.
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Because of both the nature of the Pacific war and the Japanese soldiers’ reluctance to surrender, compared to German and Italian soldiers, a very small number of Japanese were taken prisoner during World War II. Carr-Gregg details two revolts by Japanese POWs at camps in Australia and New Zealand.
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Fielder, David. The Enemy among Us: POWs in Missouri during World War II. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2003.
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Missouri held more than 15,000 German and Italian POWs in thirty camps during World War II. Fielder’s study stands out from many of the state studies of prison camps in that he compares the ways that locals viewed and treated the German and Italian prisoners in their midst.
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Keefer, Louis E. Italian Prisoners of War in America, 1942–1946: Captives or Allies? New York: Praeger, 1992.
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Keefer focuses on the individual experiences of the more than 50,000 Italian POWs held in the United States, often in their own words.
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Krammer, Arnold P. Nazi Prisoners of War in America. New York: Stein & Day, 1979.
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The definitive work on German POWs in the United States, Krammer chronicles the capture and transport of Nazi soldiers to the United States and their incarceration—including reeducation campaigns and escape attempts—and eventually their return to Europe.
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Moore, Bob, with Kent Fedorowich. The British Empire and Its Italian Prisoners of War, 1940–1947. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002.
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More than half a million Italian forces were captured by British forces during World War II, most in North Africa. Moore and Fedorowich, two respected POW historians, examine the logistical and political difficulties faced by British authorities in dealing with their Italian captives.
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Powell, Allan Kent. Splinters of a Nation: German Prisoners of War in Utah. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989.
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Powell examines both the conditions of German POWs and the attitudes of the local population toward them, and describes the Salina Tragedy, in which a camp guard opened fire on sleeping German prisoners.
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Straus, Ulrich. The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004.
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Based on interviews by the author, US interrogation records, and memoirs of former POWs, this in-depth examination of Japanese prisoners held by the Americans and the British focuses not only on their experiences as prisoners, but also on the ways that their captivity in Allied hands affected their hypernationalistic attitudes.
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Civilian Prisoners

World War II was not unique in that civilians found themselves imprisoned as enemies of the state, but in that they were imprisoned in unprecedented numbers by all the major powers, and often with horrific consequences. Holocaust literature is, of course, vast, and while millions of civilians were held prisoner in the Holocaust, it is not dealt with here. In the Far East, civilians, including women and children, were imprisoned in unprecedented numbers, where many were forced into labor, including prostitution. Cogan 2000 and Twomey 2007 provide overall studies of civilians interned by the Japanese, while the memoirs Hartendorp 1964 and Vaughn 1949 are excellent primary accounts of life within the camps by survivors. World War II witnessed a large number of women serving near combat areas, especially nurses, and many were captured and imprisoned during the war. While women had served in combat areas for centuries, it was not until 1918 that women were first given consideration as POWs, when an American–German agreement afforded male and female prisoners the same basic legal rights. The 1929 Geneva Accords, however, stipulated that women not be treated as POWs, but as internees, and given all the respect due their sex. Kaminsky 2000 focuses on the experiences of American women under Japanese authority during the war, while Kenney 1986 and Norman 2000 examine the experiences of nurses in Japanese camps. On the other side of the spectrum, more than 127,000 Americans of Japanese descent were detained in ten internment camps located throughout the United States during the war; Hayashi 2004 offers one of the most comprehensive studies of the US internment camps, while Weglyn 1976 provides a first-person look at the camps from one of its inmates.

Cogan, Frances B. Captured: The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines, 1941–1945. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2000.
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A broad study of the numerous internment camps for civilian prisoners established by the Japanese. Cogan also compares the treatment of civilian detainees of the Japanese with that of military POWs in the Pacific.
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Hartendorp, A. V. H. The Santo Tomas Story. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
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The history of the Santo Tomas prison camp in Manila, where more than seven thousand civilians were held between 1942 and 1945, as told by one of the inmates.
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Hayashi, Brian Masaru. Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
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Examining the internment of Japanese Americans from the perspective of internees, administrators, and social scientists at three of the ten camps, Hayashi approaches the history of the camps on the global, instead of just a national, perspective.
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Kaminsky, Teresa. Prisoners in Paradise: American Women in the Wartime South Pacific. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000.
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Kaminsky explores the different experiences of a wide variety of American women—nurses, business and military wives, teachers, missionaries, spies—trapped in Japanese-occupied territories during the war. While some women found themselves in internment camps, others remained in their homes under Japanese surveillance, and still others joined resistance movements.
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Kenney, Catherine. Captives: Australian Army Nurses in Japanese Prison Camps. Brisbane, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1986.
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A shocking account of the murder of twenty-two Australian nurses by their Japanese captors.
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Norman, Elizabeth M. We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. New York: Atria, 2000.
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The story of ninety-nine American nurses taken prisoner by the Japanese during the invasion of the Philippines, and their imprisonment at POW camps in Bataan and Corregidor.
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Twomey, Christina. Australia’s Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War Two. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Twomey explores how captivity differed for the 1,500 Australian men, women, and children imprisoned by the Japanese in the South Pacific during World War II.
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Vaughn, Elizabeth Head. Community under Stress: An Internment Camp Structure. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949.
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A study of the conditions within a Japanese internment camp in the Philippines, written by a survivor of the camp.
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Weglyn, Michi. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. New York: Morrow, 1976.
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Weglyn, who was interned during the war at Gila River, Arizona, produced one of the first accounts of American internment from the perspective of an inmate of the camps, but goes beyond her personal narrative and explores the postwar effects on Japanese American internees and their descendants.
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Korea

The Korean Conflict, while often referred to as a “forgotten war,” has nonetheless inspired a great deal of historical research on prisoners taken during the three-year war. Much of the interest has been inspired by the harsh conditions and treatment of UN prisoners at the hands of their Korean and Chinese captors, but other factors, such as the Chinese attempt to “brainwash” their captors through “educational” meetings in the camps, are the focus of Biderman 1963 and White 1957. Richard Basset’s memoir (Basset and Calson 2002) provides perhaps the best first-person account of life within the camps, while Carlson 2002 is perhaps the best overall treatment of the subject. Another focus has been the stories of the twenty-one Americans who refused to be repatriated at the end of the war, who have also contributed to the great interest in POWs of the Korean Conflict. Pasley 1955 was the first, and still most complete, treatment of those Americans who refused to be repatriated at the end of the war; one of the men, Clarence Adams, explains his decision to stay with the Communists in his edited autobiography (Adams 2007). Much of the early controversy regarding UN POWs held by the Communists dealt with the alleged collaboration of prisoners with their captors, as portrayed by Kinkead 1959. Material on Communist prisoners of the UN forces is sparse, much of it focusing on the “forced repatriation” of Communist POWs at the conclusion of the war and the prison riots that occurred at the Koje-do camp. Hermes 1966 and Song 1980 provide rare insights into the experiences of the Communist POWs.

Adams, Clarence. An American Dream: The Life of an African American Soldier and POW Who Spent Twelve Years in Communist China. Edited by Della Adams and Lewis H. Carlson. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
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Adams, one of the infamous twenty-one Americans who refused to be repatriated at the end of the war, choosing instead to immigrate to China, tells his story of growing up in the segregated South before joining the military and being captured in the early months of the Korean War.
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Basset, Richard M., with Lewis H. Carlson. And the Wind Blew Cold: The Story of an American POW in North Korea. Kent, OH, and London: Kent State University Press, 2002.
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The memoir of an American prisoner at Camp 5, North Korea, who describes not only the conditions in the camp where he was held, but also the ways that he and his fellow former POWs were treated as security risks by the US government upon their return home.
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Biderman, Albert D. March to Calumny: The Story of American POWs in the Korean War. New York: Macmillan, 1963.
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Biederman separates POWs in Communist camps into four types: resisters (or “reactionaries”); temporary collaborators (or “progressives”); renegades who sided with their captors; and the majority of prisoners who sought to just keep their heads down and survive.
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Carlson, Lewis. Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War: An Oral History of Korean War POWs. New York: St. Martin’s, 2002.
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Carlson assembled a wide variety of oral histories into a very readable narrative. One of the classic works on the Korean War.
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Hermes, Walter G. Truce Tent and Fighting Front. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1966.
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Hermes devotes an entire chapter to the subject of Communist prisoners, their treatment, and the issue of repatriation.
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Kinkead, Eugene. In Every War but One. New York: W.W. Norton, 1959.
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Kinkead’s controversial book examined why captured American servicemen in Korea failed to escape from their captors, asserting that Americans had become “soft” in post–World War II America and ill-equipped to combat communism in the Cold War world.
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Pasley, Virginia. 21 Stayed: The Story of American GI’s Who Chose Communist China—Who They Were and Why They Stayed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955.
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Pasley examined the backgrounds of the infamous twenty-one American servicemen who refused repatriation at the end of the Korean War.
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Song, Hyo-Soon. The Fight for Freedom: The Untold Story of the Korean War Prisoners. Seoul: Korean Library Association, 1980.
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An examination of the treatment of Korean prisoners of war from a Korean perspective.
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White, William Lindsay. The Captives of Korea. New York: Scribner’s, 1957.
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White compares the treatment of POWs on both sides of the line, asserting that while, for the most part, the Communist prisoners in UN camps were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, the Chinese and North Koreans did not afford UN prisoners the same protections.
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Vietnam

The experiences of POWs in Vietnam have in the past, and in many ways continue to have, a powerful hold on American consciousness, despite the fact there were fewer than eight hundred Americans held captive in North Vietnamese POW camps during the conflict. Part of this interest is rooted in the media’s fascination with Vietnam’s POWs, and also with the belief among many Americans that not all US POWs were returned at the end of the war. While most scholars have dismissed speculation that many American troops deemed missing in action (MIA) were kept (and perhaps are still kept) in secret POW camps, films such as Rambo and Uncommon Valor have kept that belief alive in the popular mind. Allen 2009 provides the best examination of the POW phenomenon that emerged in the United States following the war, while McConnell 1995 seeks to put aside all conspiracy theories about remaining POWS in Vietnam. Contributing to the interest in Americans held in Vietnam is the fact that many POWs produced personal accounts or told their stories to historians or journalists, so information on their experiences is vast. Some of the best memoirs include Thorsness 2008 and McDaniel 1975, while the definitive work on the experiences of American POWs is Rochester and Kiley 1999. The rescue efforts of American POWs have also been of great interest, the best accounts on this subject being Schemmer 1976 and Veith 1998. American and South Vietnamese forces captured thousands of enemy forces over the course of the war, but the means in which they were treated varied considerably. North Vietnamese soldiers captured in uniform were transported to a series of prison camps in the North and generally treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Vietcong guerillas, on the other hand, were not always afforded the same protections, a situation that foreshadowed the difficulties the United States faced in the so-called War on Terror in the early 21st century. Prugh 1975 and Davis 2000 provide some of the few works on the treatment of prisoners held by the United States and its allies.

Allen, Michael J. Until The Last Man Comes Home: POWs, MIAs, and the Unending Vietnam War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
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Allen examines how and why the POW-MIA issue became such a major issue in both American politics and the American psyche for a generation, despite the fact there were far fewer American POWs and MIAs than in previous wars, by focusing on the National League of Families of Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia and its political impact.
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Davis, Vernon E. The Long Road Home: U.S. Prisoner of War Policy and Planning in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973. Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, Historical Office, 2000.
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Davis asserts that, contrary to most assumptions, the government of South Vietnam did not adhere to the Geneva Conventions in regard to Vietcong prisoners, and may have even hampered the exchange system with North Vietnam.
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McConnell, Malcolm. Inside Hanoi’s Secret Archives. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
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Using documents obtained from North Vietnamese sources, McConnell refutes the persistent claims that the US government knowingly left US servicemen imprisoned in Vietnam at the end of the war.
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McDaniel, Norman A. Yet Another Voice. New York: Hawthorn, 1975.
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McDaniel, an African American Air Force pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966. He tells the story of his capture and imprisonment, and the ways that race was used by his captors to try and divide the prisoners.
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Prugh, George S. Law at War: Vietnam 1964–1973. Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1975.
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Prugh, a Vietnam veteran and a JAG officer, devotes an entire chapter to the treatment and legal status of prisoners held by the United States and its South Vietnamese allies.
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Rochester, Stuart I., and Frederick Kiley. Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999.
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Based on more than one hundred interviews with former POWs, along with a careful mining of government records, Honor Bound is one of the more significant and balanced accounts of the POW experience in Vietnam.
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Schemmer, Benjamin F. The Raid. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
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The story of the failed attempt by US forces to free US POWs held at Son Tay prison near Hanoi.
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Thorsness, Leo. Surviving Hell: A POW’s Journey. New York: Encounter Books, 2008.
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The memoir of a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who had been shot down over North Vietnam and spent six years as a POW.
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Veith, George J. Code-Name Bright Light: The Untold Story of U.S. POW Rescue Efforts during the Vietnam War. New York: Free Press, 1998.
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In this examination of the numerous attempts by US government agencies to rescue American prisoners held in North Vietnam, Veith asserts that poor intelligence and interagency rivalries foiled many attempts to successfully rescue American POWs.
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Modern Conflicts

The First Gulf War, known by the US military as Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, created a logistical nightmare for the American-led coalition due to the sheer number of Iraqi prisoners taken in a short period of time. While the United States had planned on taking large numbers of POWs, and had begun construction on four camps for prisoners in Saudi Arabia, the more than eighty thousand Iraqis taken in the early days of the three-week war overwhelmed capacity. Nevertheless, the International Red Cross praised the care of these prisoners, who were given better clothing, food, and medical attention than they had by their own military. As it had during Cold War conflicts, the United States refused to repatriate any Iraqi soldier who did not want to return to his homeland following the war; more than 13,000 chose to remain in Saudi Arabia. While only forty-seven coalition troops were captured by Iraqi forces, there has been much more written on their experiences, in part because of the vastly different treatment they received at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s regime. A number of those detained were used for propaganda purposes or as “human shields,” including British airmen John Peters and John Nichol, who told their story in Peters and Nichol 1998. The increased number of female soldiers in combat areas, including the first American woman POW, Rhonda Cornum (Cornum and Copeland 1992), also became an issue of interest in the wars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. During the Second Gulf War, or the Iraq War (2003–2011), the experiences of captured female soldiers became major news in the United States, as portrayed in the memoirs of Jessica Lynch (Bragg 2003) and Shoshona Johnson (Johnson and Doyle 2010). The War on Terror, including the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, created a new dilemma in the treatment of POWs as unconventional conflicts were fought by combatants who did not meet the standards of soldiers according to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. As members of al-Qaeda and soldiers of the Taliban did not meet all the requirements as conventional soldiers, the United States viewed them as unworthy of prisoner-of-war status and protections under the Geneva Conventions, deeming them instead as “enemy combatants.” The opening of “Camp X-Ray” at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba for the most high-profile prisoners created international controversy about the United States’ handling of prisoners and has been examined in detail by Cucullu 2009 and Greenberg 2009. One of the most fascinating accounts of the experiences of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is Khan 2008, the memoir of a translator at the camp. Later revelations regarding issues such as “extraordinary rendition,” as exposed by Grey 2006, and the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison (Danner 2004) created further controversy for the US government in its treatment of prisoners in the War on Terror.

Bragg, Rick. I Am a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story. New York: Knopf, 2003.
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Jessica Lynch, the American soldier taken prisoner by Iraqi forces in 2003, became a national sensation as the Bush administration and the American media promoted her story following her rescue from an Iraqi hospital.
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Cornum, Rhonda, and Peter Copeland. She Went to War: The Rhonda Cornum Story. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1992.
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The memoir of the United States’ first female POW. Rhonda Cornum, a flight surgeon, taken prisoner by Iraqi forces when her helicopter was shot down during the First Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) in 1992. She describes an attempted sexual assault by her captors.
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Cucullu, Gordon. Inside Gitmo: The True Story behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay. New York: Harper, 2009.
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Cucullu, a retired Army colonel, argues that while there may have been some prisoner abuse at Gitmo early on, reports of torture and mistreatment have been greatly exaggerated and that the detainees there are treated well within the parameters of the Geneva Conventions.
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Danner, Mark, ed. Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror. New York: New York Review of Books, 2004.
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A collection of essays and articles written by the author, an investigative journalist, about the unfolding scandal involving the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by the US military. The essays are accompanied by a lengthy series of documents regarding the treatment of prisoners.
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Greenberg, Karen. The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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An examination of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay in December 2001 for detainees in the War on Terror. Greenberg examines the questions that existed concerning the tensions between domestic security and international law, and how the Bush administration sought to define the terms of those captured in the War on Terror.
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Grey, Stephen. Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Rendition and Torture Program. New York: St. Martin’s, 2006.
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Focusing on a number of individual cases, including that of the American José Padilla, Grey explores the practice of extraordinary rendition by which the Central Intelligence Agency outsourced the interrogation of US prisoners to other nations to avoid the appearance of condoning torture.
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Johnson, Shoshona, with M. L. Doyle. I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen—My Journey Home. Clearwater, FL: Touchstone, 2010.
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The memoir of the first African American female POW, Shoshona Johnson, who was captured along with Jessica Lynch in the opening weeks of the Second Gulf War, but did not receive the same attention from either the American media or government.
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Khan, Mahvish. My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me. New York: PublicAffairs, 2008.
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The memoir of a translator to detainees imprisoned at Guantánamo, Kahn describes both the conditions that they lived under and the circumstances that landed them in the notorious prison.
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Peters, John, and John Nichol. Tornado Down. London: Penguin, 1998.
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The story of two British airmen shot down over Iraq during the First Gulf War, and their seven weeks as captives of the Saddam Hussein regime. While prisoners, they were displayed by the Iraqi government on television, creating an international outcry.
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