Camp Crossville a.k.a. The Jap Camp
Recently, I found myself on the grounds of the former POW camp in Crossville, Tennessee. There is precious little left to identify the original purpose of this facility about which I’ve heard stories my whole life. I was hearing the history from local people who saw these men as responsible parties for the absence of husbands, brothers, neighbors and friends. They remembered sometimes seeing the men, and fearing them. They told stories of lone women shooting escapees – even mistaking them for Yankees, which in legend was much worse than a Nazi.
I went searching for some facts and I found the Military Memorial Museum in Crossville and the Cumberland County Archives which were both incredibly helpful in the writing of this article. The museum is a must-see for anyone interested in either local or military history. And the Archives is a dream-stop for any history or book-nerds like me! (We’ll revisit these places in a future blog.)
The April 9, 1942 edition of the Crossville Chronicle presented Congressman Albert Gore’s announcement that Cumberland County might house “an alien concentration camp”
Wow, today’s readers would be aghast at the prospect of a concentration camp. Well, that is one of those words that has been rather hijacked by history. The etymology dictionary lists this term from 1901 as a “compound for noncombatants in a war zone.” So, as distasteful as the concept was, both the camps that housed Japanese Americans and those for the European Jews were true to the term. However, the atrocities of the German concentration camps have forever twisted the term toward evil connotations.
Diorama of Camp Crossville - on display at the Military Memorial Museum
The news of a camp in Crossville seems to have hinged on whether “our people desired it” – and they did. In fact, the business men who met in the office of the city recorder unanimously approved the idea. The proposed facility was for non-combatants whose sympathies aligned with our enemies. And, entire families were expected.
The prospect of a government installation located on our mountain was very exciting to the impoverished people of the 1940’s. When a local office was setup for the government agent, a crowd was almost always present as they vied for newly available work.
As the decision-making proceeded, locals expected a whole town, that would be larger than Crossville, would be built. It would include a large hospital which many hoped would be a permanent fixture, possibly even a veteran’s facility when peace was restored.
On July 30th, the Chronicle announced that work had begun. By October, several hundred men were working to assemble 100 or more houses and the camp was now referred to as an “Alien Officers camp”. None of the articles I read ever referred to Japanese prisoners, but the camp would forever be called the Jap Camp. In fact, Bob Mitchell recalled local people lined up to see the Japanese when the trains began to arrive. On December 3, 1942, the first 68 prisoners arrived by special train from Nashville. They were mostly officers from Germany and Italy. Armed soldiers were stationed at every crossroad in town because the Pentagon feared angry locals would try to harm the prisoners.
The plan always included the prisoners working and many local people remember truckloads of prisoners arriving in local fields to pick beans. They worked in tobacco fields and cleared right-of-ways for TVA. In the early days of the camp, the prisoners seemed to have enjoyed a very comfortable life. In fact, as I read about their rations and the pay they received for common chores, I couldn’t help but remember the lives the local people were enduring.
Former prisoner, Hans Albert Smolinski Alberston wrote that the kitchen supervisor was a German with hotel experience. He began serving coffee and cake on Sunday afternoons with whipped cream. He added that, “Naturally, we could not write home such extravagances – nor could we tell that to our prison guards!” Wartime was hard around the world and their families back in Germany probably suffered worse than our mountain people.
When news of German war crimes began to leak, the prisoners in Camp Crossville felt the change in sentiment. Rations were reduced and guards were colder. The prisoners were made to watch news reels of the allies liberating German concentration camps and exposing the starvation and abuse.
Elmer Atkinson hailed from Clarkrange, Tennessee and served as an M.P. attached to the 7th Army. He encountered the wife of one of the Camp Crossville POWs. She was convinced that her husband was enduring the worst of treatment in captivity. Elmer asked his interpreter to tell her he would gladly trade places with her husband. Elmer also was assigned to guard the American soldiers who were liberated from German camps. His job was to prevent the emaciated men from eating too fast and killing themselves. He said they lost several men because they would sneak from one tent to the next and ate until they died.
Several of the POWs from Camp Crossville returned through the years. They shared fond memories from their time on the Plateau. A couple even wrote books. Albertson did note that even with good conditions in camp, they were very far from home. While mail was permitted, many of the prisoners had little news from their families. He writes, “Many a night one could not fall asleep because those tormenting thoughts tortured our brains and distressed our hearts! How often did we get up and walk through the silent nights along the barbed wire fences? How often did we cry or utter a silent prayer…”
The camp today bears little resemblance to the barbed wire enclosed prison. As our mountain terrain is wont to do, the scrub brush, briars and weeds have reclaimed the cleared fields and roadways. The land has been repurposed as a 4-H camp and where once prisoners passed lonely days thousands of miles from home, now young campers learn woods skills, frolic in the pool and play camp games.
