LE GRAND — What were thousands of enemy soldiers doing in Iowa from 1943 to 1946? Find out at the Humanities Iowa program at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 24 at the Le Grand Pioneer Heritage Library.

Chad W. Timm, an Associate Professor of Education at Simpson College, will present “Working with the Enemy: German, Italian and Japanese Prisoners of War in Iowa during the Second World War.”

As part of a relatively quiet and under-publicized government program, thousands of enemy soldiers invaded Iowa in 1943. With the hugely successful 1942 Allied campaign against Adolf Hitler’s Afrika Corps in North Africa, the number of enemy prisoners of war needing interment grew dramatically. Great Britain, no longer able to accommodate the increasing number of POWs, looked to the United States for help.

What began as an experiment in isolated locations in the south and southwest eventually led to more than 500 camps and 400,000 enemy soldiers interned in the United States and roughly 25,000 of them were housed in Iowa at two main camps in Algona and Clarinda. There were also several branch camps that did the same such as those in Eldora, Wapello, Waverly, Audubon and Toledo. Due to a severe shortage of agricultural laborers coupled with increased War Food Administration quotas for farm goods, Iowa’s farmers needed help doing their part to assist the United States in winning the war.

This talk will focus on the creation of two POW camps in Iowa during the Second World War: one in the northern Iowa town of Algona and one in the southwestern Iowa town of Clarinda. Some of the topics discussed will be life in a prisoner of war camp, community relations, the POW labor program, branch camps in more than 30 Iowa communities and the arrival of Japanese prisoners at Camp Clarinda in early 1945. Camp Clarinda was one of only two camps in the country to house Japanese soldiers. The story of POW interment in Iowa is a fascinating story of Iowans being confronted by the enemy: an enemy they not only needed to help them meet their wartime goals, but also challenged them to find their humanity.

Timm is an Iowa native who grew up hearing stories from his grandmother about her work at the Earl May Nursery in Shenandoah during the Second World War. His grandmother told him about the Japanese men who worked at Earl May in 1945, which sparked an interest in finding out how that could have been possible. Library Director Shelley Barron learned of the POWs in Algona from her father who was a guard at the camp after he returned from the campaigns in North Africa and Italy. Dad was stationed at the camp and my mother and sister lived in Algona. He was interviewed for the Camp Algona POW Museum.

This program is free and open to the public. The library is located in the log building in the city park. For more information on this program or the March 6 program on Bald Eagles, contact the library at 641-479-2122 or email sbarron@legrand.lib.ia.us.