Scope and Content Note
The World War II Prisoners of War Letters span the years 1942-1944. The letters were written by American soldiers, sailors, and airmen interned abroad in German and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps to relatives and friends in the United States. The letters were provided to the Library of in 1944 by Marion Hale Britton, publisher of the American National Red Cross Prisoners of War Bulletin. The original letters were returned to the Red Cross after the Library reproduced them photostatically for this collection.
German camps from which letters are principally addressed and occasionally described and illustrated by the correspondents are of Stalag Luft II and Luft III in Germany and Timis in Romania. Japanese camps include internment sites at Mukden and Shanghai, China; Los Baños and Santo Tomas in the Philippines; Fukuoka, Kawasaki-shi, Kōbe-shi, Ōmori, Osaka, Tokyo, and Zentsūji-shi in Japan; and prisoner-of-war camps in Taiwan.