If you’ve been to the Muscatine County Fair, you know the fairgrounds in West Liberty to be the land of funnel cake carts and livestock shows.  But 80 years ago, the fairgrounds were turned into a temporary camp for 300 Italian soldiers who were taken as prisoners of war during World War II.  

In July 1943, the prisoners set up cots and living quarters in the grandstand, and their American guards established themselves in the 4-H building.  The Italians then went to work detasseling corn for the Pioneer Hybrid Corn Co. in Durant and Marengo.

“When I went down to Southwest Iowa to do research, the people down there around Shenandoah were still laughing because they had had Italian POWs, and the POWs could not understand why they were detasseling the corn.  They thought they were killing the corn, and they couldn’t understand why the Iowans wanted to kill the corn,” recalls Linda Betsinger McCann, author of the book, “Prisoners of War in Iowa.”

On Tuesday, Jan. 24, McCann will speak at the Coralville Library about the forgotten history she uncovered while writing the book.  

The Iowa native, who lives in nearby Shell Rock, grew up around Waverly, about 20 miles north of Waterloo.  Waverly also had a prisoner of war camp, in this case, an existing YWCA camp.

“Just in passing, I said something about the prisoner of war camp in Waverly, and my family was speechless.  I mean, about 20 people, and they’re just speechless.  Then they started asking questions, and I realized I didn’t know all that much,” McCann recounts.  “Then I began researching and I didn’t realize how much we had here in Iowa.  We had about 25,000 POWs here from 1942 to 1946.”

Discovering how much people didn’t know about Iowa’s history – and how much they wanted to know – inspired McCann to research and write about it.  Today she has 14 Iowa history books published and is at work on her next one.  She especially hopes to reach students who are hungry to know more.

When the United States entered World War II in 1941, it wasn’t prepared to deal with prisoners of war, but the British needed American help in this regard.  German, Italian, and Japanese soldiers traveled to the US on cargo ships that would have otherwise returned home empty, and the Geneva Convention required the soldiers be housed adequately once they arrived here.  However, the Geneva Convention also allowed prisoners to work if they were paid American military wages.

“When they got here, all these companies wanted to hire them because there was a shortage of manpower,” McCann says.  “In Iowa, they were mostly at canning factories and seed corn companies.”

“We had 38 canning factories in Iowa during World War II, all over the state.  I really got the feeling that if there hadn’t been prisoners of war here, there probably would have been Iowans starved, because they didn’t have anybody to pick the crops or anybody to take care of it,” she says, adding that POWs logged lumber in the northern states and picked cotton and tobacco in the southern states.  “[They] really stepped up and took care of us, if you will.”

Four generations later, you would think that the thread to these European and Japanese soldiers would be lost, especially since there are no physical reminders of the POW camps to see, and the soldiers were all officially returned home at the end of the war.  However, the thread remains intact.

“The thing that surprised me was how many Iowans stayed in contact with certain POWs,” McCann says.  “These Iowans have visited Germany.  The Germans have come to Iowa.  I mean, I was just completely shocked at that.”

In addition to the lifelong and generational friendships that formed, some POWs appreciated American life enough that they didn’t want to leave.  

“No prisoners stayed in Iowa, for sure.  They had the paperwork to prove it.  The Geneva Convention said they had to be returned to their country when the war was over.  And they were,” McCann says.  

“But all over the state, I hear stories,” she confides.  

Learn more about Iowa’s history and the intrigue surrounding our forgotten POW camps on Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 6 p.m. at the Coralville Library. Author Linda Betsinger McCann will have copies of her Iowa history books available for purchase, including those on Prohibition in Iowa and the Civilian Conservation Corps, for $20 (cash or check payment only).