Military History

According to international law, chaplains are considered to be protected personnel who are not subject to internment as POW’s. They are to be released as soon as possible by their captors and returned to their own forces. Many chaplains, however, have elected to stay with their captive flocks and have provided essential solace to POW’s facing th...

A large prison-camp complex opened by the Japanese during World War II to house POWs captured in Singapore, Changi was set on nearly 16 square kilometers of undulating hills at the eastern end of Singapore.

In late 1944, Allied authorities in Paris began contemplating the creation of an organization to track and catalogue persons who might be of interest for the war crimes trials that were expected to be held once the war in Europe had been won.

For over a century, the Central Prisoner of War Agency of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has, under a variety of names, acted as the main clearinghouse for information on POWs and civilians interned by all belligerent nations. It was borne of the humanitarian belief that the mental suffering of prisoners and their families c...

The largest concentration of American prisoners of war in the Far East in World War II, Cabanatuan comprised three camps near Cabu village, five to 15 miles (24km) northeast of Cabanatuan City in south central Luzon, Philippine Islands.

Built between 1942 and 1945 by Allied prisoners of war and native slave labor, and extending from Ban Pong, Thailand, to Thanbyuzayat, Burma, the Burma-Thailand railway was intended to supply Japanese forces fighting in Burma. As World War II progressed, American submarines and Allied aircraft had increasingly threatened Japanese cargo ships in ...

The Bullet Decree or "Kugel-Erlass" in German also known as "Aktion Kugel" was a secret decree (Geheimbefehl), issued by the German army. The Bullet Decree stated that escaped and recaptured POW’s were to be handed over to the Gestapo for execution, in direct disobeying of the provisions of the Third Geneva Convention.

On the initiative of Czar Alexander II of Russia, the delegates of 15 European States met in Brussels on 27 July 1874 to examine the draft of an international agreement concerning the laws and customs of war submitted to them by the Russian Government.