Military History

On the 20th of December in 1941, at an icebound airfield outside the city of Kunming in China's Yunnan province, were scattered some 50 American Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighters, marked with the blue and white star of China and a row of vicious looking shark's teeth painted under their noses.

Campo 21 (P.G. 21) at Chieti, on the Adriatic coast near Pescara, was typical of the prison camps operated by the Italian armed forces during World War II. The camp comprised eight single-story barracks, each in a U-shape, with additional buildings serving as cookhouse, mess hall, hospital, guard barracks, and administrative office.

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 ...