POWs--ours and theirs and his

Your German may be better than mine. Take a shot, but I'll tell you that all of this translates into a request from a WWII German soldier to Heinrich, a relative or friend, telling him he really doesn't have to send care packages to the American prisoner of war camp in Algona, Iowa where the writer is imprisoned because, well, he's got just about everything he needs right there.

Don't get me wrong. The Algona POW camp was no resort, no B & B. If you were inside, you didn't walk away, as this prisoner's drawing illustrates.

But just beyond the barbed wire lay unending miles of Iowa countryside, where hundreds of small, family farms were operating, where land was being worked. If you were lucky--and most of the prisoners were--you got released every once in a while in a work crew because some farmer out there needed help with harvest or anything else, for that matter. In fact, the camp sent prisoners out on work details so often that those "Gerrys" built up friendships so strong that, when the war ended, and the prisoners were shipped back to Germany, some vowed they'd return when they could, and, guess what?--some did. 

Every one of these actors are Nazi prisoners of war. Okay, some are in drag, but there were no women in the camps, so if they wanted to stage some kind of drama or a Christmas play, they had to make do. You've seen pictures of Dachau and Auschwitz--these pictures bear any resemblance?

I spent some time in the local cemetery on Tuesday. A high school teacher asks me every September if I'll talk a bit about some of the fallen vets whose graves stand together in a special section. I normally include a story about a veteran named Alvin Jelgerhuis, who came back from the South Pacific theater alive, barely. 

On December 21, 1944, Alvin lost his twin brother, Elmer, when Elmer's B-29 went down on a bombing run into Manchuria. A Japanese fighter pilot drove directly into them. Everyone was killed. The two of them had gone into the service determined to stay together; the army allowed them one provision, that they would never go on a mission in the same plane. When Elmer was killed, his brother chose to stay in the service. He could have gone home.

Later, Elmer was shot down too, then taken to a Tokyo Prison camp, where he suffered every kind of horror and lost 100 pounds. Not much of him was left when the war ended, but he was alive.

Before I left for the cemetery on Tuesday, I read up on Japanese war camps like the one Elmer suffered through. They were perfectly terrible, wretched, abominable. Japanese POW camps established death rates seven times that of infamous Nazi camps. Seven times. To call the treatment of Allied GIs hellish feels like cliche. Life was unimaginable. 

I'd visited the Algona Prisoner of War Museum a couple of months ago, got a tour of the Christmas Nativity the prisoners sculpted and constructed 75 years ago. You can read about it here--or listen. 

But early Monday morning when I read about life in Japanese war camps I couldn't help drawing the immense contrast. Do it yourself. Read this note from an ex-German soldier:

I cannot be a counted among those patriotic citizens who believe America is "a Christian nation." I've spent far too much time with Native American history to baptize our story. I was in the South the night MLK was murdered. I believe Black Lives Matter.

But the difference between what I saw at Algona and what I read of Tokyo is as clear an argument as anyone can make that the very foundation of American justice is cut from something good, something just and something merciful, something approximating WWJD.

Last night I was devastated by an article in the Atlantic about our president. "According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect."

FAKE NEWS, Trump says. 

I can't help but remember what he said about John McCain, a Vietnam era POW, who was not a hero because he was captured: "I like people who weren't captured."  

And I can't help believing those "sources" are wrong. I wish I could.