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Authored by Tim Wolter, and published
by McFarland & Company, "POW Baseball
In WWII :The National Pastime Behind
Barbed Wire;" is the story of POW
baseball, complete with guard versus
prisoner ball games, radio parts hidden
in baseballs, and future major
leaguers. The book is divided into the
various prison camps and describes the
types of prisoners held there and the
degree to which baseball was played.
Nearly 130,000 American soldiers and
19,000 American civilians were captured
by the enemy during the Second World
War. The conditions under which they
were held varied enormously but
baseball, in various forms, was a
common activity among these prisoners
of war. Not just Americans, but
Canadians, British, Australians and New
Zealanders took the field, as well as
the Japanese and even a few Germans.
In the best of the German Stalags (a contraction of "Stammlager", itself
short for
Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschaftsstammlager,
a literal translation of which is
"War-prisoner") there were often
several leagues active at a time, with
dozens of teams playing games
continuously during the warm weather
months. In the harsher Stalags, and in
some Japanese camps, there was only
makeshift ball playing. In places like
Camp O'Donnell, the worst of the camps,
there was no energy left for anything
but the struggle to survive.
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