Did you know that the greater Tulsa area housed a POW Camp during WW2? Likely those in the area have heard of Camp Gruber which is located SE of Muskogee on the East side of the Arkansas River. The camp in Bixby was a short lived extension of Gruber. Not much is known about the camp other than the below blurb. I have worked with the Bixby historical society to dig up some more information or an actual photo but nothing more has been discovered yet. The most likely location is in the fields/newly being built neighborhood construction across Mingo from the cache location.
BIXBY -- Located west of S. Mingo Rd. at 136th St and north of the Arkansas River from Bixby, this branch of Camp Gruber opened April 1, 1944. There could have been POWs in the area earlier, being trucked in daily from another camp. It confined 250 prisoners and closed Dec. 15, 1945.
At one point in World War II approximately 22,000 German and Italian troops, the equivalent of one and a half infantry divisions, were held as prisoners of war in Oklahoma. Records obtained from the Provost Marshal General of the United States by Tulsa author, Richard S. Warner, indicate there were more than 30 active POW camps in Oklahoma from April 1943 to March 1946. An article by Warner in "The Chronicles of Oklahoma," the Spring 1986 edition, lists many of the camps and offers brief history on some. Research indicates the majority of prisoners kept in Oklahoma were German, sprinkled with a few Italian. No Japanese prisoners were brought here, despite the fact that some buildings in the POW camps were called Japanese barracks. Bob Blackburn, director of the Oklahoma Historical Society, which produces "The Chronicles," said the term was used to define an architectural style rather than the nationality of the prisoners housed there. Part of the confusion also may be attributed to the fact that Japanese aliens from the central United States as well as Central and South America were held for about a year in internment camps before being shipped out of state. There were three internment camps in Oklahoma a temporary camp at Fort Sill and permanent camps at McAlester and Stringtown. Each was open about a year. All three were converted later to POW camps. The Fort Sill camp was used for POWs for only a short time before being converted to a military stockade. Warner said some internment camps actually predate the war because American leaders were anticipating World War II. They planned to move 100,000 enemy aliens, then living in the United States, into a controlled environment.
There were both branch and base POW camps in Oklahoma. Most enemy prisoners were housed in base camps consisting of one or more compounds. Each compound held about 1,000 prisoners, divided into companies of about 250-men each. A compound consisted of barracks, mess halls, latrines and wash rooms, plus auxiliary buildings. Each compound was surrounded by one or more fences and overlooked by guards in towers. American personnel guarding the compounds lived in similar quarters, but outside the fences. Most Oklahoma able-bodied men had gone into military service when the prisoners of war arrived. As a popular song of the day explained, most of those left here were "... either too young or too old. They're either too gray or too grassy green..." Because of this, PWs were in great demand as laborers. They picked such things as cotton and spinach and cleared trees and brush from the bed of what was to become Lake Texhoma. Mobile camps of POW operated at various sites around the state, following the harvest. Many of these prisoners were housed in local buildings or in tents.Prisoners who worked were paid 10-cents an hour. Pay was in the form of credits they could use to buy tobacco, sweets and even beer at the compound store. Several prisoners escaped from their Oklahoma captivity. Most were recaptured or returned voluntarily after a few hours or days of freedom.
Some died of war wounds. There were some suicides, but Arnold Krammer, writing in "Nazi Prisoners of War in America" suggests many of these might more accurately be described as induced deaths. Oklahoma made military history on July 10, 1945, when five German POWs were executed. They became the first foreign prisoners of war to be executed in the U.S., Krammer said. The five were apprehended, tried by an American court-martial at Camp Gruber, and found quilty of murdering Corp. Johann Kunze at Camp Tonkawa on Nov. 4, 1943.Kunze, a German PW suspected of giving information to the Americans about secret installations in German, was tried in a kangaroo court held by his fellow prisoners in the mess hall. They found him guilty and beat him to death with clubs and broken milk bottles. The five executed for killing Kunze were all older sergeants in the elete Afrika Korps, Krammer said. After the war ended most POWs returned home. Bodies of some who died in the United States were shipped home. Some 73 POWs and two enemy aliens, who died in the U.S., are buried in the old Post Cemetery at Fort Reno.
