Oh, the places geocaching brings you. I came across this plaque while in the area geocaching. I had no idea that there was a relocation camp here in Orem. It made me wonder how many others didn't know about Camp Orem either.
The following information comes from an article in the Daily Herald dated Feb 20, 2010:
To understand why a POW/labor camp was located in Orem during the war, one has only to look at the large-scale call up of young men from Utah Valley to serve in the armed forces after Pearl Harbor, according to records compiled by the late Hollis Scott, an Orem resident who kept a history of the camp. In the absence of the men that helped harvest cherries, peaches, pears, strawberries and other crops, local farmers called upon the government for help. With their boys off to war, the local farmers needed help.
The five-acre POW compound held three large barracks, a mess hall and kitchen, a commissary, offices and shower rooms and latrines. There were also six large tent-top cabins that housed prisoners. By the end of the war, 42 more tent cabins were added.
The first occupants were 200 Japanese-American laborers who had volunteered to be transferred from the Topaz internment camp near Delta. "The Japanese workers proved to be both industrious and honest," according to Scott’s notes. The Japanese Americans were hired by several local farmers and the city during the planting and harvesting season of 1944.
In the fall of 1944, the Japanese Americans were replaced by 60 Italian POWs from Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City. While they did some work with local farmers, the Italian prisoners were brought to the camp for about six weeks specifically to build a barbed wire fence around the camp, four watchtowers at each corner of the camp, and to install lighting around the camp. All of this was in preparation for a large contingency of German POWs that would be arriving, according to Scott’s records.
For one year, between June 1945 and June 1946, approximately 350 German prisoners resided at the Orem POW camp, working with the local farmers by day and being guarded by U.S. troops by night.
“They came out of the Ogden Depot in the spring and fall and worked in the orchards,” said Gareth Seastrand, founder and former chairman of the Orem Heritage Museum. “They loved it here. The people were fed better here then where they were in Germany.”
These particular German POWs were all officers from the North African campaign. They came to camps in America voluntarily to get out of the prison camps over there. They were college educated and professionals including professors and even a physician. Many spoke English, Scott wrote in his notes.
To learn more:
https://www.heraldextra.com/news/2010/feb/20/historians-museum-chronicle-story-of-wwii-pow-camp-in-orem/
Orem Heritage Museum (located on the second floor of the SCERA Center for the Arts) has a small exhibit about the POW camp including a diorama.
https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/300
To receive credit for finding this cache please message me the number of bricks found on the ground that surround this plaque.
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