Prisoners of Love

"P.O. Box 1142" was the code name Army intelligence gave a top-secret prison camp outside Washington during World War II; a site devoted throughout the war to interning 3,400 German, Japanese and Italian prisoners of war.

A sequestered section of Fort Hunt, in Alexandria, Virginia, P.O. Box 1142 remained top secret until 2006, when Brandon Bies, a ranger with the National Park Service, uncovered it.

Eyewitnesses—now mostly deceased—told Bies that P.O. Box 1142 was indeed a prison camp, and that the interrogators who worked there persuaded enemy POWs to reveal their governments' closest-held military secrets—including Nazi Germany's rocket and atomic bomb programs. Interrogators' notes, written reports and photographs, archived in the Pentagon, verified their stories.

Right after the war, P.O. Box 1142 was bulldozed, the records sealed, and the eyewitnesses sworn to secrecy.

But the Pentagon missed one: my mother.

She served during World War II as a Woman Marine in the Pentagon. When I was a kid, she told me a story about P.O. Box 1142.

She told me it was the Pentagon's habit to send Women Marines from her barracks at nearby Henderson Hall to guard POWs at P.O. Box 1142—until amore put a stop to it.

It seems some of the Women Marines fell in love with the enemy prisoners—the Italian ones, in particular; some pledged to marry them; some became pregnant by them.

I asked Brandon Bies if he could confirm my mother's story.

"Putting it in the larger context of what I've learned about 1142, I would put this in the tall-tale category," he said. "I have never heard any evidence of Women Marines being at P.O. Box 1142. We do have evidence of a handful of WACs who were stationed there in 1945, as well as a handful of civilian typists, who served officers late- and immediately post-war.

"Furthermore, while we don't have exact numbers, the number of Italian prisoners was likely very low—my guess is that they made up about 1-2 percent of the total prisoner population. Maybe a dozen or so over the course of the war.

"Finally, while 1142 did 'relax' the rules from time to time in order to get information out of a prisoner, it is very hard for me to believe that they would have allowed women to guard prisoners, let alone present them with opportunities to spend intimate time together."

Matt Virta, also with the National Park Service, told me he couldn't confirm the story, either.

"I can find no information in the Fort Hunt records I have access to, nor can staff member Layesanna Rivera, regarding any female Marine guards at Fort Hunt and their potential links to Italian POWs," he said.

So is my mother's story unfounded?

Maybe not.

Tales of "POW coddling" in fact abounded during World War II, including tales of "too affectionate" Italians. When newspapers and magazines began to report them, Congress demanded a committee investigation.

While the Congressional committee found no evidence of coddling, you know what Italians say: Non c'è fumo senza arrosto. No smoke without fire.

Maybe "POW cuddling" should have been investigated.



PS: Have a safe and pleasant Memorial Day—and take time to remember our fallen warriors.

Teardrops over Tarawa

In the middle of World War II, 2,700 Women Marines (average age 22) served in Headquarters Battalion at Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. 

My mother was one of them.

She told many "war stories" later, mostly comical; and one, in particular, not comical.

The latter was set in late November 1943, when she helped operate a ticker tape machine inside the war room where the top brass worked.

The machine was dedicated to one purpose: transmitting live reports of casualties from the Pacific.

On November 20 of that year, 18,000 Marines began an amphibious attack on a Japanese-held "islet" called Betio.

A mere two miles long by a half-mile wide, Betio is a coral rock 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii and part of a larger atoll named Tarawa—in 1943, the most fortified spot in the Pacific.

As the history books tell, everything went wrong.

As the first assault wave prepared to hit the beach—code-named "Red 1"—high seas slowed the Marines' transfer from the battleships onto the landing boats, so the attack fell behind schedule.

Then, planned air raids were delayed, so the boats had to linger offshore, sustaining terrible artillery fire from the island. 

Slowly, the tide went down—much lower than expected—and grounded the boats on coral reefs. So the Marines abandoned the armored landing crafts and waded toward Red 1 hundreds of yards through chest-deep water and under brutal machine-gun fire from 100 Japanese pillboxes.

Those who made it onto the sand had to crawl inland, to avoid the rain of bullets. 

But hundreds of Marines never made it. They drowned in the surf. Their bodies so clogged the assault path the second wave of reinforcements couldn't be sent until the next day.

In Arlington, the generals in the war room stood watching a sign of the disaster-in-the-making on Red 1: the ticker tape machine.

My mother said it was spitting out the names of casualties faster than anyone had ever witnessed, or thought possible.

She said the normally gruff men were transfixed by the clattering machine. They stood looking helpless, and openly sobbing.