Did you know that a Prisoner of War (POW) camp was located in the Pigeon Point section of the city of Beaufort, behind what is now the the present day park and neighborhood?
The camp opened in 1943, and was one several POW camps in the state of South Carolina that was built to house prisoners during WWII.
Around 250 Italian soldiers were sent to the camp in Beaufort in 1943 from Camp Wheeler, which had been established near Macon, Ga. The Italian soldiers were captured during the earlier years of the war, fighting alongside German troops in North Africa under the command of General Erwin Rommel, also known as the Desert Fox.
Because there was a male labor shortage in the United States during WWII, with many men having enlisted or having been drafted, the prisoners of war throughout the United States were used to help replace some of that lost labor.
In Beaufort, truck farmers employed the POWs to harvest vegetables, and the prisoners were housed in tents, which is why there are no remnants to find of the camp today.
After the United States entered World War II in 1941, the government of the United Kingdom requested American help with housing prisoners of war due to a housing shortage in Britain, asking for the US to take 175,000 prisoners. The first full-scale POW camps in the U.S. opened on February 1, 1943 in Crossville, Tennessee; Hereford and Mexia, Texas; Ruston, Louisiana; and Weingarten, Missouri. Eventually, there were 1,204 camps and also hospitals for wounded enemy combatants on U.S. soil.
Also, members of the German military were interned as prisoners of war in the United States during World War II. In all, 425,000 German prisoners lived in the 700 camps throughout the United States during the war.
The camp at Pigeon Point in Beaufort closed in the spring of 1944. Prisoners of war from Italy, Germany and Japan remained in other camps in South Carolina, and in the United States, through 1946.
On January 20, 2022, the Beaufort County Historical Society dedicated a historic marker commemorating the World War 2 POW camp that was set up and used in Pigeon Point. The marker is located in the popular Pigeon Point Park.
Visit this link for a complete list of WWII POW camps housed on U.S. soil.
