One Comment

  • Craig Davis

    I think it is commendable that the name of the organization includes
    Civilian Prisoners Of Wars (CPOW) as opposed to “internees”.
    My dad was a member of the 511th PIR / 11th Airborne Div but
    was not part of the rescue. He and my mom were good friends
    with Jerry and Margaret Sams who were Los Banos prisoners.
    The Sams resided about 4 miles from my parents near Grass
    Valley, CA.

    I interviewed the Sams for a college research paper in 2001.
    Jerry Sams explained to me that he resisted the term “internee”
    in favor of CPOWs because the Japanese referred to them as
    POWs and “the Japanese had the guns”. In fact, generally the
    civilian prisoners of the Japanese were treated better than the
    the military prisoners but both categories were treated
    poorly to the extreme. This is especially true when compared to
    Japanese-Americans who were wrongly interned in the US
    during the War and were referred to as internees. There can
    no comparison to the poor treatment endured by the
    civilian enemy prisoners under Japanese captivity in WWII.

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