Camp Perry, Ohio– “Contractors removed the final nine WWII prisoner of war huts in the southeast section of Camp Perry last week of the approximately 965 huts that were constructed in 1943 to house German and Italian POWs. The last POWs were repatriated to their home countries in 1946. The nine remaining huts were saved for a period of time as historic examples and hopefully will be used as a model for the construction of a replica in the future.”
“There were 380 huts that housed more than 1,600 Italian POWs located on the west side of Camp Perry and 585 huts that housed about 2,500 German POWs (some of them from Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps) on Camp Perry’s east side. The final nine wood-framed structures survived 78 years of Camp Perry wind and weather and served the housing needs of countless participants in the annual National Matches each summer in the post-war era until the recent decade.”
The National Matches– considered America’s “World Series of the Shooting Sports”– have been a tradition at Camp Perry, Ohio since 1907. Each summer, the nation’s finest civilian and military marksmen and women square off for five weeks of rifle and handgun competition in a variety of formats and events.
According to The Smithsonian, “From 1942 through 1945, more than 400,000 Axis prisoners were shipped to the United States and detained in camps in rural areas across the country. Some 500 POW facilities were built, mainly in the South and Southwest but also in the Great Plains and Midwest.”
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