Behind every prisoner-of-war story is a struggle to endure, resist, escape, or simply hold on to hope. These 25 accounts reveal extraordinary courage, ingenuity, sacrifice, and survival from conflicts across history.
POWs Saw Harsh Treatment
1. In World War 2, German POWs in America were shocked by the way African Americans were treated. This happened because the prisoners worked alongside them in the fields, which allowed them to grow closer through their shared labor.
2. Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill was held POW in South Africa, and after learning that his release was unlikely, he made a 300-mile escape by jumping freight trains and walking.
3. 250 Union soldiers surrendered to the Confederates, enlisted in the Confederate Army while held as POWs, were recaptured by the Union Army, and then re-enlisted as Union soldiers. They were known as Galvanized Yankees.
4. Fritz Joubert Duquesne fought against Britain in the Boer War, was captured and held as a POW in Bermuda, escaped to the USA where he became a secret agent for Germany during both World Wars, leading the largest espionage ring in American history.
5. Floyd Thompson was the longest-held prisoner of war in US history, spending nearly 9 years in captivity in Vietnam. When he returned, his wife was living with another man and of his 3 children, only his eldest child barely remembered him. Within 4 years of rescuing, he attempted suicide.
6. British Army officer Eric Lomax, shown on the left in the photo, was taken prisoner by Japan during World War 2. He was starved, brutally beaten, and tortured by a Japanese officer named Nagase Takashi. 50 years after his release, Eric Lomax met his chief tormentor again, and they became great friends.
7. Captain Richard Antrim was taken captive in 1942 and held as a POW. While imprisoned, he won over his captors with his engineering abilities and helped the Japanese lay out trenches. Seen from above, the trenches spelled out “US”, warning bombers not to attack and showing that it was a POW camp, saving hundreds of lives.
8. A Japanese aggressor named Kazuo Sakamaki was taken alive from Pearl Harbor. His request to commit suicide was refused, and he remained a Prisoner of War for the rest of World War 2. After Japan surrendered, he was released and returned to Japan. He then moved into a pacifist life, becoming leader of Toyota Motors.
9. At age 13, future U.S. President and current POW Andrew Jackson was struck in the face with a saber by a British officer after he stubbornly refused to shine his boots. He later came to cherish the scar as his own badge of freedom.
10. Hitler had taken Stalin’s son (Yakov Dzhugashvili) prisoner of war and offered to exchange him for a German Marshal prisoner. Stalin replied, “I will not trade a Marshal for a Lieutenant.”
Rubin’s Long Medal Delay
11. Tibor Rubin survived the Holocaust, fought for the US Army during the Korean War, became a POW, and had to wait 55 years to receive his Medal of Honor, all because his sergeant was an anti-Semite.
12. American POWs in Vietnam checked whether a new prisoner was American by tapping the first notes of “Shave and a Haircut” on a wall and seeing if they answered correctly.
13. A German POW named Georg Gaertner in the US escaped his New Mexico camp in 1945 and stayed on the run for 40 years, before giving himself up after confessing to his American wife.
14. Robert Barany was a prisoner of war when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Prince of Sweden and Red Cross negotiated with Russia for him to attend the ceremony.
15. On August 5, 1944, one of the biggest jail-breaks (Cowra breakout) in history involved hundreds of Japanese POWs attempting to escape an Australian prisoner camp. The Japanese considered the Australians weak because they treated the prisoners well. The breakout ended with 234 Japanese dead and another 108 wounded.
16. William E. Dyess, together with 9 American POWs and aided by 2 convicts, got out of a Japanese controlled prison by simply walking away. The escape took months to plan and was regarded as the only successful mass-escape of Allied POWs from a Japanese camp during the Pacific War.
17. While he was a POW, Alexis Casdagli created numerous cross-stitches. One of them was so impressive that the Germans put it on display in his POW camp for everyone to see, not realizing that his handiwork contained a secret message stitched inside it. The message, in Morse code, reads “God save the King” and “F*ck Hitler.”
18. From 1970 to 1973, four Israeli fighter pilots translated The Hobbit from English into Hebrew to occupy their time in an Egyptian prison, where they were held as POWs. Their translation was published commercially in 1977, and until 2012 it was regarded as the best Hebrew version of the book.
19. An American soldier named Joe Kieyoomia was the only prisoner of war to live through both the Bataan death march and an atomic bomb blast. He was also beaten for months by his Japanese captors, who thought he was Japanese-American when he was, in fact, of Navajo descent.
20. During the Great Papago Escape, 25 German POWs, mainly naval personnel, dug their way out of a Phoenix POW camp in the hope of riding the rapids of the Gila River down to Mexico. It never occurred to the prisoners that most rivers in Arizona run dry.
Bear Sends POWs Back
21. A group of escaped German POWs returned to Camp Ozada in Alberta, Canada voluntarily after encountering a grizzly bear.
22. Walter Frederick Morrison, the inventor of the Frisbee, fought in World War 2 as a pilot, was shot down in Italy, and was a prisoner of war for 48 days.
23. Denholm Elliott, also known as Marcus Brody, was a World War 2 gunner whose plane went down in the North Sea in 1942. He and two other survivors became prisoners of war in Silesia, where he got involved in amateur drama.
24. Special Forces intel officer Colonel James N. Rowe was a POW in the Vietnam War. He spent 62 months in captivity, battled numerous diseases, solved engineering problems to disguise he was an intel officer, and escaped via helicopter by over-powering the guards.
25. A group of POW during World War 2 recorded a documentary about their imprisonment using a secret camera built with parts smuggled inside sausages.
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