Japanese POWs in Michigan Were Allowed to Shop in Town — They Thought Americans Had Gone Mad…
December 1943, Campo Train, Michigan. Lieutenant Teeshi Yamamoto stepped through the gates of the prisoner camp into the crisp winter air of a small American town, accompanied only by a single guard who walked beside him rather than behind. The Japanese naval officer, captured 8 months earlier in the Elucian Islands, had been told he would be permitted to purchase personal items at the local general store. He assumed it was a trick, perhaps a test of loyalty, or worse, an elaborate setup for an escape attempt that would justify harsh punishment.
The reality he was about to encounter would shake the foundations of everything the Imperial Japanese Navy had taught him about the enemy. What Lieutenant Yamamoto and hundreds of other Japanese prisoners would discover in the forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula would prove more devastating to their understanding of the conflict than any battlefield defeat.
They would learn that the propaganda they had been fed about American weakness and decadence was not merely exaggerated, but represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the nation they fought against. And in learning this truth, these men would undergo a transformation so profound that many would struggle for the rest of their lives to reconcile what they had believed with what they had experienced. The camp that held Lieutenant Yamamoto and 417 other Japanese prisoners sat in a landscape that seemed impossibly remote.
Surrounded by dense forests of pine and birch, the facility occupied land that had once served as a civilian conservation corps camp during the depression years. The wooden barracks painted a dull olive green stood in neat rows behind double fences topped with wire. Guard towers anchored each corner, though the soldiers manning them seemed remarkably relaxed compared to what the prisoners had expected. Yamamoto had arrived at Campran in May of 1943. part of a group of 63 prisoners transferred from a temporary facility in California.
A graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy, he had served aboard the destroyer Aabono before his capture during operations in the Elusians. At 31 years old, he represented the educated officer class of the Japanese military. fluent in English from his pre-war studies and trained to view Americans as soft, materialistic, and lacking the spiritual strength necessary for total conflict. The journey from the West Coast had taken 5 days by rail, the prisoners traveling in converted passenger cars under heavy guard.
Yamamoto had used the time to observe the countryside rolling past the windows, and what he saw had begun to plant the first seeds of doubt. The sheer scale of American industry became apparent as they passed through cities and towns. Factories sprawled for miles, smoke stacks reaching toward the sky, parking lots filled with automobiles that seemed impossibly numerous. In Japan, private car ownership remained rare even among the wealthy. Here, apparently, even factory workers owned vehicles. But Yamamoto had dismissed these observations as concentrated showpieces, assuming the Americans had deliberately routed their train through the most developed areas to impress and demoralize the prisoners.
Surely, he told himself, the real America beyond these industrial corridors must resemble the struggling nation Japanese propaganda described. The first shock came not from what the prisoners saw, but from what they were fed. The evening meal on their first day at Camp Otra included portions that seemed absurdly generous. Thick slices of beef, mashed potatoes with butter, fresh bread, canned vegetables, and coffee with real sugar. Yamamoto stared at his tray, certain it must be a special meal designed to soften them up for interrogation.
But the same portions appeared at breakfast the next morning. By the third day, Yamamoto approached the camp commandant, Colonel Robert Henderson, a career army officer who had requested this assignment specifically because he wanted to understand the enemy better. Through an interpreter, Yamamoto asked when the regular prisoner rations would begin. Henderson looked puzzled, then explained that these were the regular rations, the same food served to American soldiers throughout the military. Yamamoto returned to his barracks, shaken. In the Imperial Navy, officers received adequate food, but enlisted men often survived on rice, pickled vegetables, and whatever protein could be spared.
The idea that America fed its prisoners the same rations as its own soldiers, seemed incomprehensible. Petty Officer Kenji Tanaka, a submarine crewman captured when his vessel was forced to surface after depth charge damage, shared Yamamoto’s confusion. At 24, Tanaka came from a farming family in Hiroshima Prefecture and had joined the Navy to escape rural poverty. He had been taught that Americans were weak individualists who would never make the sacrifices necessary for total conflict. Yet here they were, imprisoned in the heart of America, eating better than they had eaten even before the conflict began.
The prisoners established their own internal hierarchy with Lieutenant Yamamoto as the senior officer. He organized the men according to military protocol, maintained discipline, and insisted on daily physical training. Colonel Henderson allowed this, understanding that structure helped maintain order and morale. But Henderson also implemented a policy that would prove revolutionary. Prisoners who behaved well would be allowed to work outside the camp, earning wages that could be spent at local businesses. This policy reflected a broader American approach to prisoner management that emphasized the Geneva Convention requirements while also recognizing practical realities.
The upper peninsula faced severe labor shortages as young men left for military service or better paying war industry jobs in Detroit and Chicago. The prisoners represented a potential labor force that could contribute to the war effort while simultaneously reducing the cost of maintaining the camps. In late July of 1943, the first work details began. Yamamoto volunteered, partly from boredom, but mostly from a desire to see more of America. He was assigned to a logging crew, cutting timber that would be used for everything from shipping crates to construction materials.
The work was hard, the summer heat oppressive, but the crew was fed lunch in the field. Sandwiches made with actual meat, apples, cookies, and cold water from insulated containers. The American supervisor, a man in his 50s named Frank Morrison, who had worked in the timber industry his entire adult life, treated the prisoners with professional courtesy. He showed them how to safely operate the equipment, corrected mistakes without anger, and worked alongside them rather than simply giving orders. This confused Yamamoto deeply.
In the Japanese military, officers did not work alongside enlisted men, and supervisors certainly did not treat subordinates with such casual equality. During a water break, Morrison offered Yamamoto a cigarette. When Yamamoto hesitated, Morrison smiled and said the prisoners were allowed to smoke. Yamamoto accepted and they stood together in the shade of a massive pine tree. Morrison asked about Japan, genuinely curious about the country and culture. Yamamoto found himself answering honestly, describing the mountains of his home prefecture, the festivals he remembered from childhood, the beauty of cherry blossoms in spring.
Morrison nodded and said he had always wanted to travel. Maybe after the conflict ended, he would visit Japan and see those cherry blossoms himself. The casualness with which he assumed both his own survival and the eventual possibility of peaceful travel struck Yamamoto as either remarkably naive or indicative of a confidence that bordered on certainty. Americans, he was learning, did not seem to believe they could lose. As summer turned to autumn, the work program expanded. More prisoners volunteered, drawn by the opportunity to escape the monotony of camp life.
The camp canteen itself amazed the prisoners. shelves stocked with goods that had become scarce in Japan even before Pearl Harbor lined the walls. Chocolate bars, chewing gum, toiletries, writing paper, magazines, even small luxury items. Petty Officer Tanaka, who worked at a nearby farm helping with the harvest, found himself increasingly troubled by what he observed. The farmer, a Norwegian immigrant named Lars Olsen, operated a modest dairy and grain operation with his wife and teenage daughter. Despite having two sons serving overseas, Olsen treated Tanaka with basic decency.
He showed Tanaka how to operate the equipment, included him in the midday meal with the family, and paid him the agreed upon wage without complaint. One afternoon, Olsen’s wife, Martha, brought fresh baked bread to the field. She said she hoped he was being treated well, that she prayed this conflict would end soon so all the young men could go home. Tanaka, whose English was limited, managed to thank her. After she left, he sat on the edge of the wagon and wept, overwhelmed by the contrast between the inhuman demons he had been taught to expect and the ordinary people showing him basic kindness.
But the real transformation began in December of 1943 when Colonel Henderson implemented the most radical policy yet. Prisoners with exemplary behavior records would be permitted to visit the nearby town of Munising accompanied by a single guard to shop at local businesses. The announcement caused immediate debate among the prisoners. Some suspected a trap, others saw it as an opportunity to escape, though the wilderness surrounding the camp made escape practically impossible. Lieutenant Yamamoto was selected for the first group of 10 prisoners authorized to make the trip.
On a cold Tuesday morning, he and the others boarded a truck for the 15-mi journey to Munising, a town of approximately 3,000 residents situated on the southern shore of Lake Superior. The guard assigned to accompany them, a corporal from Ohio named Bill Jensen, seemed remarkably unconcerned about the possibility of escape attempts. He chatted casually with the prisoners pointing out landmarks. Munising appeared like something from a different world. Main Street stretched along the waterfront, lined with shops, restaurants, a movie theater, and a small hotel.
Christmas decorations hung from lampposts, wreaths adorned doorways, and store windows displayed goods with a casualness that seemed almost incomprehensible. The truck stopped in front of the general store, and Corporal Jensen told the prisoners they had 2 hours to shop before the return journey. Yamamoto entered the store with a sense of unreality. The interior stretched back 50 ft. Shelves rising from floor to ceiling, packed with merchandise, canned goods, fresh produce, clothing, hardware, tools, toys for children, books and magazines, household items of every description.
The owner, Ernest Burquist, greeted them with professional politeness. Through the translator, he explained that the prisoners could purchase anything except alcohol. What struck Yamamoto most forcefully was not the abundance itself, but the casualness of it. This was not a special showcase store, not a propaganda display. This was an ordinary general store in a small town in a remote part of America. And yet it contained more goods than the finest stores in Tokyo had stocked even before the conflict.
If this level of material wealth existed here in the wilderness of Michigan’s upper peninsula, what must the industrial heartland possess? Several towns people browsed the store during the prisoner’s visit. An elderly woman selecting yarn barely glanced at the Japanese men. A mother with two young children navigated the aisles without apparent concern. A farmer purchasing seed nodded politely to Yamamoto as they passed. This casual acceptance, this fundamental lack of fear communicated something profound about American confidence in their ultimate victory.
Yamamoto purchased a notebook, several pencils, and a bar of soap. As Bergquist wrapped the items, Yamamoto noticed a display near the cash register. Warbonds posters encouraging citizens to support the effort. One poster showed factory workers and listed production figures for aircraft. The numbers seemed impossible. Thousands of planes produced each month, an industrial capacity that dwarfed anything Japan could match. Outside the store, Yamamoto stood on the sidewalk and observed the town. Cars moved up and down Main Street with casual regularity.
People went about their business with no apparent hardship. The movie theater advertised a double feature. A restaurant’s menu board listed stakes and fish dinners. This was a nation at the height of global conflict, fighting on two fronts across two oceans. And yet, civilian life continued with barely a ripple of disruption. Petty Officer Tanaka approached Yamamoto with a dazed expression. He held a candy bar he had purchased, the same type American soldiers threw to children in captured territories.
Tanaka said quietly that everything they had been told was a lie, that Japan could not win this conflict, that the disparity in resources was not just significant, but absolutely insurmountable. Yamamoto wanted to disagree, wanted to defend the teachings of the Imperial Navy. But standing on that sidewalk in Muning, Michigan, watching ordinary Americans go about their lives with absolute confidence in the future, he could not find the words. This was not a nation on the brink of collapse.
This was a nation that had mobilized only a fraction of its industrial capacity, and already possessed such overwhelming material superiority that the outcome of the conflict was mathematically certain. The visits to town became regular events with different groups of prisoners making the journey each week. Colonel Henderson saw the program as a humanitarian gesture that also served a practical purpose. The prisoners returned from these trips quieter, more compliant. They were confronting the reality of their situation in a way that no amount of battlefield defeats could accomplish.
By spring of 1944, nearly 200 prisoners were working outside the camp regularly. The local economy had come to depend on this labor force, and relationships between prisoners and civilians, while never friendly in the conventional sense, had settled into a kind of pragmatic coexistence. Yamamoto found himself assigned to a sawmill operated by a family named the Johnson’s. The work was dangerous, but safety protocols were strict and enforced equally for everyone. The Johnson’s provided the same protective equipment to the prisoners as to their civilian employees, fed everyone the same lunch, and paid the agreed upon wages without discrimination.
One afternoon in May, the sawmill’s main blade shattered unexpectedly, sending fragments spinning through the workspace. A piece of metal struck Samuel Johnson, opening a gash on his forearm that bled profusely. Yamamoto, who had received medical training as part of his naval education, immediately applied pressure to the wound while others called for help. He improvised a tourniquet and kept Johnson calm until the town doctor arrived. The doctor treated the wound and told Yamamoto he had likely saved Johnson from serious complications.
Samuel Johnson shook Yamamoto’s hand and thanked him directly. His father, Walter Johnson, approached Yamamoto later and said that he would write to Colonel Henderson commending Yamamoto’s action and character. This incident crystallized something for Yamamoto. He had saved the health of an American whose nation was actively fighting his homeland. Yet nothing in the situation felt wrong. Johnson was simply a man who had been injured, and Yamamoto had responded as any decent person would. The propaganda that had painted Americans as less than human had been revealed as exactly what it was, lies designed to make the conflict psychologically manageable.
As spring became summer, news from the Pacific filtered into the camp through newspapers and radio broadcasts. The reports painted a picture of steady American advance. Island after island captured, Japanese positions overrun, supply lines cut. The prisoners read these accounts with growing resignation. Each ship sunk was replaced by five more. Each plane lost represented a tiny fraction of monthly production. Japan was not losing individual battles. It was being systematically ground down by an enemy whose resources were effectively infinite.
Petty Officer Tanaka, who had been keeping a secret journal, wrote entries that reflected his evolving understanding. He described the abundance of food, the casual wealth of even ordinary Americans, the efficiency of their industry. He noted how prisoners were treated according to clear rules applied consistently, how even in captivity, they received better care than many Japanese soldiers in active service. In August of 1944, a new group of prisoners arrived at Camp Otran, recent captures from the Maranas. These men were gaunt, traumatized, many wounded or sick from their experiences.
They had been told to expect terrible treatment. Instead, they found themselves in heated barracks, fed three meals a day, receiving medical care from American doctors who treated their injuries with the same attention given to American soldiers. Yamamoto and the other longerterm prisoners watched the newcomers go through the same shock and disbelief they had experienced. One young soldier, barely 19 years old and so thin his bones showed through his skin, wept openly when given his first meal. He told Yamamoto he had been eating grass and tree bark for 2 weeks before his capture, that his unit had been abandoned without supplies.
The newcomers brought stories that confirmed what Yamamoto had come to suspect, that Japan was not just losing the conflict, but had already lost it. The young soldier described watching American ships shell his position for hours. Thousands of rounds expended casually while Japanese forces rationed every bullet. He described American planes filling the sky in formations so large they blocked the sun, while Japanese aircraft appeared only rarely and in small numbers. As autumn arrived again, marking Yamamoto’s second year at Camp Altra, the prison population had grown to over 600 men.
The work program had expanded to include nearly half the prisoners and the economic impact on the local area had become significant. Several businessmen had written letters arguing for the program’s continuation even after the conflict ended. In December of 1944, exactly one year after his first visit to Munising, Yamamoto was again granted permission to visit the town. The Christmas decorations seemed even more elaborate than the previous year. He purchased small gifts for several of his fellow prisoners. Simple things like soap and notebooks.
At the general store, he noticed Ernest Burrquist moving more slowly and learned the man’s grandson had been lost in France in September. Yamamoto offered his condolences through the interpreter. Struggling to find appropriate words, Bergquist accepted them with quiet dignity and said he appreciated the thought. Then he said something that Yamamoto would remember for the rest of his life. He said he hoped the conflict would end soon, that enough young men had been lost on all sides, that maybe after it was over, people could learn to live together peacefully.
There was no hatred in his voice, just exhaustion and a hope for something better. On the truck ride back to camp, Yamamoto sat silently, watching the winter landscape pass. He thought about Burrquist’s grandson lost in a French field and about all the young men from both sides who would never see their homes again. He thought about the lie he had believed that Americans were soft, that they lacked the spiritual strength to endure hardship, that Japan could win through superior discipline.
The truth was exactly the opposite. Americans had spiritual strength in abundance. They simply expressed it differently. They valued individual life which made them fight harder to protect their comrades. They believed in rules and fairness which made their system more efficient. They possessed such overwhelming material advantages that they could afford to be humane even to their enemies. By the spring of 1945, news from the Pacific made clear that the conflict was entering its final stages. The prisoners at Campo Train listened to radio broadcasts with grim resignation.
Yamamoto began teaching English class to his fellow prisoners, reasoning that learning the language might prove useful in the postwar world. In April, news of President Roosevelt’s passing reached the camp. Several guards wept openly, and the prisoners were surprised by the genuine grief displayed. Colonel Henderson declared a day of mourning and the camp flag flew at half mast. Yamamoto found himself oddly moved by the display by the evidence that Americans could grieve collectively. In May, Germany surrendered and the implications were immediately clear.
American resources previously divided between two theaters would now concentrate entirely on the Pacific. Several prisoners asked Yamamoto what he thought would happen now, and he told them the truth, that Japan would face the full weight of American power that continued resistance was pointless. In August, news reached the camp of devastating weapons used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The prisoners struggled to comprehend such destruction. Petty Officer Tanaka, whose family lived in Hiroshima, sat in the barracks, staring at the wall for 2 days, lost in grief and shock.
When Japan surrendered on August 15th, the prisoners at Camp Out Train received the news with mixed emotions. Relief that the fighting would finally stop, shame at defeat, uncertainty about the future, fear for their families in Japan. Yamamoto gathered the prisoners and told them that they had survived, that they would eventually return home, that their duty now was to help rebuild what had been destroyed. In the months following the surrender, the process of repatriation began slowly. During this interim period, the work program continued and life at Campot Trans settled into a strange peaceime routine.
The prisoners were no longer enemies, but neither were they free. Walter Johnson approached Colonel Henderson with a proposal. Several prisoners, including Yamamoto, had proven to be excellent workers. Johnson asked if it might be possible for prisoners who wish to remain in America to apply for some kind of residency status. Henderson explained that such decisions were far above his authority, but that he would forward the request. In November of 1945, Yamamoto made his last visit to Munis Singh.
He wanted to see the town once more before repatriation. He walked along Main Street, noting the changes. War bond posters had been replaced with advertisements for civilian goods. The movie theater showed peaceime films. Ernest Burquist remembered Yamamoto and asked through the interpreter what he would do when he returned to Japan. Yamamoto said he was not certain, that his nation had been devastated. Bergquist nodded and said that rebuilding would take time, but that he believed Japan would recover.
He said Americans held no permanent hatred that once enemies could become friends if both sides were willing to try. Then he gave Yamamoto a small package, a notebook and a pen. He said Yamamoto should write down his experiences that someday people should know what had happened here. Repatriation finally began in March of 1946. The prisoners boarded trains for the journey to California where ships waited to carry them across the Pacific. As the truck pulled away from Campau Train for the last time, Yamamoto looked back at the compound that had been his home for nearly 3 years.
Soon the camp would be dismantled, and nothing would remain to mark what had occurred here. During the voyage across the Pacific, Yamamoto spent hours on deck watching the ocean and thinking about everything he had learned. He thought about the abundance he had witnessed, the industrial capacity that had proven so overwhelming, the humanity his capttors had displayed. He thought about the lies he had been told and the truths he had discovered. Japan, when he finally saw it again, shocked him more than America had.
Cities lay in ruins, infrastructure destroyed, the population struggling. Yet, even in the devastation, Yamamoto saw signs of resilience. People were rebuilding, clearing rubble, starting businesses in makeshift shelters. The American occupation forces were implementing reforms and providing aid. Yamamoto settled in Tokyo, finding work as a translator and eventually teaching English at a university. He kept the notebook, filling it with observations and reflections. He spoke occasionally to students about his experiences, trying to convey the lessons he had learned.
Some listeners understood. Others remained trapped in bitterness and denial. Petty Officer Tanaka, whose entire family had been lost at Hiroshima, struggled more deeply. He found work in Osaka, remarried, started a new family. But he never fully recovered from the twin traumas of losing everything and learning that his sacrifice had been based on lies. He spoke rarely of his time at Camp Alran, but when he did, he emphasized the kindness shown to prisoners and the realization of how completely Japan had been outmatched.
Of the 617 prisoners who passed through Camp Otran during the conflict years, most returned to Japan and rebuilt their lives as best they could. A handful did eventually immigrate to America in the 1950s. Some maintained correspondence with Americans they had met during their captivity. awkward letters that gradually became easier as time softened the edges of memory. The camp itself was dismantled in 1946. The buildings removed. The land returned to forest. No monument marks the location. No historical marker explains what occurred there.
But in the region’s history, in local memories and family stories, traces remain of the years when Japanese prisoners worked alongside American civilians. When enemies learned to see each other as human beings, what happened at Campot Tren represented a microcosm of the broader conflict and its aftermath. Japan had gone to fight believing its superior spirit would overcome American material advantages. Instead, Japanese prisoners learned that material advantages were themselves a reflection of something deeper. an economic system that generated wealth efficiently, an industrial base that could produce seemingly infinite quantities of goods, and a political culture that valued individual life even in the midst of total conflict.
The prisoners had expected brutality and found rules. They had expected starvation and found abundance. They had expected hatred and found casual indifference mixed with occasional kindness. These discoveries proved more devastating than any battlefield defeat because they revealed the entire worldview that had sustained them as fundamentally false. And perhaps the most significant lesson was that the Americans had known this from the beginning. They had mobilized only a fraction of their industrial capacity, fought a two-front conflict while maintaining civilian prosperity, and fed their prisoners better than many Japanese soldiers fed themselves.
The confidence Yamamoto had observed in Munis Singh was not bravado but simple mathematical certainty. In the decades after the conflict as Japan rebuilt and eventually became an economic powerhouse in its own right, the lessons learned by prisoners like Yamamoto and Tanaka would prove prophetic. Japan’s postwar success came from adopting many of the industrial and organizational principles they had observed in America.
But in the immediate aftermath of repatriation, the former prisoners of Camp Ultran faced only uncertainty, struggling to find their place in a shattered nation, carrying memories of abundance and humanity that seemed almost dreamlike. They had witnessed something that few of their countrymen could understand. the true face of the nation that had defeated them. Not monstrous but ordinary. Not weak but overwhelmingly strong. Not hateful but simply confident in its inevitable victory.
