Site of World War ll Prisoner of War Camp
China, Jefferson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The reduction of the labor force in the United States during World War II prompted the use of prisoners of war as laborers for various agricultural interests. The responsibility of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service at Texas A&M University, the program in Jefferson County was supervised by J.M. Combs, county extension agent. Combs determined the farm labor needs of the county and analyzed the local labor supply to coordinate his efforts with those of the base P.O.W. camp in Hunstville. The camp at Huntsville, one of the largest base camps in Texas, opened early in 1943. Its first prisoners were members of Rommel's Afrika Korps who had been captured in north Africa. German prisoners came from the European theater of operations, as well. Temporary branch camps were established in areas such as China which were too distant from the base camp for daily round trips. The China branch camp opened in September 1944 on this site. The U.S. government leased the property from the Stanolind Oil & Gas Company. Local farmers and others wishing to use the day labor provided by prisoners picked them up at the camp in the morning and returned them each night. German soldiers performed general farm labor at twenty-five cents per hour and harvested rice for three dollars a day. They also worked as loggers. In January 1945 there were 148 prisoners at the China camp. At its peak in August 1945, the camp housed 403 prisoners. The China camp was open only 15 months. It closed in December 1945 and its 350 prisoners returned to Huntsville, then eventually to Germany. At the dawn of the 21st century the only remnant of the China base camp was the water well.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As World War II drained America's labor force, the government put prisoners of war to work on the home front. This site held a branch of the huge Huntsville base camp, opened in September 1944 on land leased from an oil company and coordinated through the Texas A&M extension service. German soldiers—many first captured from Rommel's Afrika Korps—were picked up each morning by local farmers to harvest rice, log, and do general farm labor for a few cents an hour; at its August 1945 peak the camp held 403 prisoners before closing that December.
Why it matters
The camp is a tangible reminder of the little-known network of POW labor camps that helped sustain American agriculture during the war, bringing the global conflict directly into rural Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the middle years of World War II, America faced a problem that rarely makes the history books: with millions of men in uniform, who would bring in the crops? Farm labor grew desperately short just as the nation needed food more than ever, and the government looked for workers wherever it could find them.
One answer was the hundreds of thousands of enemy prisoners of war held on American soil. Under the rules of war then in force, prisoners could be put to paid labor that did not directly aid the war effort, and agriculture fit the bill. Across rural America, and especially across Texas, a network of camps sprang up to house them.
Here in China — a small farming community in Jefferson County, Texas, not to be confused with the country — that national need touched the ground directly. The surrounding rice fields and timber needed hands, and for fifteen months those hands belonged to captured soldiers.
People & events
The work here was organized through the Texas Agricultural Extension Service at Texas A&M, and in Jefferson County it fell to the county extension agent to make it work. His job was practical: figure out how much labor local farms needed, measure it against the workers available, and coordinate with the large base camp at Huntsville.
That Huntsville camp, among the largest in Texas, had opened early in 1943, and its first prisoners were soldiers of Rommel's Afrika Korps captured in North Africa; later arrivals came from the fighting in Europe as well. Because Huntsville was too far for a daily round trip, temporary branch camps like the one at China were set up closer to the fields.
The China camp opened in September 1944 on land leased from an oil and gas company. Each morning local farmers and others would drive out, pick up their crews, and return them by nightfall. The prisoners did general farm work for a small hourly wage, harvested rice for a set daily rate, and worked as loggers. The numbers grew from about 148 prisoners early in 1945 to a peak of 403 that August.
Its place in the American story
The China camp is a small window onto a vast, half-forgotten chapter of the home front. Enemy soldiers were held in the thousands across the American countryside, and many communities found themselves working shoulder to shoulder in the fields with men who had recently been the enemy.
Those everyday encounters left a complicated legacy. Far from the front, the war became personal and oddly ordinary — a truck of prisoners arriving at dawn, a day of shared labor in the rice, a return to camp at dusk. It is a reminder that total war reached even quiet rural crossroads, and that the machinery of a global conflict ran in part on this kind of local improvisation.
The camp lasted only fifteen months, closing in December 1945 as the war ended. Its prisoners were sent back to Huntsville and eventually home to Germany, and the episode folded quietly back into the county's farming life.
If you visit
There is not much to see here, and that is exactly the point. The marker notes that by the turn of the twenty-first century the only remaining trace of the camp was a single water well — and even that may or may not survive today, so come to read and to imagine rather than to tour ruins.
Stand on this flat coastal-plain ground and picture the rows of a temporary camp, the morning trucks, and the rice fields stretching toward the horizon. The ordinariness of the landscape is what makes the history feel so surprising.
If you are exploring rural Jefferson County, this makes a thoughtful stop between larger destinations — a chance to talk with traveling companions about how strange and human the home front really was. Bring the marker's own account, read it slowly, and let the empty field do the rest of the work.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · J.M. Combs
Related events
- · World War II
Themes & tags
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