Much of my author's journey has involved immersing myself in the Italian experience of World War II. One of the most surprising finds was that the 600,000 Italian soldiers in Mussolini's army were taken as prisoners of war by the Allies, and 51,000 of them were brought to camps in the United States.
Yes, you read that correctly. The Allies transported POWs to several countries, including the United States, where they were held until the conflict's end.
Filmmaker Camilla Calamandrei worked for ten years to make the 2002 documentary film Prisoners in Paradise. The film follows the journeys of six Italian men, starting with their war conscription through their internment as POWs in America and the critical decision they faced after Italy's 1943 armistice: whether to support the U.S. war effort as part of groups called Italian Service Units.
Some 35,000 Italian POWs chose that route, allowing them to work in various jobs supporting U.S. troops (i.e., doing laundry, construction, or farming), depending on their location. In most of the camps, the POWs were allowed to have visits from local Italian American families on Sundays. At times, they were allowed to attend social gatherings outside the camps, under supervision, or sometimes even dine in locals' homes. A number of ISU members developed romantic relationships with women they have met during these years. Although all POWs were repatriated to Italy after the war, a number of women went to Italy to marry these men and came back to the U.S. to live. (Italian POWs who chose not to collaborate with the U.S. war effort were sent to camps in Texas, where they faced harsh restrictions and reportedly reduced food rations.)
These stories are richly documented in Camilla's film, using interviews with surviving POWs and their wives along with rare archival footage. Prisoners in Paradise serves as a valuable, lasting document of the impact of these wartime experiences on these people's lives. It is filled with moments of humor, poignant stories, and reflections on loyalty and identity during a turbulent time. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn more about Italian World War II history.
Camilla took the time to speak with me about her inspiration, memorable interviews, surprises, and more.
What inspired this film?
My father was an Italian who fought as an anti-fascist partisan during WWII and then came to the U.S. after the war to study, and eventually became the American correspondent for a major Italian newspaper. I didn't know anything about Italians who had served in Mussolini's army until one visit with my family in Tuscany. I had visited my family in Italy a number of times throughout my childhood, but I did not speak Italian, so our conversations were limited. Then, once, when I was visiting in my early twenties, my uncle (who didn't speak English and who had never been to the U.S. during my lifetime) started to recount a story in Italian, "When I was a prisoner in America during the War…" I had no idea what he was talking about. I had never heard his story of being a POW, and I had no idea that there had been Italian prisoners of war in the U.S.
I started looking for information in books or films, but there was very little documented about Italian POWs, just a handful of academic articles and one book by a man named Louis Keefer, Italian Prisoners of War in America, 1942-1946: Captives or Allies? He had interviewed a number of POWs who had returned to the U.S. and published a collection of their oral histories.
I contacted Mr. Keefer, who shared some of his contacts, and I used a large and varied network to find surviving POWs who had returned to the U.S. and others who had remained in Italy. I traveled around the U.S. and interviewed 19 surviving POWs and their wives before we began filming. They don't all appear in the film, but I learned a lot from them. I then selected those who I thought would be most compelling for the film. I also found Italian POWs who had not collaborated and had not come back to the U.S. and interviewed them in Italy. Several American historians and an archival researcher also helped me.
What were some of your more memorable interviews?
The first story every surviving POW told me about arriving in America was about food. One Italian officer tells the story of when a U.S. soldier opened a can and pulled out an entire cooked chicken. Another tells the story of his disbelief that so much food could be for the enemy POWs. And yet another tells of POWs hiding bread in the rafters of their barracks because they feared it would run out. The Americans couldn't figure out how the Italian POWs were eating so much bread, but eventually, they discovered what was happening.
The POWs I interviewed also had almost identical descriptions of being amazed by the wide-open vistas as they were being transported across the country by train. And the very strong similarities in their experiences continued as they joined Italian Service Units, regardless of where they were held in the U.S. Even their perspectives, decades later on, of having a split identity between the U.S. and Italy are the same. That's why the film is constructed the way it is: We took the beginning of each man's story but then took the next piece from just one or two people and the next piece from another. We didn't need to revisit every step of each man's story—together, it is a tapestry of moments and experiences that add up to the story of all of them.
What was the most surprising thing you encountered?
There was this powerful sense of America. My uncle talked about being captured by the British and immediately saying to his friend, "Let's go with the Americans! That'll be better." Somehow, they already had this impression of what America would be like and wanted to see it. There's a long history, even before World War II, of Italians coming to the United States to work and then going back. This sort of strong connection was already between Italy and the United States.
I remember this one family who still lived in Utah. Mario was held as a POW in Ogden, just outside Salt Lake City. He ended up marrying an Italian-American woman, Anna, who came to visit the POWs with her family (and the local minister) on Sundays. Mario was repatriated after the war, but Anna traveled to Italy to marry him, and they came back to the U.S. They lived the rest of their lives in Ogden, the same town where he had been a POW. Their first house was even an old POW barrack they adapted.
One poignant note that is not in the film is that Anna, as a young woman, had always wanted to move to the West Coast, but Mario became very attached to her family, so they stayed in Ogden and raised three children. She never got to live by the ocean, but she had a rich and vibrant family with plenty of grandkids. Mario closes the film by saying, "Down deep, you love your country (Italy), but America gave me everything."
You present individuals who chose not to join the Italian Service Units. Tell us about that.
It's interesting. We included two men in the film who did not collaborate, including one extremely articulate man, Gaetano Tumiati, who wrote a book about his experiences later. He chose not to collaborate because he felt it would potentially mean he would be working to harm his brother, who was fighting in Mussolini's army when they last saw each other. He would only find out after the war that his brother had fled the army and joined the partisans. So his view, in the end, was, "My judgment after all this is... democracy! How fortunate we did not win the war! How lucky that we lost and the Americans won. Because we realized… what would have happened if Hiter had won."
Then there was another man who, for his entire life, just saw the war and his years as a POW as lost years. He blames the United States and is super angry about it.
For those of us who've grown up never having to be involved in a war, it is always educational to understand that people are plucked from youth and put into these situations not of their own making that changed their lives. You don't get those years back.
What was your goal with this documentary?
The purpose of the film was to provide a window into this world or this experience that people are not aware of. I like the hidden-in-the-margins-of-history idea. My film is one of the most comprehensive documents about the experience, along with Louis Keefer's book, so I feel good about that, and I am glad that people continue to be interested in it.
>>Read more about the film Prisoners in Paradise.<<
If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!
