Auburn's WWII POW camp then. A side road into history today

"The Nazis are coming to Placer County." The Roseville Press-Tribune reporter didn't mince words in a May 1945 article, but quickly added that it wasn't an invasion but an influx of prisoners of war. And indeed, hundreds of German and Italian POWs did get shipped to Placer County that year in a short, little-chronicled chapter in World War II history — A-town division. In late June 1945, the Auburn Journal picked up where the P-T left off, informing readers that 200 prisoners had arrived from the Florence, Ariz. internment camp. Their interim home would be a hillside clutch of barracks that had seen service during the Depression housing Works Progress Administration employees and then — after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor — troops guarding rail links and dams from saboteurs. Before the prisoners arrived, the barracks were being used as a convalescent center for troops injured in battle and treated at the nearby military hospital off Bell Road. Auburn's guard tower Camp Flint — on what is now Pacific Avenue — was fitted with a guard tower in preparation for the POW arrival and locals were given assurances that the work the Germans and Italians were in line to do wouldn't displace any jobs. Because of a labor shortage at the DeWitt General Hospital, 5 miles to the north, they would be put to work as groundskeepers. And while the prisoner numbers were mentioned at the time as between 200 and 300, former Military Police Sgt. Ray Jackson estimated in a 1980s account that there were more than 500 POWs when the camp was at its peak. The location of the POW camp is where Overlook Park is today. But while the "now" and "then" photos show the barracks in place around 1945 that are no longer on the property, the bend in the road leading up Camp Flint from the Union Pacific railroad tracks is still a prominent part of the landscape. On the lower right-hand corner of the photo, we can see an open guard house and two people — at least one dressed in soldier's uniform — kibitzing in the shade. The Stars and Stripes blows in a breeze on the hilltop behind them in an area that now houses an old radio shack that may or may not have been built during wartime. That and a brick wall are two of the prominent reminders of the wartime activity on the site. Minimal local contact In 2005, the Journal interviewed former Placer County Sheriff Bill Scott about the prisoner-of-war camp. There was some community interaction with the prisoners but it was limited because of the language barrier, he said. Most of the local hospitality came from the Italian community, he said. With the war long over and DeWitt Hospital decommissioned at the end of 1945, the remaining POWs were one of the final vestiges of the military presence still in Auburn in 1946. At the end of February, the Journal would report that Camp Flint was abandoned, with prisoners moved on to Stockton. Then it became a question of what to do with the buildings. At first, potential housing for returning veterans attending nearby Placer College was under consideration. The college was located on what is now the Placer High School lower campus. When that didn't work out, the buildings were made available by the Placer County Farm Labor Cooperative to local ranchers at 25 cents a square foot. The barracks, as well as a mess hall and administration building were hauled away, leaving little trace of Camp Flint and its time as a POW camp. Media Life's Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com or 530-852-0232. Thomson is a state and national award-winning reporter who writes for the Auburn Journal.