Thibodaux, Louisiana
Thibodaux, Louisiana
“My connection to the camp is through the sugarcane plantation where I grew up which was called Acadia Plantation. Nicholls State is on our plantation property and we had about 300 to 500 acres stretching back almost to Bayou Blue. During WWII I was only 5 years old, my father had arrived here in Thibodaux in 1939 and began farming a plantation that had gone pretty much to waste. By 1942, when he needed work done there was nobody to do it so it was a really rough time until the prisoners began to arrive.”
“My father had a wagon built with steel frames and boards on the side and he would take the wagon up to camp every morning and pick up maybe 10 or 20 guys with a U.S. Sergeant or Corporal guarding them and would drive them up to wherever they were working at the time. They not only helped cut the cane during the harvest but they helped clean the dishes and that kind of thing.”
“My memory is that they were very friendly guys and very few of them spoke English, they were mostly Italian and German. Occasionally when I was on holiday or out of school my father would take me with him and we would go out there and check on these guys. One time they were cleaning out a deep ditch and they had to have a sweep, which is similar in looks to a k-knife but it is much longer, the German soldiers are cleaning out this ditch and one of these guys sees a snake down in the ditch. They didn’t know anything about the biology of south Louisiana, so he picked the snake up by the tail and showed it off to the sergeant and the sergeant said ‘drop that snake, that’s a water moccasin!’”
“I don’t think people have gone to all of the sources that can be had. I don’t know that too many people have researched this individual plantation.”