When most think of World War II, the focus shifts straight to military involvement, Adolf Hitler,  the Holocaust, and a war thousands of miles away. But the impact of the war came to the Bayou Region of South Louisiana as prisoners of war were brought into camps to help with local industry while workers fought overseas.

“My mother and her cousins used to ride their bikes alongside the camp in Mathews when they were little,” says Wendy Phillips, resident of Raceland. “The prisoners were there, mostly to help pick up sugarcane scraps from the sugarcane company.”