D’s Bones

Nearby woods concealed
World War II machine gun
nests where my Boy Scout patrol
practiced manhood, badge by badge.
Best of all was the old barbed
wire compound and watch tower—
the prisoner of war camp.
There we slung
stout darts of weeds
at one another
shouted victory,
rarely considered
the camp’s purpose
or the pleasant
decayed odor of
its latrine.

Seward, 1953

Here, at an intersection of nature and nurture, can be observed the origin of good, clean warfare. All ironically superimposed on the the remnants of a global war that we knew of through old war movies and the stories of our parents. This was fun, but within two years, the same group of friends would be unconsciously swayed by Cold War rhetoric and begin worrying and childishly preparing for the Commies to invade our Alaskan home.

The old facilities around Seward were never used to repel an actual Japanese invasion, but with war activities so near (e.g. in the Aleutian Islands), there must have been enough concern to fortify the place. The “prisoner of war” camp never housed any foreign soldiers, but was occasionally used as a brig.