Spies, Intelligence, and Prisoners of War

These lesson plans support the development of understanding the significance of Wilmington, NC as a WWII heritage city: its contributions to home front efforts such as defense manufacturing, civilian involvement, and Armed Forces presence. Each lesson includes a primary or secondary source reading, photographs, and activities. These short lessons are designed to fit into an hour or less. This series was created by Sarah Nestor Lane, educator.

Charles House was Navy weatherman on Kiska when the Japanese invaded. He eluded capture for 50 days but was finally taken prisoner to Japan.

On December 7, 1941 Japan executed a coordinated, multi-pronged attack on the US home front. Within a few hours, they attacked Hawai’i, Guam, Howland Island, Midway Island, Wake Island, and the Philippines. These were not just military targets. They also hit sugar mills and the Honolulu airport in Hawai’i; the Pan Am Hotels in Guam and on Wake Island; and the settlement on Howland Island.

Several changes that took place leading up to and because of World War I influenced America in the Second World War. People, products, ideas, and information moved faster and on a more global scale than any time before. And an increasingly small number of individuals controlled increasingly large methods of production – and wealth.

The attacks of December 7, 1941 that began at Pearl Harbor were not the only targets of America's enemies. By the time World War II was over, Japanese forces had attacked the US mainland and almost all American territories in the Pacific. Some of these places of the Greater United States fell under enemy occupation. In the Atlantic, German U-boats targeted cargo ships. Germany, Japan, and Russia all had operatives and spies living and working across the country.

During the war, the United States government incarcerated many people in camps and prisons across the home front. This included enemy aliens, prisoners of war, Japanese Americans and Native Alaskans, and conscientious objectors. In Hawaii, the military imposed martial law. Elsewhere in the Greater United States, enemy forces incarcerated American civilians during and after the capture of American territories.

Tens of thousands of American women served their country as nurses during World War II. As members of the Army Nurse Corps, Navy Nurse Corps, and Cadet Nurse Corps, they cared for patients in Europe, the Pacific, and on the home front.

Florence Eberling Smith Finch was a woman who stood up for her convictions in the face of overwhelming odds. She aided United States military intelligence and the Philippine resistance during World War II. She provided supplies to prisoners of war (POWs) in Manila, and she survived arrest and interrogation. Upon her release in October 1944, she joined the US Coast Guard. Her efforts broke barriers for Asian American women in the armed forces.

During World War II, American and British intelligence agencies collaborated on a top-secret mission with the US Playing Card Company. To help Allied prisoners of war escape from Nazi prison camps, the company devised a way to hide a map of Germany inside playing cards.

During World War II, Fort Hunt was the location of a top-secret military intelligence installation (P.O. Box 1142), where high value German captives were interrogated, and means were developed for the escape of captured U.S. servicemen. After the War, some German scientists who chose to come to the U.S. rather than go to the Soviet Union were debriefed at Fort Hunt.