09/12/2026
🌾 HARVEST HISTORY: When Prisoners of War Worked Minidoka County's Fields
On Wednesday, we shared a little of the history of Camp Rupert, the World War II prisoner-of-war camp located west of Paul. But there's another part of that story that is closely tied to something happening all around us right now — harvest season.
During World War II, many of Minidoka County's young men were serving in the military, leaving local farmers with a serious shortage of workers. Prisoners from Camp Rupert became part of the labor force that helped keep area farms operating.
The photographs shown here capture that history firsthand.
On June 30, 1944, Italian prisoners of war from Camp Rupert were taken to the Otto Hoppe farm west of Paul to thin sugar beets. Later, German prisoners of war also worked on local farms. According to the history recorded in Progressive Paul, Idaho, POW labor was used for crops including sugar beets, potatoes, alfalfa, hay and grain.
It's an unusual chapter in Minidoka County's agricultural history: men who had been captured thousands of miles away, working in southern Idaho fields while local men were fighting overseas.
Today, as trucks, tractors and harvesting equipment once again fill our roads and fields, these photographs are a reminder of just how much harvest has changed — and how much history lies beneath the fields we pass every day.
Do you remember hearing stories from parents or grandparents about prisoners from Camp Rupert working on local farms during the war? We'd love to hear them.
Photos and historical information from Progressive Paul, Idaho, compiled by W. Gary Schorzman. Photographs courtesy of Vilma Ochsner-Martsch and Carolyn Gallegos, as credited in the book.
