# International communication in wartime

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/international-communication-in-wartime/164491>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 27, 2003, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/international-communication-in-wartime/164491 "2003-03-27T08:54:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/international-communication-in-wartime/164491/1 "2003-03-27T08:54:15Z")

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I was wondering about letters sent home from people in Japanese POW camps - how was the transfer of mail effected, given that diplomatic contact between the two countries would be strained to say the least.

Was it all handled by the Red Cross?

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/international-communication-in-wartime/164491/2 "2003-03-28T01:05:08Z")

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Since this seems to be lying unanswered …

Basically, yes. From [this history of the Australian Red Cross](http://www.redcross.org.au/aboutus_history_australia_default.htm):

> [@](#):
>
> The Red Cross Tracing and Message Service was one of the busiest services  
> during World War II. The Geneva Conventions stipulate that those detained as  
> enemy soldiers have a right to communicate with their families. If a family  
> received a Red Cross Message from a soldier, it was a happy occasion it  
> meant that he was alive.
> 
> For captured soldiers, news from home would bring at least some comfort and  
> relief.
> 
> During the war hundreds of thousands of Red Cross Messages were processed by  
> Australian Red Cross. During 1943 in the Far East some 230,000 letters were  
> distributed to POW camps in Malaya, Java, Shanghai, Hong Kong, China, Burma  
> and Japan.

As for how it worked, [this page](http://www.pegasus-one.org/pow/pDocs.htm) has a good selection of photos of documents relating to POWs in Europe. While none of the actual items of correspondence seem to bear direct evidence of the involvement of the Red Cross, [this letter](http://www.pegasus-one.org/pow/Tony4.htm) is an example of how the families were informed of the appropriate procedures for sending letters. In this instance, they were British and so they were told to send letters to the “Prisoners of War Department, St. James Palace, London”. This was a branch of the Red Cross. I don’t quite know what happened then. But the 1944 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the organisation and the [corresponding Nobel Lecture](http://www.nobel.se/peace/laureates/1944/red-cross-lecture.html) goes into some detail about their activities during the war in Europe. While it doesn’t specifically mention letters, it does discuss how they distributed food parcels. Since families could send parcels to specific POWs, I’d guess that their postal network was rather similar.

On the other hand, there were other mechanisms. For example, in the case of Japan, [radio broadcasts](http://www.usmm.org/duffyhonoring.html). As for Germany, there’s even [this case](http://psywarsoc.psyborg.co.uk/timeline/v1rocket.html).