Evansville Courier 4-7-2009. About 250,000 soldiers trained at Camp Breckinridge, Ky., during World War II. An estimated 3,500 German prisoners of war were housed on the grounds. The facility cost about $132 million to build, more than seven times the price tag of the Evansville shipyards.

“A lot of people don’t realize the enormity of the camp,” said historian Harold Morgan, who will speak on the subject Thursday at Willard Library.

WHAT: Harold Morgan will speak on Camp Breckinridge

WHEN: 6 p.m. Thursday

WHERE: Willard Library, 21 N. First Ave. in Evansville

“It had 468 barracks, 10 chapels and 11 post exchanges. In the camp’s heyday, they were training 12,000 soldiers over a 60-day period and then bringing in the next bunch.”

Morgan said the camp contained a German village “so soldiers could get acclimated to the clothing and attitudes of the people.”

When more attention turned to the Pacific theater later in the fighting, an Asian village was built so troops could learn Japanese ways.

The government forced farmers off their land to build the camp and later refused to let the landowners buy their property back or reimburse them for mineral rights.

Descendants of families who owned the 35,849 acres in Union, Henderson and Webster counties filed suit. In February, the U.S. Court of Claims ruled the seizure of the property was legal.

“I think the property owners were treated poorly,” said the 72-year-old Morgan, who has material about the long-standing lawsuit in his program.

“But the thing to remember is that patriotism ran rampant at that time. People really thought the war could go wrong, and they would be speaking German and Japanese. Everybody was willing to sacrifice, including the landowners at what became Camp Breckinridge.”

Morgan’s grandfather, William Wells, was one of the thousands of carpenters who got the camp up and running by August 1942.

“The men were allowed to take home wood scraps, and that’s what he made his house in Morganfield (Ky.) out of.”

Most soldiers had shipped out of Camp Breckinridge by mid-spring of 1945.

“The German POWs weren’t immediately sent home because there wasn’t any food or housing for them. The men were repatriated in 1946 when some of the recovery in Europe had been finished.”

Morgan said the post was “opened and closed several times” before part of the grounds became home to the Earle C. Clements Job Corps Center in the early 1960s.

“What some people aren’t aware of is that the camp was being seriously considered for a Boys Town location, as well as the home for the Air Force Academy that eventually went to Colorado Springs (Colo.)”

Morgan said the original field house remains as well as one chapel and a service club.

“But a lot of what was the former camp is in disrepair,” he said.

“The military had a rule: If an installation was designed for seven years or less, it was considered a temporary facility. And in those days, temporary meant wood, not bricks and concrete.”

The retired engineer is the author of “Home Front Heroes: Evansville and the Tri-State in World War II.”