During the Second World War, Allied troops captured large numbers of Axis soldiers and transported them to prisoner of war camps across the United States, including more than 70 camps in Texas that housed some 50,000 prisoners. In March 1942, Hearne Chamber of Commerce President Roy Henry asked Congressman Luther Johnson to have a camp located here, and within a month U.S. Army staff had inspected the area and chosen 720 acres as a prison site. Construction began in September 1942 and was completed in six months. The camp was arranged in three sections, each with a mess hall, lavatory, company office, and eight barracks. The first of almost 5,000 prisoners arrived in June 1943. Most were non-commissioned officers of the German Afrika Korps captured in Tunisia. Because the Geneva Convention did not require non-commissioned officers to work in prison camps, they spent most of their time in recreational and educational activities, while enlisted men, who made up about twenty percent of the prison population, performed most of the camp's work. In 1944, Camp Hearne became the central mail distribution point for all German prisoners of war in the U.S., but poor supervision allowed a small group of Nazi sympathizers to infiltrate the system and intimidate and terrorize both prisoners and their families in Germany until the scheme was discovered and the operation was shut down in July 1945. A few hundred Japanese prisoners arrived in the summer of 1945 shortly before the war ended. All prisoners were gone and the camp closed by January 1946.