Original Item: One-of-a-Kind. This is an especially unusual and historically compelling U.S. Army Model 1938 “Parsons” Field Jacket that was reissued for use by an Axis Prisoner of War in the United States, retaining bold black PW identification stencils on the back and additional individual P and W stencils on the sleeves. The M-1938 was itself an early wartime U.S. field jacket, but examples repurposed for POW use are far scarcer than standard issue jackets. Rather than being merely an American uniform garment, this piece reflects a very different side of the war on the U.S. home front, when hundreds of thousands of German and other Axis prisoners were housed in camps across the country and clothed in altered or reissued American garments clearly marked to distinguish them from U.S. personnel.

As WWII expanded, the United States became responsible for housing an enormous number of Axis prisoners captured overseas.

From 1942 through 1945, more than 400,000 Axis POWs were transported to the United States. They were held in hundreds of camps and branch facilities spread across the country, especially in the South, Southwest, Great Plains, and Midwest.

These camps were often located in rural areas where land was readily available and where prisoners could also be used to supplement local labor shortages.

The wartime labor shortage became a major issue across the United States. Millions of American men had entered military service, while factories, farms, mills, canneries, and other industries were operating at unprecedented levels.

Prisoner labor became one partial solution.

Under the rules governing prisoners of war, POWs could be required to perform certain types of work and were compensated according to wartime regulations. Tens of thousands were employed in agriculture, food processing, lumbering, maintenance, and other work where additional manpower was badly needed.

That practical system created another problem:

clothing.

Many Axis prisoners arrived in the United States wearing the uniforms in which they had been captured. Those garments were frequently worn out, unsuitable for American weather, or inappropriate for labor assignments.

The U.S. government therefore issued POWs a variety of American military clothing.

This could include:

obsolete garments
reissued GI clothing
factory seconds
surplus uniforms

To prevent confusion with U.S. military personnel, these garments were often altered with highly visible prisoner markings.

The most familiar of these was:

PW

for:

Prisoner of War

The letters could be applied to the chest, back, sleeves, trousers, or other areas depending on the garment and local practice.

Some POW garments were also dyed or otherwise modified to make them more easily identifiable.

This particular example began life as a standard U.S. Army:

M-1938 Field Jacket

commonly referred to by collectors as the:

“Parsons” Jacket

The M-1938 was one of the Army’s important prewar and early WWII field garments and helped bridge the gap between older service coats and the more specialized field jackets introduced later in the war.

Its relatively short, practical cut was intended for field use and made it well suited to the changing needs of a more mobile mechanized army.

By the time large numbers of POWs were arriving in the United States, earlier field garments such as the M-1938 could be redirected from normal frontline issue and reused for prisoner clothing.

This jacket was clearly altered for that purpose.

The rear bears a large black stencil reading:

PW

The sleeves are separately marked with:

P

and:

W

These large, highly visible letters would have made the prisoner easy to identify from multiple angles.

The markings are the defining collector feature of the jacket.

They transform what would otherwise be a heavily worn early war U.S. field jacket into a direct artifact of the Axis POW system inside the United States.

The jacket shows extensive use.

There is heavy overall wear consistent with prolonged service and later prisoner issue.

The original interior identification tag is no longer present.

The inner lining has suffered significant damage, including:

tearing
holes
general wear

There are also some smaller holes in the sleeves.

These condition issues are substantial, but they are entirely consistent with a garment that likely saw two separate phases of wartime use, first as U.S. military clothing and later as POW issue.

The fact that the jacket survived at all is noteworthy.

Many POW garments were discarded, destroyed, repurposed, or stripped of their distinctive markings after the war. Others remained in government stores or were simply worn out through labor use.

As a result, clearly marked examples are considerably less common today than ordinary U.S. Army field jackets.

The M-1938 itself is an interesting uniform pattern.

It was developed during the period when the U.S. Army was modernizing its field clothing and moving away from older service uniform concepts.

The jacket featured a practical cut suited to field duty and remained in use into the early years of WWII before later designs such as the M-1941 and M-1943 field jackets became more widespread.

That chronology makes this example particularly interesting because it shows how older but still serviceable U.S. garments were recycled for secondary wartime roles.

The POW camps themselves formed a large but often overlooked part of the American wartime landscape.

German and other Axis prisoners could be found working in farms, factories, forests, and processing plants far from the battlefields where they had been captured.

For many Americans, these prisoners were their most direct contact with the enemy during the war.

Garments marked PW were therefore not abstract military equipment. They were the clothing actually worn by prisoners living and working inside the United States.

That gives this jacket a very different historical character from standard combat clothing.

With its unmistakable PW back stencil, separate P and W sleeve markings, authentic M-1938 Parsons construction, and heavily worn condition, this is a highly evocative piece of U.S. home front and POW history. The missing interior tag, damaged lining, sleeve holes, and overall heavy wear are fully disclosed, but the prisoner markings give the jacket exceptional collector interest. It would make a strong addition to a U.S. WWII home front, Axis POW, prisoner labor, M-1938 Parsons jacket, or advanced American uniform collection.