Qualla: Bando Prisoner-of-War Camp

Bando Prisoner-of-War Camp: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On June 1, 1918, in a prisoner-of-war camp on the island of Shikoku, German soldiers performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for the first time in Japanese history. The performers were not free men. They were among the roughly one thousand soldiers from the Imperial German Army, Imperial German Navy, and Austro-Hungarian Navy who had been captured at the Siege of Tsingtao in 1914 and imprisoned at the Bando POW camp near Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture. That single concert set in motion a national tradition: today, Beethoven's Ninth is performed across Japan every December, and the standard length of an audio compact disc -- over 74 minutes -- was reportedly influenced by the desire to fit the entire symphony on one disc.

Bando Prisoner-of-War Camp: A Village Behind the Wire

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Bando was not a typical prison camp. Formed in 1917 by merging three older facilities at Marugame, Matsuyama, and Tokushima, the camp sprawled across 57,233 square meters and held just under a thousand prisoners. Its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Matsue Toyohisa, took an approach...

Bando Prisoner-of-War Camp: Music from Captivity

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The cultural life of Bando was extraordinary. The camp supported multiple orchestras -- the Kiautschou Sailor Artillery Band, the Tokushima Orchestra, the Schulz Orchestra, and a mandolin band -- along with theater groups that staged everything from amateur skits to professional-...

Bando Prisoner-of-War Camp: The Camp as Printing Press

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Bando had its own printing shop, which produced an impressive range of materials: event programs, maps, postcards, lecture notes, entrance tickets, sheet music, advertising leaflets, technical drawings, books, and even stamps for internal use. The camp's most significant publicat...

Bando Prisoner-of-War Camp: Sixty-Three Who Stayed

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the camp closed on February 8, 1920, most prisoners returned to Germany. But sixty-three chose to remain in Japan. Their decision speaks to the unusual bonds that formed between the prisoners and their hosts. In 1972, the city of Naruto opened the Doitsu-kan -- the German Ho...