During WWII, almost the whole world was involved in the battle. North America, Germany, Asia, Europe, South Pacific, and India are some of the people involved. During war, if people were captured by the enemy and put into a camp controlled by them you would be considered a POW or prisoner of war. POWs were brought to Minnesota because there were camps and land in Minnesota in which the POWs could be held in and also many places were becoming to crowded with POWs, so Minnesota agreed to take 50,000 of them. Minnesota got the first POWs in August of 1942.