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POW Exposition

© Earl Rickard

Lieutenant Colonel Ross Greening and his fellow ex-prisoners of war were crushed. They had collected 56 crates of American ingenuity--POW handicraft--while waiting at their former prison camp for repatriation in the spring of 1945. Greening had wangled the 5,000 pounds of material onto an airplane bound for the states, telling an intelligence officer that the crates contained important POW data for the War department. Back in the states, Greening talked the War Department into presenting a POW Exposition and secured the YMCA's co-sponsorship. Now on a hot and humid July afternoon the men learned that the New York City Museum of Science and Industry's director, who liked the idea of an exhibition showcasing American ingenuity, said the exhibition could be scheduled in approximately 18 months. Greening and his men knew that in 18 months they would be scattered around the world, some pursuing military careers, most of the others happily discharged civilians. Determined to put the show on as soon as possible, Greening and his men took their crates to the third level basement of the YMCA building on Madison Avenue. Greening would need to marshall all the resourcefulness and ingenuity he so often displayed during his military career.

In the spring of 1942, then Captain Greening served as the armaments officer on Jimmy Doolittle's famous Tokyo raid. Prevented from using the top-secret Norden Bomb sight on the raid, Doolittle asked Greening to devise a replacement. Using 20 cents worth of scrap metal, Greening fashioned the "Mark Twain bomb sight." The sight proved more efficient than the Norden for the low-level mission. After the raid, Greening reassembled his crew following their bail out over China and brought them to safety. In late 1942, Greening went to North Africa as a bomber pilot and was shot down during a raid on Naples, Italy in July, 1943. For many months Greening eluded first the Italian fascists and later the Germans before his eventual capture.

Deep underneath the YMCA building, Greening and his ex-POWs mulled over their problem. They decided to set up a temporary display--a recreated escape tunnel--and invite the museum director in hopes of impressing him. When the director saw the exhibit he told the men the museum would host the Pow Exposition in the museum's main hall beginning October 1, 1945.

Greening's men spent August and September putting the exhibit together and hammered the last nail just before the opening. The exhibit contained the aforementioned escape tunnel, a full-scale replica of a 16-man room including a primitive prisoner-made heating device, a solitary confinement cell with a burlap sack instead of a mattress, wire cutters made from ice skates, and dummy guns and knives. The exhibit also displayed the arts and crafts the

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