WAR & PEACE: Prisoners of Defense

WAR & PEACE

Into Boston Harbor last week steamed the filthy, seaworn, ketch-rigged little (61-ton) Norwegian tub Busko, first Nazi sea victim of U.S. naval might, trapped off Greenland by a U.S. patrol vessel, escorted into the harbor by the old 703-ton Coast Guard cutter Bear, once a Byrd Antarctic ship. Aboard the Busko were radio equipment, skis, dogsleds, two dogs, a Gestapo agent, 18 Norwegian sailors, a woman and a boy. What was the status of the captives? Were they prisoners of war or (since the U.S. is not in the war) prisoners of defense? Under what law could they be held in jail? The unembarrassed Justice Department, which knows a lot about the law, smoothly ruled that the Busko’s crew could be held “because they are not in possession of the proper traveling documents.”