Italian prisoners of war in Pasco were some of the first aficionados of Washington wines back during World War II.

And war regulation violators at another prison camp near Richland in the mid-1940s would hide out in fruit trees.

These bits of trivia were gleaned from the meager data available on two prison camps that were as much a part of life in Pasco, Kennewick and Richland in the 1940s as was the mammoth Hanford Project.

The Italian POW camp was at what is now the Port of Pasco's Big Pasco industrial park.

The other prison camp, called Columbia Camp, was at the site of the existing Benton County Horn Rapids Park.

There are no signs of either camp today.

Albert Pardini of Kennewick recalls how his father, Fred, had the Italians work in his wine grape vineyard at the Richland Y and how fond they were of his homemade zinfandel wine.

Jean Carol Davis, a Kennewick resident whose hobby is historical research, wrote an article about Camp Columbia. It was near Horn Rapids Dam and housed conscientious objectors and prisoners who had broken wartime laws.

In her interviews she learned that some prisoners climbed high into fruit trees and were reported missing by their guards, only to be found a little bit later.

Davis wrote about Camp Columbia in the February edition of The Courier, the quarterly magazine published by the East Benton County Historical Society.

"There has been a lot of misinformation about this camp, with many people thinking it was either a prisoner of war camp or connected with Hanford, which it was not," she said.

The camp existed from 1944 to 1947. Inmates' offenses ranged from violating price support regulations to wearing military uniforms without permission.

Camp Columbia prisoners often were sent to nearby farms to help with crops, chiefly picking fruit.

The camp lacked the high walls and tall barbed-wire-topped fences of traditional prisons.

The Italian POW camp also lacked walls and fences.

It existed for two years, 1944 to 1945. The prisoners were permitted to make field trips into Pasco and Kennewick to break the monotony of prison life.

There also were frequent visits to the Pardini vineyards to help pick the wine grapes.

Most of the details about the Italians come from the files of the Pasco Herald weekly newspaper, the forerunner of today's Tri-City Herald.