Densho Encyclopedia
Camp Blanding (detention facility)
We need your help! There is little available research or existing scholarship about the subject of this article. If you have information or sources that you can share, please help make the Encyclopedia better by contacting us at [email protected]ensho.org.
| US Gov Name | Camp Blanding Internment Camp |
|---|---|
| Facility Type | U.S. Army Internment Camp |
| Administrative Agency | U.S. Army |
| Location | Starke, Florida (29.9333 lat, -82.1000 lng) |
| Date Opened | |
| Date Closed | |
| Population Description | Held German Latin Americans and German POWs |
| General Description | U.S. Army Internment Camp located in Starke, Florida, southwest of Jacksonville, in northeast Florida. |
| Peak Population | |
| National Park Service Info | |
A large army training center in north-central Florida during World War II—among those who trained there were some Nisei destined for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team or Military Intelligence Service —Camp Blanding also had a separate compound that held around three hundred German Latin American internees in the spring and summer of 1942. In Judgment Without Trial , Tetsuden Kashima cites documents noting five "Japanese" also interned there. There is no further information on who these "Japanese" internees were, whether Japanese Latin American , local resident Issei , or others. Later in the war, Camp Blanding was the site of a large camp for German POWs, with over 4,000 having been held there.
For More Information
Robert D. Billinger Jr. "With the Wehrmacht in Florida: The German POW Facility at Camp Blanding, 1942–1946." The Florida Historical Quarterly 58.2 (Oct. 1979): 160–73.
George E. Cressman, Jr. "Camp Blanding Station Hospital in the War Years." The Florida Historical Quarterly 93.4 (Spring 2015), 553–86.
Kashima, Tetsuden. Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.
Last updated July 6, 2021, 9:27 p.m..
