Camp Blanding (detention facility)

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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.

Authored by Brian Niiya , Densho

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. [ https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol93/iss4/5/ "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 June 24, 2024, 7:59 p.m..