Florence (detention facility)

Camp Florence was a large POW camp located outside of Florence, Arizona. It opened in August 1942 to hold Italian POWs and later held Germans and Austrians. It had a peak population of 13,000.

A chart showing the distribution of Japanese relief goods distributed to various Japanese American confinement sites in late 1943 published in Michi Weglyn 's Years of Infamy shows a small distribution to Camp Florence, suggesting that the camp also held persons of Japanese descent. A list of INS Temporary Detention Stations based on INS documents compiled by Tetsuden Kashima lists Florence, indicating that it was also used to hold enemy aliens, though it includes no additional information. Robert F. Spencer , a researcher for the Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study , was mistakenly taken to Florence while trying to get to Gila River in mid-August, 1942. He describes Florence as empty at that time and having "high wire fences and with machine gun towers." Camp administrators told him that the camp was for POWs and for "enemy aliens convicted of sabotage and espionage." No other information on persons of Japanese descent being held at Camp Florence could be found. ^[1]