The Untold Story of the Internees of Camp Blanding

By Joe Marzo

The Origins of Camp Blanding

Florida’s Silent Internment: The Forgotten Prisoners of Camp Blanding

In the heart of Florida’s pine scrub country, where Spanish moss hangs heavy over the palmettos and the hum of insects echoes over sandy soil, stands Camp Blanding, a military base whose World War II legacy has long been anchored in patriotic pride. Located on the shores of Kingsley Lake in Clay County, Camp Blanding was, during the early 1940s, one of the largest and most vital Army training facilities in the United States. Over 800,000 troops passed through its gates on their way to the European and Pacific theaters.

But beneath the noise of artillery drills and marching boots, another story was quietly unfolding—one far less known, and far more uncomfortable.

Between 1942 and 1946, Camp Blanding also became home to hundreds of Axis prisoners of war, including Germans and Italians. But not all of them had been captured on the battlefield. Some were civilians, rounded up in Latin America, transported thousands of miles in secrecy, and deposited behind barbed wire in the backwoods of Florida. They were held without charges. Without trial. Without due process. And when the war ended, most were simply sent away and forgotten.

This is the hidden story of Florida’s silent internment, of how a state that symbolized freedom and sunshine became, for some, a cage built on suspicion, fear, and geopolitical strategy.

The Transformation of Camp Blanding

Camp Blanding began as a National Guard training site in 1939 but rapidly expanded after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The War Department selected it as a central training hub for infantry divisions, artillery units, and military police. It sprawled across 73,000 acres and soon included an airfield, hospitals, and rail connections.

By late 1942, however, the U.S. military faced a new logistical dilemma: the capture of thousands of Axis soldiers in North Africa and Europe was creating an overflow in military jails and temporary holding areas. American officials decided to house prisoners on U.S. soil, arguing that it was more secure, cost-effective, and allowed for better logistical control.

Camp Blanding, with its vast infrastructure, was selected as a temporary POW holding site. Barbed wire enclosures, guard towers, and prisoner barracks were quickly constructed on the outskirts of the base.

What arrived next, however, would complicate the moral clarity of this military operation.

Not Just Soldiers — Civilians Deported from Latin America

Beginning in late 1942 and continuing through 1945, the United States, in cooperation with governments across Latin America, began orchestrating a secret campaign to detain and deport “enemy aliens”—people of German, Italian, and Japanese descent—from countries such as Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama.

In theory, these actions were about security: protecting the Western Hemisphere from pro-Axis saboteurs. But in practice, this was an operation fueled by ethnic profiling, political pressure, and diplomatic leverage. Many of those rounded up had lived in Latin America for generations. Some were born there. They ran bakeries and schools, churches and small farms. They were not spies or agents. They were targeted because of their ancestry, and little else.

The U.S. State Department, working through the FBI and the Office of Inter-American Affairs, secretly arranged for their transport—first to Panama, then by ship to New Orleans or Miami, and finally by train to internment camps across the U.S., including Camp Blanding.

Held Without Trial: The Legal Black Hole in Florida

Once at Camp Blanding, these civilians were processed not as POWs, but as enemy aliens under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—a dusty piece of legislation resurrected during wartime. This allowed the government to hold them indefinitely without charges, without legal representation, and without a trial.

There were no hearings, no public records, no judicial oversight. The internees—some of whom were as young as 14 or 15 years old, others elderly or ill—had no idea how long they would be held or what would happen to their families. Many were separated from spouses or children, who were taken to women’s and family internment centers elsewhere, such as Seagoville, Texas or Crystal City, Texas.

The conditions at Camp Blanding were not cruel in the physical sense—internees received food, clothing, and basic medical care—but the psychological toll was immense. These were men who had not fought in the war, who had no allegiance to Hitler or Mussolini, and yet they found themselves living behind barbed wire in Florida, labeled enemies of the United States.

Inside the Wire: Life in the Camp

Internment life at Camp Blanding was a mix of monotony, confusion, and quiet resistance. Barracks were set up military-style, with cots, footlockers, and shared latrines. Food was standard Army fare. Prisoners could attend religious services and were sometimes given materials to pass the time—books, newspapers, even instruments.

The Italians, especially after Italy’s surrender in 1943, were generally cooperative. Many joined Italian Service Units (ISUs), which allowed them to perform non-combat labor in exchange for more freedom within the camp.

The Germans, by contrast, were divided. Among those captured in combat, some were diehard Nazis who tried to intimidate fellow prisoners. But those brought from Latin America—many of whom had no connection to the war—formed a separate, quieter class. They created camp newspapers, taught language classes, and tried to maintain a sense of dignity and order.

There were no official executions or torture at Camp Blanding, but there were documented cases of ideological violence—especially among German prisoners who denounced others as traitors. The military kept a close watch and sometimes moved prisoners to other facilities to prevent unrest.

Outside the wire, Florida farmers and foremen came to rely on prisoner labor. Internees were dispatched to cut timber, harvest crops, and repair roads. In nearby towns like Starke and Green Cove Springs, locals sometimes saw the prisoners being marched under guard—but most had no idea that some of these men weren’t soldiers at all.

Human Bargaining Chips: The Exchange Program

One of the darkest aspects of this internment program was the U.S. government’s use of civilian detainees as “exchangeable nationals.” Throughout the war, the U.S. arranged prisoner swaps with Germany and Italy, trading civilians from camps like Camp Blanding for captured American soldiers or diplomats.

This meant that a man arrested in Peru, detained in Florida, and denied a trial could end up on a ship to Nazi Germany—against his will—simply because he had a German last name.

At least hundreds of internees were shipped from U.S. camps, including Florida, to war zones where they faced further danger, poverty, or even imprisonment under fascist regimes. Their deportation was not just immoral—it often amounted to a death sentence by bureaucracy.

The War Ends, But the Detention Doesn’t

After V-E Day in 1945, and Japan’s surrender later that year, the American public assumed the war—and its accompanying internment policies—had ended. But for many of the internees at Camp Blanding and other Florida camps, captivity dragged on.

It took months, sometimes years, for release orders to be issued. Some were sent back to Latin America—only to find that their homes had been seized or their families had vanished. Others were expelled to Germany, a country they barely knew.

A small number were allowed to remain in the United States under strict surveillance. Some later became citizens. Many simply disappeared from the historical record.

In total, over 6,000 Latin American civilians were interned in the United States. How many passed through Camp Blanding remains uncertain, as records are scattered, redacted, or lost. But military documents, oral histories, and State Department archives confirm that Camp Blanding was a key node in this forgotten network of secret internment.

Florida’s Forgotten Role

Unlike the more widely known internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast, the story of German and Italian internment—especially that of Latin American civilians—is largely absent from Florida’s public memory.

There are no historical markers at Camp Blanding acknowledging its role in this program. The museum on site covers military history and troop training, but the POW compounds and internee stories are seldom mentioned.

In places like Clewiston, Belle Glade, and Tallahassee, other temporary camps were established for POW labor, especially in sugarcane and citrus agriculture. But it was Camp Blanding, as a centralized processing and holding site, that carried the heaviest ethical weight.

The Moral Cost of War at Home

The story of Camp Blanding’s internees is not one of gas chambers or forced starvation. It’s a quieter, more bureaucratic form of injustice: arrest without warrant, detention without trial, and the permanent branding of innocent civilians as enemies.

Florida played a key role in this. Not just as a training ground for the war abroad—but as a landscape of confinement for those who were never truly part of the war to begin with.

In the humid air beneath the longleaf pines, Camp Blanding still stands—active, proud, and patriotic. But beneath that pride lies a deeper truth. The barbed wire is gone, but the silence remains.

Sources

• U.S. National Archives and Records Administration – Department of Justice and State Department Internee Files

• German American Internee Coalition – Case Studies and Oral Histories

• Camp Blanding Museum and Historical Associates

• Office of the Historian, U.S. State Department – Hemispheric Security Reports, 1942–1946

• Dobbs, Michael. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (also includes reference to Latin American detainees)

• Trinity University’s Latin American German Internment Project

• Oral Histories from Former Military Police at Camp Blanding

• University of Florida Digital Collections – Florida POW and Internee Records