World War II

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan,” said President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Within an hour of FDR’s speech on December 8th, 1941, Congress voted to bring the United States into World War II.

A recording of FDR’s address to Congress can be heard as you enter the “Florida Remembers World War II” exhibit, on permanent display at the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee.

“Florida’s role in World War II was really transformative,” says Bruce Graetz, senior museum curator. “Florida was a relatively rural area before World War II. There was a large influx of servicemen for training during the war, industry like ship building occurred, and by the time the war was over, we’re getting into what’s considered modern Florida.”

According to government statistics, approximately 248,000 Floridians served in World War II. During the war, the population of the state exploded. Key West had 13,000 residents in 1940, and 45,000 by war’s end five years later. The population of Miami doubled to almost 325,000. Florida became an active training ground for American troops.

“Florida’s mild climate and flat terrain allowed for year round training for aviation,” says Graetz. “Camp Blanding [near Starke] is now a National Guard Camp. During World War II, it’s said that population-wise, Camp Blanding was the fourth largest city in the state.”

American troops were provided with amphibious training at Camp Gordon Johnston in Carrabelle, Florida.

“Between those two bases, the three significant U.S. Infantry divisions that went ashore at Normandy had some of their training here in Florida,” Graetz says. “In Daytona Beach, the WACS, the Women’s Auxiliary Corps, developed a training base. Noted African American educator Mary McLeod Bethune had lobbied President Roosevelt to set up a WAC training base, so from 1942 to early 1944, a large number of women trained here in Florida.”

The “Florida Remembers World War II” exhibit includes informational panels, and displays of uniforms, photographs, documents, posters, and personal artifacts.

“Camp Blanding even had a souvenir pillow case that soldiers would buy and send home to sweethearts as a token of where they were training here in Florida,” says Graetz.

More than 50,000 African Americans from Florida entered the military during World War II, primarily as Army support personnel. Some of the famous Tuskegee Airmen were from Florida.

“We’re very fortunate to have had donated for this exhibit, some of the memorabilia of James Polkinghorne, who’s from Pensacola,” says Graetz. “He was a Tuskegee Airman fighter pilot who was flying a strafing mission in Italy when his aircraft went down and he was killed. We have his training yearbook, his posthumous Purple Heart, his pilot’s file, and photographs.”

Florida’s participation in World War II went beyond serving as a training ground for soldiers. Immediately after the United States joined the war, German submarines began attacking supply ships off the coast of Florida.

“Quite a few tankers and freighters were attacked and sunk in Florida,” says Graetz. “In the early months of the war, pretty much the first seven months of 1942, civilians would see a burning tanker [from the shore] and even see a submarine surface. So it really brought the war home to Florida.”

In the 1940s, it was not uncommon to see men working in citrus groves wearing clothing marked with a “P” and “W,” indicating that they were German prisoners of war.

“They were brought back first from the North African campaigns, and some were captured submariners, and then eventually from Europe,” says Graetz. “Germans that were captured and brought to Florida were considered fortunate as opposed to Germans who were captured by the Russians and sent to Siberia. They were held in bases around Florida, and they took classes in English and American Values.”

After the war, Florida’s population expanded by 46%. Many soldiers returned here with their families, or to get an education on the G.I. Bill. To accommodate the influx, the Florida State College for Women became Florida State University.

“Florida produced a booklet called ‘After Victory’ promoting Florida as a state people could move to,” Graetz says.

The Monday, December 8, 1941, Orlando Morning Sentinel “Extra” edition had a one word headline in bright red block letters nearly four inches tall: WAR.

Front page articles detailed the attack on Pearl Harbor, described the imminent declaration of war on Japan, and outlined what retaliation for the attack might look like.

The paper’s front page editorial stated, “This may be a long war. It may last for years. It may, probably will, involve us in actual fighting with Germany and Italy.”

The editorial went on to say, “That means sacrifice. That means that every soldier, every seaman must do his duty and be ready to answer any call. That means the citizen must give up his ideas of profit and easy living. That means the man…in every walk of life must surrender his own plans and purposes in answer to the great call of country and of freedom.”

Young men in Brevard County were ready to answer the call.

“I remember a friend that used to hunt with my dad that came by the house, and he told us about Pearl Harbor,” says lifelong Brevard County resident George L. “Speedy” Harrell, who was 14 years old in 1941. “A lot of people enlisted in the service right away.”

Harrell was too young to serve in the military immediately after Pearl Harbor, instead earning the nickname “Speedy” playing football as a freshman at Cocoa High School. He remembers everybody making sacrifices during wartime.

“The rationing of everything was set up to conserve what we had,” says Harrell. “Gasoline was rationed weekly based on need. I was a growing boy with big feet, and would have to go to the Rationing Board and explain that I needed a new pair of shoes to get it. Tires for your automobile, you had to go before the Rationing Board and show that you needed a new tire.”

Harrell turned 18 before the war ended, and was sent to serve the U.S. Army in Germany.

Immediately after the United States joined World War II, German submarines began attacking supply ships off the coast of Florida.

“Many cargo ships were sunk off Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach by German U-Boats,” said Brevard County resident Bob Cowart in 1988. “The cargo vessels liked to hug the coastline as much as possible in their north-south routes. Since they had to swing far offshore in order to avoid the shallow water off the Cape, that area became one of the favorite spots for the German submarines to torpedo them.”

On May 1, 1942, less than five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the British freighter La Paz was torpedoed off Cape Canaveral and towed to Cocoa Beach, where it sank. The stern of the ship rested on the bottom of the ocean, but the bow was visible above the water. The La Paz was raised, towed to Jacksonville, repaired, and returned to service during the war.

“I had the privilege of working on the salvage operation, along with other local 16 and 17 year olds, and will always remember this as a great experience for a kid of that age,” said Cowart.

Many Brevard County residents remember fondly how 900 cases of Johnny Walker Scotch whiskey was “rescued” from the La Paz and brought ashore for locals to enjoy.

Most ships were not salvageable after being torpedoed by the Germans, but their crews were often able to escape on lifeboats. The refugees would travel through Merritt Island and Cocoa on their way home.

“I remember talking to one seaman who said that he had made three voyages out of New York, and that Cocoa Beach was the furthest south he had come before being torpedoed,” Cowart said.

Not all of the crew members of torpedoed ships were so lucky. One ill-fated lifeboat was displayed at the corner of Brevard Avenue and King Street in Cocoa.

“It was riddled with bullet holes by a German sub which surfaced and machine gunned the helpless survivors in the lifeboat,” said Cowart. “Twelve men died in the lifeboat.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into a global conflict that was partially fought along the coast of Brevard County.

As World War II began in 1939, the population of Florida was less than two million people. The population of the state grew exponentially each decade after World War II, and military installations constructed during that conflict were a major factor in that growth.

Daniel Hutchinson is Assistant Professor of History at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina. His doctoral dissertation at Florida State University was “Military Bases and the Transformation of the Rural South During World War II.”

“During the Great Depression, tourism to Florida really took a very big hit, and with the coming of World War II, many Florida communities that relied on tourism saw military bases as a way to recover,” says Hutchinson. “Hotels, resorts, tourist destinations of all kinds sent letters to the War Department saying ‘turn our hotel into a troop training facility, or a troop recreational facility, or a convalescent hospital,’ and the War Department took up these offers.”

World War II provided Florida with unprecedented economic growth and revived areas that had been crippled during the Great Depression. Defense contracts led to construction jobs, and then other civilian employment opportunities after military facilities were built. Rural landowners often benefited financially from the construction of military installations through government purchase of their property.

The impact of military facilities coming to an area was not always positive. Sometimes entire communities were lost. The impact on African American neighborhoods was usually negative.

“African American communities became prized targets to build military bases, because they were the cheapest lands that were available,” says Hutchinson. “Because African Americans didn’t have any real political strength in terms of resisting this, they often found themselves wiped off the map.”

Stark, Florida is located about 50 miles southwest of Jacksonville. Today, Stark is best known as the home of Florida State Prison. In 1940, Starke was a small, rural community of about 1,400 people. Life in Starke changed radically when the town was chosen as the site of Camp Blanding.

During World War II, Camp Blanding became Florida’s fourth largest city.

“There was a call for construction workers to come build the camp,” says Hutchinson. “Suddenly Starke was deluged with people. Some 32,000 migrants arrived to the community looking for a job. This is still the Great Depression, so the opportunity for a government job at a government pay scale was incredibly attractive.”

People came from as far away as the Midwest seeking construction jobs at Camp Blanding.

“It was in some ways both a benefit and a thorn in the side of Starke,” says Hutchinson. “Starke benefitted tremendously economically from the arrival of these soldiers, but Starke had a difficult time with its limited infrastructure, processing and dealing with thousands of new people.”

Other Florida communities were significantly impacted by the expansion of existing military installations.

“Pensacola, for example, was a community with a long standing military presence, but World War II really heightened the demand for labor there,” says Hutchinson. “The Pensacola Naval Air Station hired 15,000 civilian workers to run its facilities. You have thousands of Floridians leaving the fields and going to work in the cities near these military bases.”

During World War II Florida’s population exploded. Key West had 13,000 residents in 1940 and 45,000 by war’s end five years later. The population of Miami almost doubled to more than 325,000. After the war the population of the United States increased by 15 percent, and the population of Florida expanded by 46 percent.

“One of the lasting impacts these military bases have is it brings in millions of non-Floridians to the state for the first time, who see Florida’s beaches, Florida’s climate, and many of the soldiers that are stationed in Florida during the war are going to come back to Florida after the war as permanent residents,” says Hutchinson.

Building World War II bases also gave Florida the experience needed to bring additional federal jobs and federal infrastructure to the state.

“It’s hard to imagine that without these military bases that Florida would have been as successful in drawing things like NASA and the Space Coast into existence,” says Hutchinson. “Both of those were big government, big military projects, and there’s a connection there.”