When Danger Lurked in Paradise

Portrait
Jack Voisin at Miami Beach, Florida, 1943

My father, John E. “Jack” Voisin, was stationed at Miami Beach, Florida for basic training from August to September 1943.  He returned there in March 1944 for air crew classification processing.

The United States Army Air Forces operated Basic Training Center #4 at Miami Beach.  Jack was housed some of the time in the Netherland Hotel, a seven-story ocean-side hotel on the beach. This sounds luxurious, but as early as 1942 the Army Air Force had bought or leased 452 hotels and converted them into schools and barracks to process the huge number of recruits. 1  He later stayed in “tent city,” which was a vast group of canvas tents.

Jack was an 18 year old from Michigan who also liked photography.  He took several photographs of the South Beach area along Ocean Drive, among the Art Deco hotels where he stayed and underwent training.  He sent these prints home and wrote descriptions on most of them for his parents.  In studying these I discovered some details that are historically very interesting.  Even though Miami Beach was a paradise, it was essentially a military installation.  It was guarded against enemy attack; something you would not consider while sitting on the beach today.

Netherland
Netherland Hotel as a partial flight of air cadets marches in front.

Jack’s room is marked by a small arrow on the fourth floor, right corner, of the building.  It was right across the street from the beach and ocean.  He wrote, “Home–Netherland Hotel. This is the hotel. I took it at about 7:30 P.M. and the sun was just about down. You can see about a half of a flight marching [by].”

Search Light
Atop the Netherland Hotel with search light tower on the beach (inset).

The beach had search light towers.  Jack wrote, “I took this from the top floor of the hotel facing south. You can see a search light above the trees.”

Guard
Beach area with machine gun emplacement.

The beach also had .50 caliber machine gun emplacements.  Jack wrote, “Here is a guy climbing up to get a coconut. The tent you see is for the guys that guard the beach. They have a .50 machine gun near it.”

Dirigible
Dirigible patrolling the waters.

The threat of enemy submarines was real.  Here a dirigible is probably patrolling the waters for submarines.  Jack wrote, “This is the beach [across] the street from the hotel. I took it in order to get the [dirigible] on it. Some times they come right over the hotel.”

Vintage photographs can sometimes reveal interesting clues about the past, as these did about war-time Miami Beach.

Footnotes

  1. Army Air Forces, The Official Guide to the Army Air Forces, May 1944, p. 102.

One thought on “When Danger Lurked in Paradise”

  1. My father was one of the millions who returned from WW2 and never talked about it. He was at the Miami Beach B.T.C. from early September through the end of November ’43. He became an air cadet, then went off to a college detachment until the Spring of ’44. I believe he got caught up in the “too many in the pipeline” situation at that time and went on to gunnery school. He served with the 8th AF from November ’44 through the end of the war as a ball turret gunner, 35 missions. When he died in 1977 (age 56), he left behind a small box of war memorabilia which got passed on to me eventually. I am trying to get a better sense of what he experienced during the war, starting with what’s in the box and building out through research. I am particularly interested in the stories of men who were in the same places as he was at the same time he was, so your Dad’s pics (and comments) of Miami Beach are very interesting to me. Thanks so much.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*