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.
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