Clearwater Mirrors the Nation

Clearwater residents were asked to cooperate in practice blackouts between 9 and 9:30 p.m. and to stay off the streets as war fever began. They remembered Pearl Harbor by increasing their purchases of Defense Savings Stamps and local sales surged to more than $150,000 per month.

Mayor George R. Seavy asked that stamps be sold at every business in Clearwater. Pinellas County became a leading county in War Bond and War Stamp purchases by May 1942. With Safety Harbor, Mayor Seavy also launched a Joint Salvage Campaign for the collection of old scrap metal, old rubber and rags, while Clearwater’s Boy Scouts began calling on homes for waste collection. A Junior Salvage Army was formed by local schoolchildren to further aid the war effort.

Mail sent abroad was subject to censorship and post office policies were published in local papers.

Hotels Change Hands—and Faces

Rumors circulated that the U.S. Army would take over the Belleview Biltmore Hotel. These rumors proved true in early 1942 when the Army moved in. All luxurious furnishings were removed and the hotel repainted olive drab. Up to 3,000 soldiers and airmen would be housed there at any one time until the end of the war. Tents were erected on the golf course to house even more soldiers and Army Air Corps personnel.

The Army moved into the Belleview Biltmore Hotel in early 1942, removed the luxurious furnishings and painted it olive drab.

The Fort Harrison, Gray Moss Inn, Dunedin Isles Hotel and literally every other hotel in the area served as supplemental housing for soldiers stationed at MacDill and Drew fields in Tampa. The Army took over the Pinellas County Master Airport on Tampa Bay and billeted troops there as well.

Army personnel drilled in the streets and raised the Stars and Stripes daily in front of the Pinellas County Courthouse. Thousands of soldiers, traveling by bus to save badly needed (and strictly rationed) gas, enjoyed time in the sun at Clearwater’s beaches before shipping out for foreign shores and the dangers of combat.