Camp Upton, Yaphank, Suffolk, New York, USA, 40.86996,-72.887104
Camp Upton was named after Emory Upton, a Union general of the Civil War and was
created in 1917 to house and train soldiers for the United States, which had no large standing army at the
time of its entry into World War I. The 152nd Depot Brigade was the garrison unit that received new recruits
and prepared them for service overseas, and then out processed demobilizing soldiers at the end of the war.
Irving Berlin, the composer, and Alvin York, the most decorated soldier of the American army in World War I,
were processed at Camp Upton. The 77th Division was first organized there. During part of the war, the 82nd
Division was quartered there.
At the end of World War I, the camp was used to demobilize and inactivate
units. Some of the units demobolized at the camp were: the 327th Infantry Regiment, the 325th Infantry
Regiment, the 53rd Brigade, and the 101st Signal Battalion.
In May 1919, Camp Upton became the site of
the Recruit Educational Center, an Army program that enrolled foreign-born, non-English speaking, and
illiterate soldiers. Most of the Recruit Educational Center's inductees were immigrants from Eastern and
Southern Europe. In practice, the program aimed to "Americanize" these immigrants through instruction in the
English language, military protocol, U.S. history, geography, citizenship, and political economy. Soldiers
who graduated from the Recruit Educational Center at Camp Upton were eligible for a three year term of
military service, after which they could be naturalized as American citizens.[1]
In 1921, the federal
government sold the buildings and equipment, but kept the land, designating it Upton National Forest. Many
of the structures from the camp were transported to form the first large scale settlement at Cherry Grove,
New York on Fire Island.[2]
It was used again by the Army in the mobilization of 1940 that preceded the
American entry into World War II and later housed a convalescent and rehabilitation hospital. In 1946, the
camp was closed and ownership transferred to the Brookhaven National Laboratory.