U.S. Military in Boca Raton Courtesy Florida State Archives By
the time World War II began, both the U.S. Navy and the army’s
Signal Corps had developed techniques for airborne radar (an
acronym for radio detection and ranging). A radar post in the
hills above Pearl Harbor spotted the Japanese attack in December
1941, but could not alert the main forces in time. The Army
Signal Corps opened a radar school at Camp Murphy, now Jonathan
Dickinson State Park in Martin County, and the Army Air Corps
wanted a similar site close by. They considered Vero Beach, but
after lobbying by Boca Raton’s mayor, Jonas C. “Joe” Mitchell,
the Air Corps’ Radio School No. 2 opened (No. 1 was in Illinois)
on land that would become the site of Florida Atlantic
University and Boca Raton Airport. About 50 owners of over 5,820
acres were forced to sell their land to the government under the
Second War Purposes Act, including the Town of Boca Raton and
the Lake Worth Drainage District. As explained in the Miami
Herald on May 17, 1942, o