Camp Kilmer: Edison staging ground in World War II and its postwar legacy

Camp Kilmer, on the border of Edison and Piscataway, was transformed in 1942 from farmland into one of the United States’ principal staging grounds for troops bound for Europe, a presenter said. "Approximately 11,400 civilians worked for 4 months to transform the site into 1 of the most important staging grounds for American troops heading to Europe during World War 2," the presenter stated.

The camp was named for New Brunswick poet Alfred Joyce Kilmer. The presenter summarized Kilmer’s military service, noting he served with the Fighting 69th and was killed in action in France during World War I. The presenter also emphasized the camp’s scale and throughput: "Camp Kilmer operated more like a small city than a typical army facility," and during World War II it processed 1,320,481 servicemen for duty overseas.

The facility covered more than 1,500 acres and contained over 1,000 buildings, including wooden barracks, theaters, chapels, nine post exchanges and a 1,000-bed hospital. Recreational life at the camp included baseball and football teams, numerous courts and USO shows featuring performers such as Betty Grable and Benny Goodman. The presenter noted celebrity recruits as well, citing Sergeant Joe DiMaggio and Private Red Skelton among those who passed through.

After the war, Camp Kilmer became the main reception and processing center for returning soldiers—sometimes exceeding 5,000 arrivals a day—before being deactivated in the fall of 1949. It was briefly reactivated in the early 1950s for the Korean War. The presenter said the camp’s last major peacetime role came in late 1956, when it served as the receiving center for about 40,000 refugees fleeing the Hungarian revolution.

The presenter also recounted a widely private royal layover: on Oct. 20, 1957, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip reportedly made a secret early-morning stop at Camp Kilmer before continuing to New York. "The Queen got her wish, sort of," the presenter said, describing arrangements that included an army ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan.

In the postwar decades, much of the site was repurposed for civilian uses. The presenter said Vice President Hubert Humphrey reactivated a large portion of the land in 1965 as the Kilmer Job Corps Center, now called the Edison Job Corps Center. The presenter added that 549 acres were given to Rutgers University for its Livingston College campus and that other parcels became the Piscataway campus of the Middlesex County Magnet School and land transferred to Edison Township and an industrial park.

Reflecting on the site’s continuing presence, the presenter said, "It stands as an unlikely crossroads of history right here in Edison." The campus, dorms and green spaces that remain carry forward both the camp’s educational uses and traces of its wartime past.