Selected on 27 April 1975, the installation served as one of four main U.S. Vietnamese Refugee Processing Centers operated by the Interagency Task Force for Indochina Refugees, where base personnel housed and processed more than 10,000 Southeast Asian refugees, the first 374 of which arrived on board a Northwest Orient Boeing 747 on 4 May 1975.Braxton, Sheila, "Refugees Arrive; 514 Due in Today", Playground Daily News, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, 5 May 1975, Vol. 30, No. 75, p. 1A. The final 16 refugees processed through the Eglin center departed on 15 September 1975.Fort Walton Beach, Florida, "Refugees Leave Eglin's Tent City", Playground Daily News, 17 September 1975, Vol. 30, No. 191, p. 1A. Eglin again became an Air Force refugee resettlement center on 25 April 1980 processing over 9,200 Cubans who fled to the U.S. between April and May 1980.
