Pride Mixed with Bitterness

Of the 19,168 African-Americans who served in the Marine Corps during World War II, 12,738 went over seas in the defense battalions or combat support companies or as stewards. Those who remained in the United States performed numerous duties: stewards in officers' messes at various headquarters; staff members at the Montford Point Camp or recruits in training there when the conflict ended; or service troops at supply depots at Philadelphia or Norfolk or the Naval Ammunition Depot at McAlester, Oklahoma.

While the African-American Marines in the United States braved loneliness and racial discrimination, those overseas might wait on distant islands for Japanese attacks that never came; manhandle heavy containers out of ships' holds; load all sorts of supplies into landing craft; sort out the cargo on the beachhead, often under deadly fire; and move the desperately need material inland to the fighting units. Men in the defense battalions sometimes unloaded ships, whereas members of the combat support companies became infantrymen in an emergency, and stewards often doubled as stretcher bearers. Looking back at a succession of exhausting, dangerous, and at times boring assignments with the 3d Marine Ammunition Company, Robert D. Little said: "If I had to do it all over again, I'd still be a black Marine . . . . I think they made a man of me."

Brooks E. Gray, who helped form the Montford Point Marine Association to preserve the heritage of the wartime black Marines, has spoken of the "pride mixed with bitterness" experienced by the African-Americans who wore the uniform of the Marine Corps during World War II. Segregation prevailed at the time, even following the black Marines across the Pacific to Japan and the Asian mainland. "The in justices . . . in those segregated units," Gray recalled, "sparked a fierce determination to excel." And these African-Americans did excel. "We represented," he believed, "the breakthrough of the final barrier" — the obstacle of racism — "by being part of the elite corps." Events proved Gray correct, for the post-World War II Marine Corps could never return to the racial policy of 1940. Blacks had won the fight for the right to serve; they were in the Marine Corps to stay. Moreover, integration of the races would come to the Corps, though that radical change had to await President Harry S Truman's executive order banning racial discrimination in the armed forces, issued in 1948, and the demands for manpower imposed by the Korean War, which broke out two years later. By the time Gray retired in 1969 as a master gunnery sergeant after 24 years of service, the Marine Corps had committed itself to racial integration .

BLACK MARINE UNITS
OF THE FLEET MARINE FORCE, WORLD WAR II