Facing Racism in the Armed Forces: Black Servicemen in World War II
by Sarah Terzo
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Note: This article contains profanity and references to racial slurs.
For her 1975 book The Invisible Soldier: The Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II, Mary Penick Motley interviewed Black World War II veterans. They spoke about the discrimination they faced and how authorities gave privileges to German prisoners of war that they were denied.
During World War II, the military practiced segregation. Black servicemen were put into all-Black regiments, and these were almost always commanded by white officers. Although there were some lower-level Black officers, such as second lieutenants, the higher ranks were almost exclusively occupied by whites.
The Role of Black Men in the Navy
In the Navy, Black people were limited to being stewards; they were never given combat roles.
Roy Carter enlisted in the Navy after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He wanted to defend his country. During boot camp, he discovered that the only job open to Black people at the time was to wait on white officers:
During our boot training we were given little white coats. I wondered what they were for, oh man, I was a real dum-dum! I soon found out that mess attendants wore these little white coats to wait on the officers.
Here I had enlisted to fight for my country and my great contribution to the war effort was to wait on whites.
Cooking, waiting on table, shining shoes, the whole bit; this was the job for Negroes in the navy in World War II… Here I am spoiling for a fight with the enemy and the question begins to arise, just who the hell is the enemy?
A Survivor’s Experience
Carter’s ship, the USS Gregory, was sunk by a Japanese torpedo. Out of 230 men, Carter was one of only 70 survivors. He spent what he called “the longest night ever” in a lifeboat with other survivors, one of whom was critically injured and died before morning. The next day, Carter and the other survivors were spotted by an American plane and rescued.
After the rescue, Carter said the white sailors “were welcomed everywhere and given every consideration,” while the Black ones were banned from many establishments.
Even the Red Cross discriminated against the Black sailors. When the ship sank, the men lost their paperwork. This led to a delay in getting paid. The Red Cross gave the white sailors “health and comfort money,” but the Black sailors had to fend for themselves.
The Navy gave all the survivors 30-day leave, and the white sailors easily found rides home on trains and airplanes, but Black sailors were refused seats. They had to take the bus, and only after their parents wired them money.
Carter described what he experienced on the journey home:
In Texas up through the Panhandle we were refused food. We couldn’t eat in the restaurants yet we could see German prisoners of war just gulping down succulent steaks and having a ball. Here we had just taken a long swim in the goddamn Pacific Ocean and a lot of men had died horribly and these “mothers” were sucking up to the enemy and refused us food.
The Contrasting Treatment of Black Soldiers and White POWs
David Cason, Jr., a Black soldier, faced combat in Europe. When he was coming home on furlough, he described the following experience:
I was returning [home] by way of El Paso, Texas, when the passengers had a layover. I was hungry and the only place I could find that would serve me was a dingy, dinky place near the station.
The station restaurant was doing a rush business with white civilians and the German prisoners of war. There sat the so-called enemy comfortably seated, laughing, talking, making friends, with the waitresses at their beck and call.
If I had tried to enter the dining room the ever-present MPs [military police] would have busted my skull, a citizen-soldier of the United States. My morale, if I had any left, dipped well below zero. Nothing infuriated me as much as seeing those German prisoners of war receiving the warm hospitality of Texas.
Richard Carter was a Black sergeant who served overseas with the 597th Field Artillery Battalion. While traveling by train to Ft. Huachuca, he had a layover in a small Texas town.
It was a sweltering night, and fans in the station were providing relief, so Carter stretched out on a bench to sleep. He was awakened by what he called a “typical Southern cracker cop” hitting his feet with a billy club. The officer told Carter that “n—s” couldn’t sleep there. He would have to move to the “Colored” section.
Carter said:
… I was so hot, but I wasn’t a kid and I wasn’t about to die at the hands of the likes of him. I moved. There were MPs all over the place but I hadn’t the slightest doubt where they stood.
As I walked in the direction of a sign marked Colored, I passed the station dining room. Would you believe that American MPs and some of Hitler’s bully boys, now prisoners of war, were having a ball together, wining and dining! It was sickening.
He was disgusted, but there was nothing he could do. He continued:
I finally found “my place” under the watchful eye of the Texas Gestapo.
How they managed it I don’t know but there was not a bit of air in the small colored section; not one fan anywhere. Sleep was out of the question because the room was stifling. I just sat there with rivulets of water pouring off me until my train finally arrived.
Privileges for Prisoners
Sometimes, the military kept German POWs on the same Army bases as American soldiers. In some instances, white German POWs were permitted access to facilities denied Black American soldiers.
The military sent Eddie Donald to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, after boot camp. Officials relegated Donald and the other Black soldiers to an area he called “a swampland, the most undesirable area of the whole camp.” White soldiers, he said, were “on good ground with the highway nearby and bus facilities to take them to town.”
Black soldiers were banned from the “white” parts of the base and not allowed to enter the PX. Donald also discovered that much of the nearby town was considered “off-limits” as well. According to him, officials permitted Black soldiers to access only the “ghetto” area.
Donald reluctantly accepted this. But then he observed:
[A] number of German prisoners were in the camp in a special area, not swampland. They were given freedom of movement and had access to facilities denied black American soldiers. They were given passes to town when black soldiers were confined to the area.
Colonel Howard Donovan Queen traveled to another base that held German POWs, Camp Atterbury, Indiana. Buildings such as the Post Exchange were reserved for white soldiers, and Black men could only attend the on-base movie theater at certain times. Col. Queen soon discovered that “German prisoners of war were granted privileges denied to colored soldiers.”
He was able to change the situation by going above the commanding officer’s head and submitting a formal complaint, but conditions in the Army toward Black people were so hostile that he asked to be relieved of his command. White officers of lower rank contradicted his orders, and he witnessed much unfair treatment of Black soldiers that he was powerless to stop.
Ill-Trained and Ill-Equipped
Col. Queen’s breaking point came when military authorities insisted on sending Black soldiers into a war zone without sufficient training, ignoring his concerns. The military accepted his resignation. Later, the 366th suffered significant casualties.
Another Black unit, the 758th Tank Battalion, was issued faulty equipment, receiving old, beaten-up tanks that were constantly breaking down, while white soldiers got the best the Army had to offer.
Some of the survivors interviewed by Motley said that they were sent on suicide missions, describing military objectives with impossible odds. They were so badly managed that some of them suspected the military actually wanted them all to be killed.
This may not have been true, but their accounts show that racism in the military in the 1940s was deeply entrenched and permeated the military leadership at every level, despite the United States presenting itself as a defender of democracy and justice at the time.
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