BLACKS IN THE
MARINE CORPS
By
Henry I. Shaw, Jr.
and
Ralph W. Donnelly
HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1975
Library of Congress Card No. 75-600089
PCN 190 003062 00
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C. 10402--Price $1.90
Stock Number 008-055-0089-1
FOREWORD
Today's generation of Marines serve in a fully integrated Corps where
blacks constitute almost one-fifth of our strength. Black officers,
non-commissioned officers, and privates are omnipresent, their service so
normal a part of Marine life that it escapes special notice. The fact that
this was not always so and that as little as 34 years ago there were no black
Marines deserves explanation. There has long been a need for a history of
blacks in the Marine Corps. This concise account, BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS,
was written to fill that need. It has focused in particular on the segregated
black units of World War II whose veterans have not had an official history
which highlighted their accomplishments. These were the men who in a very real
sense earned a place for black Marines in the Corps.
The historical trail of the black Marines became hard to trace once
integration and non-discrimination became official government policy during
the Korean War era. In essence, they disappeared within the Marine Corps
family, surfacing only on occasions of individual exploits. The story of these
later years, therefore, is more general in nature and deals primarily with the
reaction of the Marine Corps and the men and women in its ranks to a period of
tremendous social upheaval and change.
Throughout all stages of the preparation of this history, there has been
a conscious attempt to ensure that the story as written would be both accurate
and unbiased. The manuscript was reviewed repeatedly by black and white
Marines and scholars who were knowledgeable of the events portrayed. In this
respect, since it was the consensus of all concerned that the racial
designation "black" was now preferable to all others, it has been used
throughout the text except where quotations dictated other terminology.
The reviewers of the draft manuscript seldom took issue with the
historical facts as presented, but they were rarely unanimous in their view of
the interpretation of these facts. In the absence of unanimity, the authors
have presented such interpretations as appeared justified to them. The authors
of this monograph are both widely experienced Marine Corps historians. Mr.
Shaw, who is the Chief Historian of the History and Museums Division, is a
graduate of Hope College who obtained his MA in history at Columbia
University. A Marine veteran of World War II and Korea, he has written
extensively on Marine operations in the modern era. Mr. Donnelly, Assistant
Head of the Reference Section, is a graduate of Wilson Teachers' College who
received his MA in political science from Catholic University. He has had a
varied career as school teacher, insurance executive, and official historian
and is a widely published writer on historical subjects. In the interest of
accuracy and objectivity, the History and Museums Division welcomes comments
on this history from interested individuals.
E. H. SIMMONS
Brigadier General, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)
Director of Marine Corps History and Museums
Reviewed and approved:
14 September 1975
iii
PREFACE
This has been a difficult history to research. The records of black
Marine units are sparse; the administrative correspondence concerning blacks
in the Marine Corps is equally scanty. One lucky find was a file of
correspondence relating to the efforts to find a place for black Marine
barracks detachments in the late 1940s. It came to light as the result of the
research efforts of Mr. Morris J. MacGregor of the Army's Center of Military
History, who is writing a history of blacks in the Armed Forces for the
Department of Defense. A similar unexpected find was several folders of
statistical data on black Marines in the 40s and 50s which had been relegated
to the back of someone's file drawer in the Manpower Department and happily
rediscovered by a person who recognized its historical worth.
The basic information compiled on World War II Marines was gained by a
painstaking extraction of data from the monthly muster rolls of black Marine
units. The Reference Section of the History and Museums Division has
maintained subject files over the years consisting of pertinent newspaper
clippings, extracts from official documents, copies of answers of public and
official queries, and other valuable miscellaneous pieces of information.
Those files pertaining to black Marines were used extensively but with care as
to the authenticity of the sources. An assemblage of official documents
relating to blacks in the Marine Corps, maintained by the then Personnel
Department, and later by the Commandant's Special Assistant on Minority
Affairs, was turned over to the Reference Section at the start of the writing
of the history.
All apparently pertinent published sources were consulted, but it was
soon discovered that very little has been written about black Marines and much
of that which has been available is inaccurate. The Camp Lejeune newspaper was
read, page by page, from 1942 until 1950 to uncover news of the men of
Montford Point. Surprisingly little was published in the way of news stories
specifically concerned with black Marines, but the columnists and
photographers unwittingly provided a mine of information. A summary history of
black Marines which had been prepared in the Historical Branch in 1946, as
later enlarged upon by Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth H. Berthoud, Jr., who also
added a history of black officers, proved very useful. Colonel Berthoud
himself was even more useful as a source of information in his conversations
with both authors.
When most of the documentary research had been completed, Mr. Donnelly
wrote a first draft of this history. It provided the backbone for much of what
is now printed, but it was obvious that more information than could be culled
from official sources was needed. To fill the gaps, Mr. Shaw conducted a
number of interviews in the summer of 1972 with serving black officers and
enlisted men and with black veterans. Key interviews in this series were those
with Assistant Secretary of the Navy James E. Johnson, then-Lieutenant Colonel
Frank E. Petersen, Jr., Sergeant Major Edgar R. Huff, and retired Sergeant
Major Gilbert H. "Hashmark" Johnson. Through the good offices of the Montford
Point Marine Association (MMPA), Mr. Shaw was able to hold extensive
discussions, both informally and on tape, with members attending the
association's 1972 annual meeting. There he benefitted greatly from an
extended talk with retired Master Gunnery Sergeant Brooks E. Gray, Jr., first
President of the MMPA. Taped interviews were conducted with Marine veterans
Herman Darden, Jr., Obie Hall, Alex Johnson, Robert D. Little, and Norman
Sneed.
Once the rewrite of the narrative had started, a chance visit from an old
friend, Master Gunnery Sergeant Frederick H. Clayton, who had been a
classification specialist at Montford Point and with both the 51st and 52d
Defense Battalions, provided the answers to several baffling questions.
Throughout the writing of the final version of the history, Majors Edward L.
Green and Solomon P. Hill were ever ready to provide advice, information, and
constructive criticism. Three civilian employees of Headquarters Marine Corps,
Joseph H. Carpenter, Charles H. Doom, and David C. Hendricks, all World War II
veterans of Montford Point, were particularly helpful in providing background
information on personalities and events and in clearing up disputed points
about the service of black Marines.
v
A number of knowledgeable individuals were asked to review the final
draft manuscript. The majority of their valuable comments have been
incorporated in the text. Active duty reviewers included Colonels Berthoud and
Petersen, Majors Green and Hill, and Gunnery Sergeant Roy G. Johnson. Retired
and former Marines who read the manuscript included Secretary Johnson,
Sergeant Major Huff, Master Gunnery Sergeant Clayton, Mr. Carpenter, and Mr.
Hendricks. Dr. Robert Humphrey of the USMC Human Relations Institute at San
Diego had the text reviewed by "my best two black advisors in the Corps" and
provided their comments. Dr. Charles W. Simmons, Head of the History and
Geography Department at Norfolk State College and former sergeant major of the
51st Defense Battalion, was particularly helpful in his review. Mr. MacGregor,
drawing on his considerable background in recent black military history,
furnished many useful and constructive comments. All members of the 1973-74
Commandant's Advisory Committee on Marine Corps History read and critiqued the
manuscript including Major General Donald M. Weller, USMC (Retired), Chairman,
Major General Norman J. Anderson, USMC (Retired), Colonel Frederick S.
Aldridge, USMC (Retired), Dr. Gordon A. Craig, Dr. Philip K. Lundeberg, and
Mr. Robert L. Sherrod.
The editorial review of the manuscript was made by Brigadier General
Edwin H. Simmons, Director of Marine Corps History and Museums, and Colonel
Herbert M. Hart, Deputy Director for Marine Corps History. The typing of the
manuscript through its various drafts was the responsibility in succession of
Miss Cynthia L. Brown, Lance Corporal Carl W. Rice, and Miss Catherine A.
Stoll. Miss Stoll and PFC Denise L. Alexander prepared the index for the
printer. The maps, charts, and cover copy for the history were prepared by
Staff Sergeant Paul A. Lloyd. Unless otherwise noted, official Department of
Defense photographs were used throughout the text.
RALPH W. DONNELLY HENRY I. SHAW, JR.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Original On-Line
Page Page
FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
CHAPTER 1. A CHOSEN FEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Camp Opens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The First Graduates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Expansion Looms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
CHAPTER 2. THE 51st DEFENSE BATTALION . . . . . . . . . . 15
The First Combat Unit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Overseas Duty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
On to the Marshalls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Home Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
CHAPTER 3. THE 52d DEFENSE BATTALION. . . . . . . . . . . 23
First to the Marshalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Forward to Guam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Postwar Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
CHAPTER 4. DEPOT AND AMMUNITION COMPANIES . . . . . . . . 29
Into Service Overseas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Combat in the Marianas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Combat on Peleliu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Combat on Iwo Jima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Combat on Okinawa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Occupation Duty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Windup in the Pacific. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
CHAPTER 5. BETWEEN THE WARS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Finding a Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Truman and Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
The End in Sight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
CHAPTER 6. A DECADE OF INTEGRATION. . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Combat in Korea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Black Leaders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Changing Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
CHAPTER 7. THE VIETNAM ERA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Action Against Discrimination. . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Racial Turmoil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
vii
Original On-Line
Page Page
Black Officer Procurement and Human Relations. . . . . 74
Vietnam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
APPENDIX A. NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
APPENDIX B. BLACK MARINE UNITS OF THE FLEET MARINE FORCE,
WORLD WAR II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
APPENDIX C. BLACK MARINE MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENTS. . . . 97
INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
viii
INTRODUCTION
Prior to President Harry Truman's 1948 declaration of intent to end
segregation in the U.S. Armed Forces, blacks who served most often did so in
segregated units or under a quota system designed to limit their number. In
time of war, the need for men usually required the recruitment or drafting of
blacks; in peacetime the number of black servicemen dwindled. In large part,
the situation of blacks in uniform was a reflection of their status in
society, particularly that part of American society which practiced racial
segregation and discrimination.
During the American Revolution blacks served in small numbers in both the
Continental and state navies and armies. According to surviving muster and pay
rolls, there were at least three blacks in the ranks of the Continental
Marines and ten others who served as Marines on ships of the Connecticut,
Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania navies.<1> It is probable that more blacks
served as Marines in the Revolution who were not identified as such in the
rolls. The first recorded black Marine in the Continental service was John
Martin or "Keto," a slave of William Marshall of Wilmington, Delaware, who was
recruited without Marshall's knowledge or permission by Marine Captain Miles
Pennington in April 1776. Martin served on board the Continental brig REPRISAL
until October 1777 when the ship foundered off the Newfoundland Banks. All of
her crew except the cook were lost.<2>
On 27 August 1776, Isaac Walker, identified on the rolls as a Negro, was
enlisted in Captain Robert Mullan's company of Continental Marines in
Philadelphia, and on 1 October, a recruit listed simply as "Orange. . . Negro"
was enrolled. Both of these men were still on the company payroll as of 1
April 1777.<3> It is quite possible that they served with Mullan's unit in the
Second Battle of Trenton (Assunpink Creek) on 2 January 1777 and in the Battle
of Princeton the following day.
Those few black men who have been identified as Marines from surviving
Revolutionary War rosters were pioneers who were not followed by others of
their race until 1 June 1942. The Continental Marines went out of existence
within a year after the Treaty of Paris was signed on 11 April 1783. When
Congress conditionally authorized the construction of six frigates for a new
Navy in 1794, Marine guards were part of the planned ships' complements. In
1797, after the completion of three of the frigates, Constitution,
Constellation, and United States, was authorized, Marines were actually
enlisted. The Secretary of War, who also supervised the Navy, on 16 March 1798
prescribed a set of rules governing the enrollment of Marines for the
Constellation which provided that "No Negro, Mulatto or Indian to be enlisted.
. . ."<4>
These regulations prohibiting the enlistment of Negroes were continued
when Congress, on 11 July 1798, reestablished a separate Marine Corps with a
major in command. The new Commandant, Major William Ward Burrows, was explicit
on the subject in his instructions to his recruiting officers. To Lieutenant
John Hall at Charleston, South Carolina, he wrote:
You may enlist as many Drummers and Fifers as possible, I do not
care what Country the D & Fifers are of but you must be careful not
to enlist more Foreigners than as one to three natives. You can make
use of Blacks and Mulattoes while you recruit, but you cannot enlist
them.<5>
The regulations for recruiting Marines were much more selective than
those for seamen because of the reliance on the small guards on board ship to
maintain discipline, prevent mutinies, and give a military tone to men-of-war.
This situation was, in part, a carry over from the experience of British
Marines, about whom the observation had been made a hundred years earlier:
It may be added to what has been said of the usefulness of the said
[Marine] Regimts that the whole body of seamen on board the Fleet, being
a loose collection of undisciplined people, and (as experience shows)
sufficiently inclined to mutiny, the Marine Regimts will be a powerful
check to their disorders, and will be able to prevent the disasterous
consequences that may thence result to their Mats [Majesties] service.<6>
ix
Certainly those instrumental in recreating the American Navy had before
them the spectacle and lesson of the British Navy's Spithead and Nore mutinies
of April and May 1797 and the part played by Marines in their suppression.
There is no known record of black Marines serving in the various wars of
the 19th Century. The Navy did frequently enlist blacks as seamen, so much so
that at one time in 1839 the Secretary of the Navy issued a directive that no
more than five percent of enlistees could be blacks.<7> Thousands of blacks
served in the Federal Army and Navy during the Civil War and some continued to
serve thereafter--in the Army's case in two black infantry and two black
cavalry regiments which fought the Indians on the western frontier.
Mixed crews with blacks in all ratings remained a feature of the Navy up
until World War I, when the majority of black volunteers were assigned to the
Messman Branch. Following the war, black recruitment in the Navy ceased for
more than a decade and when it resumed in 1932, blacks were again only
enlisted in the Messman Branch.<8> The Army used blacks in segregated units in
World War I and continued the practice following the war. At the onset of
American involvement in World War II, the segregation of blacks in the Armed
Forces continued. Black Army volunteers and draftees were assigned to
all-black units. The Navy restricted its black volunteers to steward duty and
the Marine Corps accepted no blacks at all.
x
CHAPTER 1
A CHOSEN FEW
The door was opened for blacks to serve in all branches of the Armed
Forces on 25 June 1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive
Order No. 8802 establishing the Fair Employment Practices Commission with this
statement:
In affirming the policy of full participation in the defense
program by all persons regardless of color, race, creed, or
national origin, and directing certain action in furtherance of
said policy . . . all departments of the government, including
the Armed Forces, shall lead the way in erasing discrimination
over color or race.<1>
Major General Commandant Thomas Holcomb appointed Brigadier General
Thomas E. Watson to represent the Marine Corps on the newly established
commission, and the Corps took preliminary steps to comply with the
President's Executive Order. There is no question but that the order was
unpopular at Headquarters Marine Corps. Faced with the necessity of expanding
the Corps to meet the threatening war situation, few, if any, of the Marine
leaders were interested in injecting a new element into the training picture.
There was serious doubt that blacks would meet the high standards of the
Marine Corps. Once war had broken out, this opposition stiffened. The
Commandant, in testimony before the General Board of the Navy on 23 January
1942, indicated that it had long been his considered opinion that "there would
be a definite loss of efficiency in the Marine Corps if we have to take
Negroes. . . ."<2>
General Holcomb also indicated that the Marine Corps did not have the
facilities or trained personnel to handle all the whites who wanted to join
after Pearl Harbor. If there were to be black Marine units, he noted that he
could use only "the best type of officer on this project, because it will take
a great deal of character and technique to make the thing a success, and if it
is forced upon us we must make it a success."<3> The need for experienced
noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in training blacks was equally acute and the
Commandant felt that "they simply can not be spared if we are going to be
ready for immediate service with the fleet."<4> Concluding his remarks, he
said, "the Negro race has every opportunity now to satisfy its aspirations for
combat, in the Army--a very much larger organization than the Navy or Marine
Corps--and their desire to enter the naval service is largely, I think, to
break into a club that doesn't want them."<5> Regardless of the Commandant's
private protests, the pressure was on from the White House and from other
public sources to get on with the enlistment of blacks for general duty in the
Navy and Marine Corps. Wendell L. Wilkie, the titular head of the Republican
Party, in a speech delivered at the Freedom House inaugural dinner on 19 March
1942, described the Navy's "racial bias" in excluding blacks from enlisting
except as mess attendants as a "mockery." He challenged, "Are we always as
alert to practice [democracy] here at home as we are to proclaim it
abroad?"<6> The Administration's answer, delivered by Secretary of the Navy
Frank Knox on 7 April, was that the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps would
soon accept blacks for enlistment for general service in active duty reserve
components. Actual recruitment would begin when suitable training sites were
established.<7> Secretary Knox's statement was followed on 20 May by an
announcement from the Navy Department that on 1 June the Navy would begin
recruiting 1,000 blacks a month for shore and high seas service and that
during June and July a complete battalion of 900 blacks would be formed by the
Marine Corps.<8>
This was to be a new experience for the Marine Corps. One officer
recalled:
. . .when the colored came in, we had the appropriations and the
authority, and we could have gotten 40,000 white people. It just
scared us to death when the colored were put on it. I went over
to Selective Service and saw General Hershey, and he turned me
1
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
over to a lieutenant colonel [Campbell C. Johnson?]--that was
in April--and he was one grand person. I told him, "Eleanor
[Mrs. Roosevelt] says we gotta take in Negroes, and we are just
scared to death; we've never had any in; we don't know how to
handle them; we are afraid of them." He said, "I'll do my best
to help you get good ones. I'll get the word around that if
you want to die young, join the Marines. So anybody that joins
[has] got to be pretty good!" And it was the truth. We got
some awfully good Negroes.<9>
The Beginnings
In the course of a study prepared on the possible uses of blacks in the
Marine Corps by Brigadier General Keller E. Rockey, Director of the Division
of Plans and Policies, the possibility that they might be employed in a
messmen's branch, similar to the Navy's, was considered, but the Corps at that
time did not have such a branch. Strong doubts were expressed that blacks
could serve successfully in combat units, citing the Army's experience that
the General Classification Test scores of the majority of black recruits
showed low levels of learning aptitude.<10> The Marine Corps actually had
little choice in the matter. The die had been cast. There would be blacks in
the Marine Corps and some at least would serve in combat units. The initial
vehicle for that service would be a composite defense battalion, a unit
containing seacoast artillery, antiaircraft artillery, infantry, and tanks,
whose task was overseas base defense.
Units of this type, their organization always tailored to their mission,
were already deployed overseas and had seen combat. Outnumbered elements of
the 1st Defense Battalion had gallantly defended Wake Island from invading
Japanese. Other units of the 1st on Johnson and Palmyra and of the 3d and 6th
Battalions on Midway had engaged enemy ships and planes with seacoast defense
and antiaircraft guns.<11>
As General Holcomb had pointed out to the General Board, the selection of
an officer to head the black unit, in fact to oversee all black Marine
training, was crucial. The choice was a wise and fortunate one. Colonel Samuel
A. Woods, Jr., a native of South Carolina and a graduate of The Citadel, had
some 25 years experience as an officer, including service in France in World
War I, duty in Cuba, China, the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines, and
service with the fleet.<12> In addition to a varied and well rounded career,
he had personal qualities that made him a memorable
Colonel Samuel A. Woods, Jr., first Commanding Officer, 51st
Composite Defense Battalion and Montford Point Camp. (USMC
Photo 9511).
man to the first black Marines. Almost universally they speak of him with
respect and affection. In the words of one black NCO who served closely with
him, his most outstanding quality was "his absolute fairness. He would throw
the book at you if you had it coming, but he would certainly give you an
opportunity to prove yourself."<13>
Colonel Woods, basing his findings upon a General Board report to
Secretary Knox of 20 March, presented his plans for the program to be
established for black Marines to General Rockey on 21 April. He based his
concept on a minimum of 1,000 black reserve recruits to be equipped as a
defense battalion after six months. Training was to be conducted at Mumford
Point (later renamed Montford Point) at the Marine Barracks, New River, North
Carolina. The barracks, soon to be named Camp Lejeune, was already the major
east coast combat training site for Fleet Marine Force (FMF) units and it
would soon be the only training site for black Marines. The sum of $750,000
was alloted to construct and enlarge temporary barracks and supporting
facilities for the new camp at Montford Point.
Some of the colonel's plan came to fruition,
2
A CHOSEN FEW
other parts were changed to meet the circumstances at Montford Point.
Basically, however, a headquarters and service battery and one or more recruit
training batteries would be formed as the initial camp complement. The first
recruits to report would have cooking experience. It was expected that boot
camp and basic training would take 180 days. At the end of this time, the
black Marines would receive combat equipment and organize for training as a
composite defense battalion. The first appointments of black NCOs would be
made at about the same time.
Colonel Woods recognized the battalion's table of organization contained
"some ranks which normally require considerable experience and more than 12
years' service to attain."<14> Since the unit was eventually to be composed
entirely of black enlisted men and white officers, blacks would have to learn
on the job to fill all NCO billets. Promotion was to be governed by length of
service, experience, and demonstrated ability, and controlled by changes in
the training allowance for the battalion.<15>
Recruiting was to begin on 1 June 1942. Although the public announcement
was not made until 20 May, the basic instructions for Marine Corps Recruiting
Divisions were sent out in a letter from the Commandant on 15 May. This letter
set a quota of 200 recruits each from the Eastern and Central Divisions while
the Southern was to furnish 500 of the initial 900 recruits. These men were to
be citizens between 17 and 29 years of age, and they were to meet the existing
standards for enlistment in the Corps. They were to be enlisted in Class
III(c), Marine Corps Reserve, and assigned to inactive duty in a General
Service Unit of their Reserve District. Both the service record book and the
enlistment contract were to be stamped "Colored."<16>
When recruiting opened on 1 June, the first men to enlist were Alfred
Masters and George O. Thompson (1 June), George W. James and John E. L.
Tillman (2 June), Leonard L. Burns (3 June), and Edward A. Culp (5 June), all
in the 8th Reserve District, headquartered at Pensacola, Florida. On 8 June,
James W. Brown in the 3d District (New York) and George L. Glover and David W.
Sheppard in the 6th and 7th Districts (Charleston) enlisted. From then on the
number on the rolls gradually rose, with the instructions to recruiters that
the first men to be sent to Montford Point would be those who had skills that
would help ready the camp for those to follow.
The majority of the recruits were well motivated to join the Marine
Corps. One recruit, Edgar R. Huff, from Gadsden, Alabama, who later became the
senior sergeant major in the Marine Corps, expressed the feelings of a lot of
those first men when he said: "I wanted to be a Marine because I had always
heard that the Marine Corps was the toughest outfit going and I felt that I
was the toughest going, and so I wanted to be a member of the best
organization."<17>
Other recruits, faced with a long delay in reporting to boot camp unless
they had qualifications that were needed in the initial camp setup, stretched
the truth a little. In Boston, a young black, Obie Hall, who eventually became
the first man in the first squad in the first regular recruit platoon
organized at Montford Point, told the recruiting sergeant that he could drive
a truck. He recalled later, "I could no more drive a truck than a man in the
moon, [but] I said, 'I'm a truck driver.'"<18> And as a result he arrived at
Montford Point on 2 September 1942.
The original schedule called for about 25 cooks, bakers, and barbers to
report to camp on 26 August. The next 100 men were to report on 2-3 September
and another 125 or so with miscellaneous qualifications were to arrive on
16-17 September. The middle of each month thereafter was to bring about 200
recruits until the target total of 1,200 men was reached.<19>
The Camp Opens
On 18 August 1942, Headquarters and Service Battery of the 51st Composite
Defense Battalion was activated at Montford Point with Colonel Woods as
battalion commander. His executive officer and officer in charge of recruit
training was Lieutenant Colonel Theodore A. Holdahl, a World War I enlisted
man commissioned as a regular officer in 1924, who had served in the
Philippines, China, Nicaragua, and British Guiana.<20> Battery strength, all
white Marines, was 23 officers and 90 enlisted men, these last soon to be
known to black recruits as SES men (Special Enlisted Staff). While there was a
sprinkling of experienced officers and warrant officers, the majority of the
commissioned strength was second lieutenants not long out of officers'
training at
3
Map of MONTFORD POINT 1943-1945
4
A CHOSEN FEW
the Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, Virginia. The staff NCOs, sergeants, and
some of the corporals were men with years of experience in the Marine Corps.
The few privates first class (PFCs) and privates filled clerical, motor
transport, and other camp support billets.
The men chosen to be drill instructors (DIs) were "old line" Marines, men
who were to impress the black recruits with their bearing and firmness of
manner. In the memory of one of the few recruits who had had prior experience
in the Armed Forces, Gilbert H. Johnson, these DIs "set about from the very
beginning to get us thoroughly indoctrinated into the habits and the thinking
and the actions of the Marine Corps. Discipline seemed to be their lone stock
in trade, and they applied it with a vengeance, very much to our later
benefit."<21>
On schedule, 13 of the 24 black recruits expected in August arrived at
Montford Point on the 26th. The first black private to set foot in the camp
was Howard P. Perry of Charlotte, North Carolina. He was joined on that
eventful first day by Jerome D. Alcorn, Willie B. Cameron, Otto Cherry,
Lawrence S. Cooper, Harold O. Ector, Eddie Lee, Ulysses J. Lucas, Robert S.
Parks, Jr., Edward Polin, Jr., Emerson E. Roberts, Gilbert C. Rousan, and
James O. Stallworth. The rest of the 23 men who eventually arrived in August
came in over the next five days. Battery A of the 51st Composite Defense
Battalion was organized on 26 August "as an administrative and tactical unit
for the training of recruit platoons," with Second Lieutenant Anthony Caputo
as commanding officer.<22>
In September recruit training began in earnest. What Montford Point
Marines later called the "Mighty" 1st, 2d, and 3d Recruit Platoons were
organized with 40 men in each platoon. Several SES NCOs were assigned to each
platoon to give the men experience in handling black recruits; as more men
came in in mid-September many of the original DIs were transferred to help
form new platoons. This was to be the experience of the first few months, in
fact it was not long before exceptional recruits were being singled out and
made "Acting Jacks," assistant DIs in their own platoons. This came about
partially because of the shortage of white NCOs and equally as well because
one purpose of all training at Montford Point was to discover and develop
potential black NCOs.
The number of voluntary enlistments of black Marines was not up to the
anticipated rate. The requirement for these first recruits to have ability in
needed skills was undoubtedly a factor in the slow intake. It became necessary
on 9 October to modify the plans for assembling the black personnel of the
51st, and the assignment of experienced SES personnel had to be curtailed in
the face of pressure for men for FMF units already deployed in the Pacific.
Although it had been anticipated that 1,200 black recruits would be enlisted
by the end of October less than 600 were in camp.<23> The Commandant was
writing as late as 19 December that "colored personnel will continue to be
procured and ordered to the 51st Composite Defense Battalion at the rate of
200 recruits per month until 1,200 is reached."<24>
The camp at this time made an indelible impression on the incoming
recruits. Coming off Highway 24 near the small and sleepy town of
Jacksonville, a narrow road about a mile long led through a corridor of tall
pine trees into a large clearing where there was:
. . .a headquarters building (#100), a chapel, two warehouses,
a theatre building with two wings, which later housed a library,
barber shop, [and] classification room on one side and a
recreation slop chute [beer hall] on the other, a dispensary
building, a mess hall, designated by the recruits as "The Greasy
Spoon," quarters and facilities for the SES personnel, a small
steam generating plant, a small motor transport compound, a small
officers' club, and 120 green prefabricated huts, each designed
for billeting 16 men.<25>
Surrounding the open spaces of the main camp area were thick pine
forests. Beyond the north forest area was Highway 24, to the south the point
of land that gave the area its name thrust into the New River, to the west was
the river, Wilson Bay, and the town of Jacksonville, and to the east was
Scales Creek, which had notorious areas of quicksand. Across the creek was an
old Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp area now partially occupied by a
war dog training center. In all there was about 5-1/2 square miles of rugged
ground in the original camp site. Mosquitoes abounded, the woods were full of
snakes, and bears padded about through the camp, much to the consternation of
recruits who saw their tracks when they fell out for morning roll call. There
was a lot of bush in the camp area to start off with, but the boots soon
cleared it away or wore it away with their incessant drilling.
Part and parcel of this somewhat drab and uninviting encampment was the
traditional DI reception the incoming recruits received. The idea at all boot
camps, whether white at Parris
5
Montford Point Camp as it appeared in 1943. In the left center
is the mess hall; in the right center are the "little green huts"
of boot camps. (Photo from Montford Point Pictorial).
Island and San Diego or black at Montford Point, was to knock the new recruit
off balance, keep him on the run, hammer at him physically and psychologically
day and night, and eventually meld him as an individual into a member of a
team, his platoon. There was ample room for the men to believe one DI's
statement, "I'm going to make you wish you never had joined this damn Marine
Corps."<26>
In point of fact, however, Gilbert Johnson, who had served six years in
the Army's black 25th Infantry on the Mexican Border in the 1920s and most of
the 1930s as a Navy mess attendant and officers' steward, sagely observed in
regard to the white DIs that "the policy was to select the type of individuals
who were not against the Negro being a Marine, and had it been otherwise, why
I'm afraid that we would have all left the first week. Some of us, probably,
the first night."<27>
Johnson, who had been an Officers' Steward 2d Class, had asked to be
discharged from the Navy in order to enlist in the Marine Corps as a private.
The Commandant and the Secretary of the Navy concurred in his request; he
received his discharge, enlisted in the Marines, and soon became known, once
out of boot camp, as "Hashmark" Johnson, because of the prior service stripes
that he wore on his sleeves. Due in part to his age, 37, when he reached
Montford Point, his considerable service experience, and a serious dedication
to making a success of being a Marine, he was destined to become a legend in
his own lifetime to the first black Marines, an elder statesman and historian
of the Montford Point experience.
But "Hashmark" Johnson was far from the only memorable man who joined in
those first few months when volunteers filled the ranks at Montford Point. The
recruiters had been selective; there were other men with Army service, John T.
Pridgen, who had been a member of the black 10th Cavalry in the late 1930s,
and George A. Jackson, who had been an Army lieutenant. Both eventually became
drill instructors. There was a host of college graduates and men who had had
college training including Charles F. Anderson, a graduate
6
A CHOSEN FEW
of Morehouse College, who arrived in September and eventually became the first
black sergeant major of Montford Point Camp and Charles W. Simmons, a graduate
of Alcorn A and M with a masters degree from the University of Illinois, who
wound up as sergeant major of the 51st Defense Battalion.<28> The man who was
to become the senior bayonet and unarmed combat instructor of black recruits,
Arvin L. "Tony" Ghazlo, a former bodyguard and jujitsu instructor from
Philadelphia,<29> arrived in October, and the next month saw the man who was
to be his principal assistant, Ernest "Judo" Jones, reach Montford Point.
Besides teaching the recruits, these two and their assistants were responsible
for many memorable exhibitions of unarmed combat techniques.
There were many of those early recruits who became men of note amongst
black Marines and, in fact, men of substance in their communities in later
life. They were, in general, a select body of young men; the recruiters had
tried hard to find and send to Montford Point men with technical, educational,
and work backgrounds who had the potential to fill out the various billets of
a defense battalion. The call for such specialists could not be completely
met, however, and the Commandant was informed in late October that it was
"doubtful if even white recruits could be procured with the
Corporal Alvin "Tony" Ghazlo, senior bayonet and unarmed combat
instructor at Montford Point, disarms his assistant, Private
Ernest "Judo" Jones. (USMC Photo 5334).
7
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
qualifications listed ..."<30> This racial comparison of relative skills was
not as odious as it might seem today, but rather a statement of the prevailing
situation in most of the country, there the general education level of blacks
was lower than that of whites and the chances for skilled job experience were
severely limited for blacks.
The First Graduates
By the end of November 1942, the initial recruit platoons were near the
finish of their eight weeks of boot camp. Two weeks preliminary marksmanship
training was conducted at Montford Point, culminated by a week of live firing
at the Camp Lejeune rifle range near Stone Bay. Since there were as yet no
living facilities for blacks at the range, the recruits found themselves
trucked to the range before dawn and returned to camp after nightfall. Still,
they did well, and the majority of the first 198 men to graduate from boot
camp qualified as rifle marksmen or sharp shooters, enabling them to wear
their qualification badges proudly on their uniforms. Even more important to
the men, the first blacks were qualified to sew rank stripes on their uniforms
in November. On the 1st, 16 privates were promoted to private first class and
on the 19th, four privates were promoted to assistant cook. Many of the new
PFCs had been acting as assistant DIs to the SES NCOs, some had even finished
up the training of their platoons as the white DIs were spread thin among
newly formed units. Others of the new "one stripers" were slated to take over
office duties in existing or planned headquarters, while the newly designated
cooks would man the kitchens of the 51st's messhall.
In early December, the new graduates had their first opportunity to go on
liberty and poured out the front gate walking down the long road to
Jacksonville. Their reception was a rude awakening to the men. The sight of a
couple of hundred blacks in Marine green coming into the little town was
unnerving to the merchants, and they closed down their stores. Far more
disturbing, the bus station and the ticket office were also closed, and the
young blacks had seemingly lost their opportunity to leave "J-ville." They had
no intention of staying in town, they wanted to get out, to take a bus to
Wilmington, Kinston, or New Bern, larger towns with substantial black
populations. In this instance, as in many, Colonel Woods was the champion of
the black Marines. He ordered out the 51st's trucks, which took the men to
their chosen liberty towns, stayed with them, and brought them back to
Montford Point. And he took steps to ensure that the buses were available
thereafter to the black Marines. Yet, the actualities of segregation in the
South made the use of these buses a sore point with the men at Montford Point.
Not only did they have to ride in the back of the bus, they were often
arbitrarily denied entrance by the white bus drivers while the buses were
filled with white Marines returning from liberty. On a few occasions during
the course of the war years, white bus drivers who attempted such arbitrary
action found themselves abandoned beside the road while a delighted crew of
black Marines returned themselves to Montford Point in the commandeered buses.
With the advent of promotions and liberty came new assignments for the
first recruit graduates. The 51st Composite Defense Battalion began to take
shape. On 1 December, Rifle Company (Reinforced) of the 51st was organized.
But its immediate function belied its name, for it was primarily a schools and
training organization for the many specialists needed. Student bandsmen,
cooks, clerks, communicators, and truck drivers were among the men who filled
its ranks. Some of these individuals were already experienced in their
specialties, others had been selected to learn by formal schooling or
on-the-job training. Also formed on the 1st was a 155mm gun battery and a 90mm
antiaircraft group. On 21 December, a 75mm pack howitzer battery was
organized. Remaining behind in Battery A were nine privates and 12 PFCs, six
of the latter to serve as DIs and six as battery clerks.
December offered many of the newly minted Marines a chance for a week's
furlough; many were home for Christmas or New Year's Day. Their misadventures
were many, for their number was still small, and the existence of black
Marines was apparently not widely known. In several instances, men were
questioned or arrested for impersonating a Marine, but the misunderstandings
were usually cleared up in short order.
Expansion Looms
While the 51st Composite Defense Battalion, still the vehicle for
handling all black Marines,
8
A CHOSEN FEW
Map of CAMP LEJEUNE AND VICINITY
9
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
was in the process of reorganization, there was the prospect of a whole new
ball game insofar as blacks in the Marine Corps was concerned. Instead of
1,200 men, one defense battalion and its training base, there were going to be
thousands more men arriving at Montford Point.
On 5 December 1942, voluntary enlistments in the Armed Forces were
discontinued for all men 18 to 37 years of age, although 17 year olds and, in
some instances, those 38 or older could still volunteer for the Navy and
Marine Corps. Beginning in January 1943, all men in the 18-37 age group would
be inducted into the services through the Selective Service System. To make
the call-up equitable, at least 10 percent of those selected would be blacks,
a proportion approximating the number of blacks in the U.S. population as a
whole.
The Army, which was the principal beneficiary of the stopping of the flow
of the volunteers into the other services, was interested in having the Marine
Corps concentrate on taking black draftees until it had reached the same
percentage of blacks in its ranks that the Army already had. This concept was
unacceptable to the Corps, since it would have severely disrupted existing
training plans for replacements and new combat units, but there was no arguing
with the imposition of an induction quota. Its advent was recognized early in
the year's planning and was confirmed in a memorandum of 8 March 1943 from
Headquarters Marine Corps to the Chief of Naval Personnel. Since the approved
increase between 1 February and 31 December 1943 was 99,000 men, this placed a
requirement on the Corps for the acquisition and accommodation of 9,900
blacks. In order to meet this goal, calls were placed with Selective Service
for 400 men in February and March, 800 in April, 1,300 in May, and 1,000 men
per month thereafter. Any increase in the authorized strength of the Marine
Corps would lead to a corresponding increase in the monthly draft calls for
black Marines.<31>
Obviously, Montford Point was due for drastic expansion, and the 51st
Composite Defense Battalion could not be the vehicle to absorb such numbers.
Some of the new men would have the opportunity of becoming officers' stewards,
cooks, and messmen, for the Secretary of the Navy on 1 January had authorized
the formation of a Messman Branch (eventually Stewards' Branch) in the Marine
Corps, composed entirely of black Marines. Still others of the incoming
thousands would serve in a second defense battalion that was contemplated as a
follow on to the 51st. But most of the new recruits, in fact the majority of
World War II black Marines, would end up serving in pioneer or labor units,
for the need for logistic support troops in the Pacific fighting was acute.
Colonel Woods visted Headquarters Marine Corps in January and presented a
plan for the future development of Montford Point. He indicated the 51st could
carry on the handling of all black Marines through February and into March
when a new 1,000-man camp area would be ready. Simultaneously, organization
work would be underway on the Mess Attendants School (an 8-week course) and an
Officers' Cooks and Stewards School (a 16-week course). The contemplated
increase in black Marines would dictate the organization of a separate
Montford Point Camp headquarters by late spring.<32>
In January, the first 42 selective service men arrived at Montford Point
to be treated no differently as boots than the men who had gone before them.
Many of the draftees, both then and later, were selective service volunteers.
Marine liaison officers with the Selective Service System and Marine
recruiters worked mightily to ensure that most of the draftees were men who
wanted to serve in the Corps. The experiences of a number of men who entered
during this period bear out the continued effort at enlisting the best men
available.<33> In May, Colonel Woods wrote the Commandant that "the standard
of inductees continues to be about the same as in the case of volunteers. This
indicates excellent work by the recruiting service."<34>
Change continued at Montford Point during the first half of 1943. In
January, the first black NCOs were appointed as three assistant cooks, Jerome
D. Alcorn, Otto Cherry, and Robert T. Davis, were named field cooks
(corporals) on the 18th. Men who had been assigned to tactical units of the
51st, but who had demonstrated that they were of DI caliber while in boot
camp, rejoined Battery A in February. Ten of them made corporal on the 19th,
the nucleus for a vastly increased recruit training effort. Nineteen other new
corporals were made in other units of the 51st in February and thereafter new
NCOs were appointed every month.
10
A CHOSEN FEW
On 11 March, Headquarters and Service Company, Headquarters Battalion,
Montford Point Camp was activated, as was Headquarters Company, Recruit Depot
Battalion. Battery A of the 51st became Company A of the Recruit Depot
Battalion. Colonel Woods, as camp commander, relinquished his command of the
51st to Lieutenant Colonel W. Bayard Onley, a Naval Academy graduate (1919)
who had recently served as Execuitve Officer, 23d Marines,<35> and Lieutenant
Colonel Holdahl took over the new recruit battalion. On 1 April 1943,
Headquarters Company, Messman Branch Battalion was organized with the new
battalion commander Captain Albert O. Madden, a World War I veteran who had
been recommissioned as a food service officer after extensive restaurant
experience in the Albany, New York, area.<36> The new unit with its attendant
schools was redesignated Stewards' Branch Battalion on 13 April. The new camp
area which would house the stewards was dubbed "Slotnick's Grove" by the black
Marines after a young lieutenant who had been involved in its
construction.<37>
Reorganization and augmentation continued at a frantic pace as hundreds
of recruits poured into Montford Point. New recruit companies were organized,
a Schools Company and a Motor Transport Company were added to the camp
headquarters battalion, the 51st's Rifle Company became the vehicle for
organizing and dispatching depot companies (labor troops) to the field, and an
Assistant Stewards' School (Company A) and a Stewards' Cook School (Company B)
were added to Captain Madden's battalion.
The change on the recruit drill field was the most drastic. Almost all of
the SES DIs had left by the end of April; black sergeants and corporals took
over as the senior DIs of the eight platoons then in training: the 16th
Platoon (Edgar R. Huff); 17th (Thomas Brokaw); 18th (Charles E. Allen); 19th
(Gilbert H. Johnson); 20th (Arnold R. Bostic); 21st (Mortimer A. Cox); 22d
(Edgar R. Davis, Jr.); and 23d (George A. Jackson).<38> In late May, the last
white drill instructor, First Sergent Robert W. Colwell, was transferred, and
Sergeant "Hashmark" Johnson took his place as the re-
Corporal Edgar R. Huff one of the first black drill instructors,
confronts a recruit platoon at Montford Point. (USMC Photo 5377).
11
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
cruit battalion's field sergeant major, in charge of all drill instructors;
Sergeant Thomas Pridgen was his assistant. From then on, all recruit training
at Montford Point was conducted by black NCOs-a milestone had been passed.
Boot camp did not get any easier, in fact, in the testimony of those who
served there in the transition period it became rougher and stayed
rougher.<39> The boots started on the run and stayed on the run. As one black
DI commented: "Glenn Cunningham [a famous miler] had nothing on the recruits
at Montford Point."<40> "Hashmark" Johnson, first as field sergeant major and
later as sergeant major of the Recruit Depot Battalion, was determined that
the black boots would measure up in every way to Marine Corps standards. His
philosophy prevaded boot training. In later years, addressing a group of
veterans of that era, he reminded them of their ordeal and the reason for it,
remarking:
I was an ogre to some of you that met me on the drill field
and in the huts of Montford more than a quarter century ago. I
was a stern instructor, but I was fair. I was an exacting
instructor, but with some understanding of the many problems
involved. I kept before me, always, that nearly impossible
goal to qualify in a few weeks, and at the most a few months,
a type of Marine fully qualified in every respect to wear
that much cherished Globe and Anchor. You were untried. The
objectives were to qualify you with loyalty, with a devotion
to duty, and with a determination equal to all, transcended
by none . . . As I look into your faces tonight, I remember
the youthful, and sometimes pained expressions at something
I may have said . . . But I remember something you did. You
measured up, by a slim margin perhaps, but measure up you
did. You achieved your goal. That realization creates within
me a warm appreciation of you and a deep sense of personal
gratitude.<41>
With Johnson's type of drive permeating the boot camp at the man-to-man
level of DI and recruit, life proved to be very trying for the new Marines.
But it was not all drill and training. There were USO shows and movies at the
camp theatre and a full schedule of intramural sports between various units at
the camp. And there was always music, for many talented singers and musicians
had enlisted. Men from the bands of Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington,
and Erskine Hawkins were in the ranks of the 51st's band, which later became
the camp band. The band was capable of producing jazz combos, dance
orchestras, and concert groups of professional caliber.
Fortunately, one of the young officers who arrived early at Montford
Point was Lieutenant Robert W. Troup, Jr., an accomplished composer and
musician from New York, who established immediate rapport with the black
musicians which carried over to the rest of the men. He eventually became camp
recreation officer, and many of his activities were directly connected with
the improvement of morale through the arrangement of talent shows, sporting
events, and concerts using the multitude of entertainment and athletic talent
in the ranks at Montford Point. He elicited almost universal praise for
understanding, ranging from "Hashmark" Johnson's typically restrained, "a top-
notch musician, a very decent sort of officer," to Obie Hall's, "he was the
sharpest cat I ever seen in my life."<42> But most of the men of Montford
Point remember Bobby Troup's song "Jacksonville," which hardly rivaled his
World War II hit "Route 66" in nationwide popular music charts, but certainly
was a hit at Camp Lejeune where it echoed the sentiments of black and white
Marines alike with words like:
Take me away from Jacksonville, `cause I've had my fill and
that's no lie,
Take me away from Jacksonville, keep me away from Jacksonville
until I die,
Jacksonville stood still while the rest of the world passed by.<43>
Black Marines practice descending cargo nets in Montford Point's
training pool under the watchful eye of Sergeant Paul E. Meeres
(on board). (USMC Photo 8275).
12
A CHOSEN FEW
Near mid-summer, one of the frequent entertainments that featured
Montford Point talent, a series of boxing matches plus unarmed combat
exhibitions by Tony Ghazlo and his instructors, produced an incident that has
never left the memory of any man who witnessed it. Major General Henry L.
Larsen, who had just returned from the South Pacific to take command of Camp
Lejeune, was invited to attend this "boxing smoker" and took the occasion to
make a short speech to the assembled black Marines. There are as many versions
of his exact words as there are witnesses, but the gist of his remarks, as
remembered, was that when he had come back from overseas he had not realized
how serious the war situation was until he had seen "you people wearing our
uniform." The unfriendly response from the predominently black audience was
immediate and tumultuous. His unfortunate choice of words emphasized to the
men that they were still on trial in the eyes of many white Marines.
By early fall, when Bobby Troup's popular farewell to Jacksonville was
being sung, whistled, and played throughout Monford Point, many men had
already left the North Carolina camp. When the anniversary date of the opening
of Montford Point was reached, four depot companies had already deployed
overseas, and a Marine barracks detachment had been sent to the Naval
Ammunition Depot, McAlester, Oklahoma. The 51st had locked on to a train-
Marines from Montford Point climb down a cargo net into a waiting
LCVP for practice landing at Onslow Beach. (USMC Photo 9007)
ing schedule for overseas deployment, other depot companies were forming for
duty in the Pacific, and stewards were leaving for assignment to officers'
messes in the states and overseas. The pace of the camp quickened as more and
more men left for duty beyond the reaches of Montford Point. The test of
combat was yet to come for black Marine units, but it was inevitable.
13
CHAPTER 2
THE 51ST DEFENSE BATTALION
Throughout the first six months that blacks served in the Marine Corps,
the focus of attention was the 51st Composite Defense Battalion. It was to be
the first (and for a time, the only) black combat unit. Its initial stages of
training were hampered by equipment shortages, but even more by the complete
unfamiliarity of the men with the weapons and supporting equipment they
encountered. There were a number of qualified white instructors for the
various specialties, and many of the junior officers had attended short
technical courses of various types, but the biggest drawback to the
battalion's progress in training was the fact that it had no cadre of
experienced men on which to build.
The initial selection of men the battalion received in its new tactical
units was a good one, but many of these served only briefly in its ranks
before they moved on to the drill field, to schools, and to camp offices to
help cope with the swelling tide of draftees, or to the depot companies that
began forming in March and April. As a consequence, there were only about 500
men on the rolls of the 51st on 21 April 1943 when a new commanding officer
fresh from overseas, Lieutenant Colonel Floyd A. Stephenson, arrived at
Montford Point to take over. His predecessor, Lieutenant Colonel Onley, moved
on to take command of the camp Headquarters Battalion and to serve as Colonel
Wood's executive officer.
Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson was an experienced artillery officer who
had been at Pearl Harbor with the 4th Defense Battalion when the Japanese
attacked. Later, he served as the battalion's executive officer and commander
of its 5-inch artillery group at Efate in the New Hebrides.<1> He approached
his new task with enthusiasm and considerable drive. Within two weeks, he was
recommending that the 51st become a regular, heavy defense battalion and
stating "that there is nothing that suitable colored personnel can not be
taught."<2> Colonel Woods in his favorable endorsement to Stephenson's
recommendation indicated that he was "now fully convinced that this unit can
be forged into a first class fighting outfit in a reasonably short time after
its complement is filled." He also noted that a composite defense battalion
was designed "to meet the requirements of a situation that no longer
exists."<3>
The units that would be detached from the 51st, if the change took place,
would be the Rifle Company (Reinforced) and the 75mm Pack Howitzer Battery. A
Machine Gun Group had been organized on 1 March 1943 to give the battalion a
light antiaircraft capability and it would remain together with the 155mm and
90mm guns.
The recommendation was approved at Headquarters Marine Corps on 28 May
1943
90mm antiaircraft gun crew of the 51st Defense Battalion
practices loading shells at Montford Point. (USMC Photo 9507).
15
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
with the stipulation that men under training for infantry and field artillery
would continue to train with the 51st pending organization of a separate
infantry battalion.<4> The news of the change caused some bewilderment and
consternation among the black Marines at Montford Point. The inclusion of
infantry and field artillery in the 51st had meant to most men that the
battalion would see some close combat. The purpose of separating and
redesignating these units was widely misunderstood. Reinforcing this
misunderstanding was the loss, earlier in the year, of the light tank platoon
which had been part of the rifle company. Although some defense battalions
already overseas had such platoons, they were no longer to be an integral part
of the defense battalion organization. Rumor had it that the black Marines
would serve only as labor troops or officers' stewards.
The First Combat Unit
Fortunately, the rumor was soon dispelled insofar as the 51st was
concerned. On 7 June 1943, "Composite" was dropped from the title of the 51st
Defense Battalion. The 155mm Gun Battery expanded to become the 155mm
Artillery Group and the Machine Gun Group became the Special Weapons Group,
its principal armament now being 20mm and 40mm cannon as well as .50 caliber
machine guns. Rifle Company (Reinforced) was redesignated Company A, 7th
Separate Infantry Battalion and the 75s became the 7th Separate pack Howitzer
Battery. Both units were attached to the camp's Headquarters Battalion but
were stationed in the 51st's area to continue training with the defense
battalion.
The redesignations continued in July when the 155s became the Seacoast
Artillery Group and the 90s the Antiaircraft Artillery Group, in keeping with
the titles of such units in a new table of organization for defense
battalions.<5> The summer was fully occupied with intensive training on
weapons, fire control equipment, searchlights, and all the myriad of equipment
that a defense battalion possessed. A few men were sent away to specialist
schools at various Army bases and some received schooling at Camp Lejeune, but
the vast majority learned on the job. The battalion doubled in size in July,
and the growth continued in succeeding months, with over 1,700 officers and
men on the rolls in October. Not all these Marines were destined to serve in
the 51st, however.
Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson had been given the task of assimilating and
training the cadre of another defense battalion, approximately 400 men, at the
same time he readied his own troops for combat. The new unit, the 52d Defense
Battalion, was to be organized at the start of 1944.<6>
The increased pace of training was marred by the death on 20 August of
the first black to die in Marine Corps uniform, Corporal Gilbert Fraser, Jr.
of the 51st's Seacoast Artillery Group. Fraser, a New Yorker who had attended
Virginia Union College, was killed when he fell 30 feet from a landing net
into a landing boat while his unit was practicing debarkation. A road leading
from the main camp at Montford Point to the base artillery area was named
after the popular 30-year-old Marine. Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson noted
Fraser Road would be "a constant reminder to those who come after him of the
fine type of young manhood" represented by Gilbert Fraser.<7>
In early September, the battalion moved out of Montford Point proper
across Scales Creek to the old CCC-Camp Knox area where it took over three of
four barracks blocks; the other was occupied by the War Dog Training Center.
The accomodations in the new campsite were not luxurious; the barracks, mess
halls, and offices were old wooden buildings, drafty and badly in need of
repair.<8> The living quarters were characterized by one of the 51st as "more
open than closed" and dominated by big pot-bellied stoves. He recalled that if
you stood within 10 feet of them "you roasted in front and froze behind."<9>
But the move was popular with the battalion. It was off by itself, running its
own show, and the transfer across Scales Creek intensified the feeling of the
men of the 51st that they were a bit different, superior even, to the rest of
the blacks at Montford Point. In the battalion's news column in the Camp
Lejeune paper, the writer, Sergeant Jimmie Stewart, observed: "We just can't
get over the thrill of being here at Camp Knox. Boy, its really swell. Makes
us feel like we're in the groove again and that life is not so bad after
all."<10>
Most of the reason the men of the 51st "thought they were the cat's
meow," as one member put it, was that they were in the only black Marine unit
engaged in extensive combat training.<11> They considered themselves to be
16
THE 51ST DEFENSE BATTALION
members of a fighting outfit and were not at all hesitant about reminding the
other black Marines of the fact. On liberty they stuck together, a not unusual
trait of men from units with high morale. They were convinced, and not without
some reason, that most of the men at Montford Point wanted to serve in the
51st.
The battalion's lot throughout the fall of 1943 was hard, exhausting
training. First the Seacoast Group moved out to Onslow Beach to fire its 155s;
the Antiaircraft and Special Weapons Groups soon followed to test their
gunnery. The whole battalion spent two months in the field, a period that saw
hard usage for all its equipment in frequently miserable weather. In order to
fill the ranks of the augmented 51st, many men with no recruit training and
others with only a few days of boot camp were added to the firing batteries so
that they could get target practice experience, and the battalion would be
ready to mount out at full strength on schedule.<12> It made the task of the
officers and white instructor NCOs doubly difficult to have to supervise these
raw recruits and train the "veterans," who were not long out of boot camp
themselves. Still, the job
DEFENSE BATTALIONS, 1942-1946
17
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
was done, although a number of the officers noted in their December training
reports and in later comments that they thought the 51st needed more training
before going overseas, that the newly promoted black NCOs needed more
seasoning, and that in general the men, most of whom had had no experience
with sophisticated equipment, "showed a lack of appreciation of the value or
importance of material and equipment."<13>
These judgments did not obviate the fact that men had often done quite
well at target practice at Onslow Beach. When an inspecting party including
Secretary Knox and General Holcomb watched the 90mm guns being fired in
November, the gun crews shot down the towed target within 60 seconds after
they started firing. Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson reported General Holcomb as
remarking, "I think they're ready now."<14> And "What a yelp went up" amongst
the black Marines when they hit that target; to them it proved too that they
were ready.<15>
Not long after the battalion returned to Camp Knox in early December,
Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson went to Headquarters Marine Corps to get further
orders on the future of the 51st. Much to his dismay he found that the
battalion's sailing orders had been moved up five weeks from original plans
and that the 52d Defense Battalion was also to be organized two weeks ahead of
the original projection. Plans for sending the men who had joined as recruits
to the rifle range to complete that essential part of their training had to be
scrapped and holiday leaves cancelled. The 400-odd men destined for the 52d
were transferred out of the 51st and the new battalion was formed on 15
December. Plans for special training of the seacoast artillery in field
artillery firing techniques were put aside and all officers and men away at
school were recalled. All hands turned to at a furious pace to crate and pack
the battalion's equipment for the pending move.<16>
Another sure sight that the battalion was on its way was the transfer of
the white senior NCOs and instructors to other units at Camp Lejeune. The
blacks who had been their assistants now took over. Gunnery Sergeant Charles
W. Simmons became the battalion sergeant major. He later recalled: "I will
never forget the consternation of the white sergeant who trained me for the
job of Sergeant Major of the 51st, when we learned that he would not go
overseas with the battalion. I was surprised too--but I understand the
situation. I had graduated!"<17>
In early January, 175 freight cars were loaded at the rate of 25 a day,
mostly in rotten weather with heavy doses of rain, snow, and sleet.<18> The
men turned to with a will, however, since they were sure they were headed for
combat. The battalion moved out in increments with the seacoast artillery
leading off and the rest of the units followed in their own troop trains. By
19 January, only a relatively small rear echelon was left at Camp Knox, and it
too was slated to leave the next day.
The departure of the 51st was not without incident that became a matter
of controversy and investigation. What started out to be some farewell rounds
of beer by rear echelon members at the Montford Point snack bar deteriorated
into a conflict with the military police. When the confrontation reached the
bottle-throwing stage, the MP sergeant on the scene closed the snack bar. As
some of the 51st's men started to throw rocks at him, he fired his carbine in
the air three times in warning, and the crowd dispersed.
Later that evening, about 15 or 20 shots were fired from the Camp Knox
area towards Montford Point. Unfortunately, one of these random shots, which
were judged to be firings with no intent to hit anyone, did find a target.
Corporal Rolland J. Curtiss, a drill instructor who had his platoon in the
woods back of the camp theatre, was wounded, though not seriously.
Authorities soon made checks of all the rifles in the Camp Knox area but
could not determine conclusively if any had been fired. There was evidence,
however, of some laxity in the accountability of rifles in the battalion. This
became a feature of a critical report that Colonel Woods submitted to the
Commandant after the departure of the last elements of the 51st for the west
coast. He commented unfavorably on the police of certain parts of the camp,
that numerous items of personal equipment had been left behind, and that the
care of government property had been neglected.<19>
So it happened that the 51st Defense Battalion arrived at San Diego under
somewhat of a cloud. Most of the men in the battalion were unaware of the
events that had transpired. They were proudly wearing their new battalion
shoulder patch, issued just before they left
18
THE 51ST DEFENSE BATTALION
Religious services are held at Onslow Beach for men of the
51st's Seacoast Artillery Group. In the background is one of
the group's 155mm guns. (Photo from Montford Point Pictorial).
Camp Lejeune.<20> It was a red oval with a large white "51" in the center with
the white letters "USMC" below and a blue 90mm antiaircraft gun superimposed
on the numerals. As they moved into tents at Camp Elliott, some of the men
went to the base's open air movie and disrupted the show when they were told
blacks had to sit in the back of the amphitheatre. They were not having any
part of segregation that night; they were too full of themselves as
combat-bound Marines. Despite the fracas, Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson
authorized the issuance of liberty passes.<21>
On 27 January 1944, much to the disappointment of the men, who liked and
respected Stephenson, the battalion was assigned a new commanding officer, and
Stephenson was transferred. Colonel Curtis W. LeGette, the new commander, was
a veteran artillery officer who had originally entered the Marine Corps as an
enlisted man in 1910. He had just returned to the states from a tour of duty
as commanding officer of the 7th Defense Battalion in the Ellice Islands.<22>
Soon after he took over, he fell the battalion in and gave the men a dressing
down on the subject of their discipline and general behavior. Naturally
enough, he used the term "you people," a common expression in the Marine Corps
by a superior when addressing a group of men, but to the men of the 51st it
meant "you blacks" and the lecture fell on deaf ears.<23>
Overseas Duty
Much to the young blacks surprise, all of the weapons and equipment that
they had packed so laboriously on the east coast were now turned in to the
quartermasters at Camp Elliott and San Diego. The men retained only their
personal gear and the battalion only a modest amount of its property. On 11
February, the 51st boarded a merchant transport, SS METEOR, at San Diego and
sailed. The ship's destination was the Ellice Islands, where the 51st was
destined to relieve the 7th Defense Battalion. En route to the islands, on 23
February, Detachment A, 51st Defense Battalion was organized with
approximately half the men in the battalion on its rolls and Lieutenant
Colonel Gould P. Groves, the battalion executive officer, as its commander.
The mission of the new detachment was to provide a garrison for Nanomea
Island. The rest of the battalion under Colonel LeGette was headed for
Funafuti and would outpost Nukufetau.
Moving by landing ship and submarine chaser, Detachment A reached Nanomea
on 25 February 1944; the rest of the battalion disembarked at Funafuti on the
27th.<24> In both
19
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
places the men of the 51st found the Marines of the 7th Defense Battalion
eager to leave. "They were never so glad to see black people in their lives,"
one of the new arrivals at Nanomea decided.<25> The 51st took over the
equipment and weapons of the 7th Defense, much of which had seen hard usage
since the battalion had first reached the South Pacific nine months before
Pearl Harbor was attacked.
The task assigned the detachment on Nanomea and the outpost on Nukefetau
was to maintain and defend the airfields on those islands for emergency use.
On Funafuti, Colonel LeGette was charged with maintaining existing staging and
limited repair facilities for aircraft, an anchorage and a motor torpedo boat
base, and with defending the atoll. The airfields in the Ellice Islands were
on standby to support combat operations then going on in the Marshall Islands
to the northward.
Not much exciting happened to the 51st in its first overseas assignment,
although the 155mm gun crews on Nanomea did let loose 11 rounds at a suspected
enemy submarine on 28 March. Most of the time was spent on gun drill and
firing practice, and the battalion began to shake down into a settled outfit,
though it still did not entirely please its more senior officers, many of whom
were veterans of oversea service with other defense battalions in the early
part of the war.
In June, when a letter from the Commandant arrived at Funafuti indicating
that the 51st's ordnance and motor transport equipment left behind in
California showed signs of lack of proper preventive maintenance, Col-
40mm gun crew of the 51st Defense Battalion ready to fire
target practice at Montford Point. (Photo from Montford Point
Pictorial).
onel LeGette ordered a board of investigation and appointed himself the
examining officer.<26> The lengthy study, which included testimony from
battery and group commanders, arrived at a conclusion that the former
commanding officer of the battalion was primarily at fault.<27> When Colonel
LeGette followed up this investigation report with an unfavorable report the
next month on the state of the 51st's combat efficiency, Lieutenant Colonel
Stephenson was embarked on a long siege of letter writing to Washington to
tell his side of the story. Much of the correspondence forms the basis for
what is known about the state of the 51st's training and capabilities, at
least from the standpoint of the battalion's officers. Throughout his
embattled responses, Stephenson, who was overseas with the 6th Marine Division
at the time, maintained a strong defense of his actions and of the unit he had
trained, calling it "the finest organization in the whole Negro program in the
Marine Corps. . .<28> It should be noted that much of this exchange went on
without the knowledge of the men in the ranks of the 51st Defense Battalion.
In their own eyes, they had done well and were steadly improving their
capabilities.
Another of the frequent changes in the battalion's organization occurred
in July. As a result of a Marine Corps-wide reshuffling of tables of
organization for defense battalions, most units were redesignated as
antiaircraft artillery battalions. Their seacoast artillery groups were
disbanded or reorganized into field artillery battalions of the corps
artillery of the two Marine amphibious corps in the Pacific. The 51st Defense
Battalion, the 52d, and the 6th on Midway were the only units to retain their
original titles, although the primary function of all three battalions was now
antiaircraft defense.<29> On 15 July 1944, the Seacoast Artillery Group of the
51st was disbanded and its men transferred to other units of the battalion.
The 90s became a Heavy Antiaircraft Group, Special Weapons became a Light
Antiaircraft Group, and a separate Searchlight Battery was organized.
At about the same time these changes were occurring, the 51st's
detachments on Nanomea and Nukufetau began moving to Funafuti. Detachment A
was disbanded on 15 July, and the battalion began preparations to move to a
more forward area. While these activities were going on, the Commandant,
Samoan Defense Group, Captain Allen Hobbs, USN, who was
20
THE 51ST DEFENSE BATTALION
LeGette's senior, wrote the colonel to express "his appreciation for the
excellent spirit and efficient manner in which the officers and men of this
battalion have carried out their duties under trying and difficult
conditions." He further wished the 51st "luck and profitable hunting in your
new assignment."<30>
On to the Marshalls
Once again the weapons and equipment of the 51st had been using were
packed and turned in. In the opinion of one member of the motor transport
section, which had had to rebuild many of vehicles it had inherited from the
7th Defense Battalion, "everything was standing tall when we left."<31> The
unit went on board ship, the Dutch-manned U.S. Army transport KOTA AGOENG,<32>
early in September, sailing on the 8th. The new destination was Eniwetok
Atoll, a bustling support area for the operations just concluded in the
Mariana Islands.
On 14 September, the battalion arrived at Eniwetok and in the next three
days replaced elements of the 10th Antiaircraft Battalion, taking over its
weapons and equipment on Eniwetok, Engebi, Parry, and Porky Islands. The 10th
was formally relieved on 17 September and left for Pearl Harbor on the KOTA
AGOENG.<33> The 51st, almost as soon as it was settled in position, embarked
on an intensive schedule of training and towed-sleeve firing. The radar and
searchlight units were constantly busy as aircraft based on the atoll were
used to try to penetrate the battalion's defensive screen. There were Japanese
on bypassed islands in the Marshalls, and the men were readily aware that they
were a lot closer to the shooting war. The enormous lagoon at Eniwetok was a
constantly shifting scene as ships passed through going and coming from the
forward areas. Here, at least, there was the possibility of action and spirits
perked up.
The men of the 51st really sharpened their talents as gunners at
Eniwetok. The battalion became a veteran unit; towed-sleeve targets were shot
down with regularity, searchlights pinpointed their targets as soon as they
"struck arc," and the radar operators prided themselves in detecting any and
all snoopers.<34> But the fact of the matter remained that the first black
Marine combat unit was not in combat.
On 13 December 1944, Colonel LeGette relinquished command of the 51st to
return to the States. When he left he expressed regret that he could not stay
with the battalion throughout its overseas tour.<35> The new and last
commander of the 51st was its former executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel
Groves, who had joined it at Montford Point in 1943.
There was action for the battalion at Eniwetok, but nothing of substance.
In early February there was a week-long submarine alert with many contacts but
no sightings. Later in the spring, Condition Red was sounded, and the men
raced gleefully and hopefully to their positions, but no enemy planes
appeared. Their disappointment was bitter. No matter how well trained the
battalion became, there was bound to be a letdown in morale. One former
sergeant recalled, "the routine got so boresome, but we got a few plane
crashes, a couple once in a while; a ship would go down at sea trying to land,
but other than that they were disappointed they didn't actually get into
combat. That was what they really wanted."<36>
On 12 June 1945, a detachment of one 90mm gun battery, one 40mm platoon,
and four searchlight sections was formed at Eniwetok for duty at Kwajalein
Atoll. Christened Composite Group, 51st Defense Battalion under Major William
M. Tracy, the 251-man unit left Eniwetok by LST on the 14th and disembarked at
Kwajalein on 17 June; the rear echelon arrived on the 22d. There the group's
duties were the same of those of the remainder of the battalion, antiaircraft
defense of an atoll. And like the rest of the 51st, the Composite Group saw no
combat action in the war.
Home Again
Once the fighting was over, the Marines in the 51st Defense Battalion
were itching to get home. Since the unit had been overseas for 19 months when
the war ended and had received no replacements, many of the men were close to
the point discharge total projected for the end of the year. The 51st was ripe
for return to the States as a unit. The men had started out together, gone
through the war together, and now they would go home together.
On 20 November at Kwajalein and 21 November at Eniwetok, detachments of
the 32d Defense Battalion arrived from Guam to replace the 51st. The reunion
of the two black units was fleeting for the men returning home immediately
boarded the ships that had brought the 52d. On 21 November, the Com-
21
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
A veteran 90mm crew of the 51st Defense Battalion poses with
its gun, "Lena Horne," at Eniwetok in 1945. (USMC Photo 121743).
posite Group sailed on the attack cargo ship USS WYANDOT (AKA-92) for Pearl
Harbor, where the ship stayed a few days before it steamed on for the Panama
Canal and the east coast. On Thanksgiving Day, 22 November, the main body of
the 51st left Eniwetok without regret and headed for San Diego on another
cargo ship, the USS SIBIK (AK-121). Save for the rough thumping that catching
the tail end of a severe storm in an empty ship can give you, the trip back
was uneventful.
On 10 December, the SIBIK docked at San Diego, and the battalion moved to
Camp Pendleton, where those men who lived west of the Mississippi and had
enough points were discharged. The majority entrained on the 19th and reached
Camp Lejeune on Christmas Day 1945, where the men from the Composite Group
rejoined. They had returned to Montford Point by way of Norfolk on 21
December.
The processing of the high point men for discharge began almost
immediately. The officers who had long served with the battalion began
leaving. After Lieutenant Colonel Groves departed on 7 January, the acting
commanding officer for the rest of the month was a second lieutenant. But
there was not much of an outfit left for him to command as the discharges
continued. On 31 January 1946, the 51st Defense Battalion was formally
disbanded and the remaining low point men were transferred to other units at
Montford Point.
As the men went their separate ways, they took with them the knowledge
that they had served in a unique, a pioneering unit, and had shared its ups
and downs. Possessed of an almost cocky belief in themselves as Marines and a
special pride in their battalion besides, they had not needed combat to
develop self respect. As a black correspondent who visited the 51st at
Eniwetok in October 1945 noted about its men: "They are a grand bunch! And
because of their ability to come through the kind of experience they have had,
with its attendant racial irritants, they undoubtedly will be better men and
better citizens."<37>
22
CHAPTER 3
THE 52D DEFENSE BATTALION
Many of the troubles that had plagued the 51st Defense Battalion in its
infancy were greatly lessened for the 52d. The key to its relatively smooth
training period was the cadre of 400 officers and men that had spent three to
six months in the 51st. They brought their experience on the antiaircraft and
seacoast defense guns, searchlights, height and range finders, and other
technical equipment with them. They were soon joined in the early part of 1944
by the experienced field artillerymen of the 7th Separate Pack Howitzer
Battery, which was disbanded on 31 March. The cadre and the pack howitzer men
made up more than a third of the strength of the new battalion. The 52d was in
far better shape than the 51st had been to rely on on-the-job training, using
experienced blacks to train others.
The new battalion's commanding officer, a native Floridian, Colonel
Augustus W. Cockrell, had spent a year at West Point and then four years as a
Marine enlisted man before he was commissioned in 1922. Cockrell, like many of
his field officers and battery commanders, was already a veteran of overseas
service in World War II. He had been executive officer of the 2d Defense
Battalion in Samoa when the war broke out and had commanded the 8th Defense
Battalion in Samoa and on Wallis Island until August 1943.<1> Known
respectfully as "old Gus" to the black NCOs who served most closely with him,
Colonel Cockrell was a good choice to oversee the formative months of the
battalion.
In addition to the fact that one out of three men in the 52d was a Marine
with some antiaircraft, seacoast, or field artillery experience, there was
also another aspect of the battalion which pleased its officers. The senior
black NCOs had some time under their belts, certainly not as much as white
NCOs of comparable rank, but for the most part they had been around Montford
Point for a year or more. Just as important, they were not trying to command
men they had gone through boot camp with. They had had some seasoning as
military leaders and were more aware of the responsibilities of their rank.
Not only did Colonel Cockrell have a more favorable ratio of experienced
NCOs and men in the 52d than Lieutenant Colonel Stephenson had had in the
51st, he also managed to increase the number of men who received technical
school training in their respective specialties. When the 52d moved into the
51st's old quarters at Camp Knox in February and began training in earnest,
its prospects for effective end results were far better than those of the 51st
had been. The morale in the new outfit was excellent, helped on as the 51st's
had been by a distinctive battalion shoulder patch that set the men apart from
the other units at Montford Point. The 52d's colorful insignia featured a red
shield with a blue diagonal bar across the center supporting four white stars;
in the upper left corner was a gold shell burst with a scarlet "52" on it and
in the lower right was a gold 90mm gun and mount with a scarlet "USMC"
superimposed.
Following the pattern of the 51st, the 52d also took to the sand dunes
and scrub growth of Onslow Beach for firing practice as its training program
progressed. And like defense battalions throughout the Marine Corps it lost
its seacoast artillery group on 12 June 1944 in the universal reorganization
of these units to antiaircraft artillery battalions. Most of the 292 officers
and men who had manned the 155mm guns were transferred to the heavy
antiaircraft group, where an additional 90mm battery was formed. The light
antiaircraft group dropped its 20mm guns and added another 40mm battery, and a
new searchlight battery was formed. Shortly after this reorganization, the
battalion also lost its first commanding officer as Colonel Cockrell was
transferred to camp headquarters where he was slated to replace Colonel Woods.
On 12 July 1944 Lieutenant
23
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
Colonel Joseph W. Earnshaw took command of the battalion. A native of Kansas
and graduate of the Naval Academy (Class of 1927), he had come to Montford
Point from Washington where he had spent two years in the Planning Division of
the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance. At the outbreak of the war, he had served as
technical advisor to the Army's commander in the Society Islands. Like his
predecessor, Lieutenant Colonel Earnshaw was an experienced artillery
officer.<2>
August 1944 saw the battalion end its training at Montford Point. Its
weapons and equipment were cleaned, checked, and turned in to the
quartermaster at Camp Lejeune. Like the 51st, it would make its move overseas
traveling light. As a necessary preliminary to that move the battalion was
completely reorganized on 15 August. In effect two nearly identical half
battalions were formed, each containing a headquarters and service group and a
heavy antiaircraft group with an equal proportion of gun, searchlight, and
equipment crews and other specialists. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas C. Moore,
Jr., the battalion executive officer, took command of Detachment A, 52d
Defense Battalion. Moore, from Georgia and a graduate of Georgia Tech, had
served overseas with the 3d Defense Battalion in the Guadalcanal campaign. He
had joined the 52d in May 1944 after serving for some time with the Artillery
Battalion of the Training Center at Camp Lejeune.<3>
On 19 August, the two new administrative units of the battalion entrained
together at Camp Lejeune and headed west.
First to the Marshalls
After an uneventful cross-country trip, the 52d arrived at Camp Pendleton
on 24 August. Nearly a month was spent encamped in the barren hills of
Pendleton, but it was a month that included some liberty in the coastal towns
and cities. Some of the men from other parts of the country learned to like
the Golden State so much during their brief stay there that they asked to be
discharged in California when they later returned from overseas.<4>
On 21 September 1944, both administrative units of the battalion boarded
the transport USS WINGED ARROW (AP-170) at San Diego, sailing the same day for
Pearl Harbor. Six days later, the ship arrived at Oahu and then lay berthed in
the Navy Yard for a week and a half
75mm pack howitzer gun crew trains on the piece at Montford
Point. (Photo from Montford Point Pictorial).
with the troops on board. The WINGED ARROW got underway on 8 October, this
time headed south for the Marshall Islands. Majuro Atoll was its first
destination.
Majuro, which was situated on the eastern edge of the Marshalls, was the
home base for the scout bomber squadrons of Marine Aircraft Group (MAG) 13 and
of the 1st Antiaircraft Artillery (AAA) Battalion which protected its
airstrips. Detachment A disembarked at Majuro on 17 October to relieve the 1st
AAA Battalion which had been part of the original landing force when the atoll
was occupied in February 1944.<5>
The remainder of the 52d Defense Battalion sailed on to the westward, to
Kwajalein Atoll in the center of the Marshalls. Arriving at the twin islands
of Roi-Namur on the 18th, the battalion stayed on board ship for several days
before landing on the 22d. It relieved the 15th AAA Battalion of its mission
of guarding the airfield and installations that housed the fighter squadrons
of MAC-31. Like Detachment A at Majuro, the half of the 52d at Roi-Namur was
soon hard at work test firing the guns it had taken over, holding tracking
drills, and in general getting settled into position.
24
THE 52D DEFENSE BATTALION
The prime mission of the Marine aircraft at Majuro and Roi-Namur was to
continue the neutralization of the Japanese garrisons that existed on Wotje,
Maloelap, Mille, and Jaluit Atolls. Although no known aircraft still existed
at these Japanese bases, the enemy did possess the ability to repair the
airfields there and planes might be flown in for supply, evacuation, or
reconnaissance purposes.<6> Although the possibility of a Japanese air attack
was remote, it existed, and this was the reason for the 52d's presence, with
one antiaircraft battalion replacing two as a reduced scale of air defense was
called for.
Lieutenant Colonel Moore's detachment at Majuro, in addition to its air
defense duties, found itself acting as reconnaissance Marines. Monthly after
the detachment arrived, patrols of 60-65 men from the firing batteries would
board naval landing craft and check out the atolls, mostly Erikub and Aur,
which lay between Majuro and the nearest Japanese bases. These two-to-six day
excursions were generally uneventful, although a Battery C patrol to Tabal
Island in December brought in three Japanese prisoners the natives had taken,
and a Battery D patrol to Aur in January brought back 186 natives to be
resettled at Kwajalein.
The battalion's stay in the Marshalls was only six months long as the war
was moving forward to the Western Pacific and the 52d, like many of the Marine
units in the islands, was to move with it. MAG-31 was among the units marked
for participation in the Okinawa operation, scheduled for 1 April 1945. Rumors
were rife amongst the men of the 52d on Roi-Namur that the black battalion
would be moving forward with them. Relations between the two units were
cordial, even to the extent of the staff NCOs of both setting up an integrated
staff club.<7> But the hoped-for joint move was not to be, and MAG-31's ground
echelon and its planes departed in March.
The naval activity attending the departure seemed to have attracted enemy
submarines, and there was a flurry of action as the 52d's men outposted nearby
islands, patrolled others farther away, and manned their guns, but found no
targets. Under a new commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel David W. Silvey,
who had relieved Lieutenant Colonel Earnshaw on 10 January, the battalion
loaded out on 28 April, boarding a merchantman, the SS GEORGE W. JULIAN.
Silvey had joined the battalion at Montford Point in May 944 after serving
with the 6th Defense Battalion at Midway since 1941<8> Since Silvey was junior
to Lieutenant Colonel Moore, when the battalion reunited he was destined to
become the executive officer while Moore took over the 52d.
The reunion was not too far in the future, for Detachment A had made a
move also about a month and a half earlier than the elements at Roi-Namur. On
9 March 1945, the detachment had boarded the transport USS DEGRASSE (AP-164)
at Majuro, taking with it the commendation of the atoll's commander, Captain
Harold B. Grow, USNR, who noted to Lieutenant Colonel Moore:
Your officers have been most cooperative and your men have
been examples of deportment, willingness to work, and military
behavior. They have been of inestimable value to us in our
various armed reconnaissance, and we shall greatly feel your
absence.<9>
The destination of both elements of the 52d Defense Battalion was Guam,
and the prospect was not bad for further forward movement to combat.
Forward to Guam
Detachment A landed on Guam on 24 March and went ashore to set up camp
near Barrigada village on the eastern side of the island just above its narrow
waist. It was not long before regular patrols and ambushes were being sent
out, for there were hundreds of armed Japanese troops still loose in the
jungles on the island, men who had gone into hiding when the island was seized
in July and August 1944. Impotent as a combat force, and not very aggressive
unless cornered, these stragglers were mainly interested in foraging and
staying alive.
Small 10-man patrols and ambush groups were sent out all around the camp
area; the use of larger forces was restricted by the dense vegetation which
one later patrol commander described as "thick as the hair on a dog's back."
<10> The patrols made their first contact on 1 April, killing one of two
Japanese discovered within 1,000 yards of the camp. Further sightings were
made in the following days, with one of the enemy killed and one wounded on 13
April, another killed on the 21st, and three wounded on the 26th, when an
ambush party received return fire, which wounded one member of the 52d, PFC
Ernest J. Calland.<11>
Lieutenant Colonel Silvey's group arrived at Guam on 4 May, landed and
rejoined the bat-
25
Map of PACIFIC BATTLEGROUND, 1942-1945
26
THE 52D DEFENSE BATTALION
talion. The next day, the 52d, which came under control of the 2d Provisional
AAA Group, was directed to undertake intensive training to be accomplished
preparatory to movement forward. On 10 May, the formal reorganization of the
battalion to its original table of organization took place, and Lieutenant
Colonel Moore took command.
As soon as the rest of the 52d was settled in, the intensified round of
training and checking equipment began with a readiness date for movement of 15
June. The patrolling and ambushes continued and it was soon obvious that some
men had a natural aptitude for the job. Sergeant (later Platoon Sergeant) Ezra
Kelly from Mississippi, a member of the Searchlight Battery, was one of these;
he killed the first Japanese accounted for by the battalion on Guam and
accounted for five others in later patrols.<12> He was, as one of his seniors
remarked, "really gung ho. Absolutely fearless."<13>
Insofar as the battalion commander knew, the next destination of the 52d
was Okinawa. Loading out for the Ryukyus actually started on 9 July, but the
orders were countermanded, and the 52d was directed to remain on Guam,
replacing the 9th AAA Battalion. The actual relief of the 9th began on 24 July
when Battery C moved into tactical positions with its 90mm guns.
The cancellation of the orders to move forward was unpopular in the 52d.
One of the battalion's clerks, PFC John R. Griffith, recalled, "our morale
dropped 99%, for the next week or ten days the men stayed around their tents
writing letters and what not--mad at the world and everyone in it. Instead of
being a Defense Unit, we turned out to be nothing more than a working
battalion."<14>
Events had taken a turn for the worse soon after debarkation. On 12 July,
the battalion began furnishing Island Command with working parties which grew
in strength until by the end of the month nearly half the battalion was
working each day, mostly as stevedores. The assignment, much disliked in the
52d, must have amused the men in the black Marine depot companies on Guam, who
were heavily committed to this physically demanding work. About this time,
Sergeant Major "Hashmark" Johnson appeared from Montford Point and noted with
displeasure that "when I arrived the 52d Defense Battalion was performing the
duties of a depot company at Apra Harbor."<15> The new battalion sergeant
major was instrumental in getting the patrols and ambushes started again, in
fact, the first one that he led himself drew and returned Japanese fire.
The end of the war also saw the end of the tactical employment of the 52d
as an antiaircraft battalion. Battery C stood down on 19 August 1945 and after
that no unit was tactically emplaced. Concurrent with the move of the
battalion to a new camp area formerly occupied by an Army engineer battalion,
the 52d began to furnish the 2d Military Police Battalion and Island Command
with large daily details of men for guard duty. On 30 September operational
control of the defense battalion was passed to the 5th Service Depot, parent
command also of the black ammunition and depot companies on the island. Six
days later, the battalion began turning in all of its equipment to the depot.
Lieutenant Colonel Moore received word on 18 October that elements of his
battalion would be relieving the 51st Defense Battalion at Eniwetok and
Kwajalein, so that the older unit could return to the States. In November the
battalion split into three parts: Headquarters and Service Battery and the
Light Antiaircraft Group stayed on Guam; a composite group designated Battery
A (Reinforced), composed of Battery A and four searchlight sections, was told
off as the relief at Kwajalein; and the Heavy Antiaircraft Group, less two
firing batteries, plus the Search light Battery, was set as the relief on
Eniwetok. Attached to both the relieving detachments were small groups of high
point men who would continue on to the United States with the 51st for
discharge.
Both elements of the 52d sailed on 16 November from Guam, on the cargo
ships USS SIBIK (AK-121) for Eniwetok and USS WYANDOT (AKA-92) for Kwajalein.
After the relief of the 51st was effected, the duties of the men at both
atolls were non-tactical; there were guard details and general duty chores
connected with the winding down of the war effort but little to relieve the
boredom. No one was unhappy when word came to return to Guam, since it meant
for most men a further return to home.
Postwar Activities
On 29 January 1946, the attack transport USS HYDE (APA-173), having
picked up the members of the 52d Defense Battalion in the Marshalls, berthed
at Guam. A month of
27
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
change and reorganization followed until on 28 February one of the postwar
Pacific units of the Marine Corps destined to be manned by black Marines was
formed. Heavy Antiaircraft Group (Provisional), Saipan was activated by
redesignation of the 52d's similar group. Low point men were transferred into
the new unit, and it began moving piecemeal to Saipan.
Before this happened, however, the ranks of the battalion were thinned
even further by the departure of another large group of high point men for the
States on 1 February. Among this group were a number of the original Montford
Point volunteers of 1942. When their ship arrived in San Francisco on the 22d,
they received a pleasant surprise. The receiving barracks were not segregated,
nor were those at Camp Pendleton when the men arrived there for processing for
discharge.
One gunnery sergeant from Louisiana, Alex "Buck" Johnson, even found
himself bossing all-white police details, which he regarded as a welcome
change from his previous experience. He noted that contrary to time-honored
practice in most units, he did not have to spend his time "running and ducking
and looking and trying to find out what happened to my detail." Instead, the
men did their work and asked him if there was anything else that he wanted
them to do.<16> The imminence of discharge must have disordered the normal
proclivity of enlisted Marines to avoid police duties.
The experience of the remainder of the 52d Defense Battalion was more in
keeping with the segregated nature of life in the Marine Corps in World War
II, since it returned home as a unit. On 13 March 1946, the 357 officers and
men still on the rolls of the battalion embarked on the transport USS
WAKEFIELD (AP-21) at Guam and sailed for San Diego. Arriving on the 26th, the
52d immediately moved to Camp Pendleton, dropped off the men who had enlisted
west of the Mississippi who would be discharged there, and entrained for Camp
Lejeune.
On 4 April 1946, the 52d Defense Battalion arrived back at Montford Point
Camp. Further discharges and separations took place immediately, and on 21
April Lieutenant Colonel Moore relinquished command of the battalion he had
served with for 23 months. On 15 May 1946, the 52d Defense Battalion passed
out of history, redesignated as a new postwar unit to be based at Montford
Point, the 3d Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion (Composite). Neither of the two
antiaircraft units that had grown out of the 52d had a long life. The group on
Saipan lasted until 28 February 1947 when it was disbanded and its remaining
men transferred into provisional depot companies which returned to Guam.<17>
The 3d Antiaircraft had a life of 12 months before it too was disbanded on 15
May 1947, with most of its men joining Headquarters Company, Montford Point
Camp.<18>
Although not directly responsible for the demise of all black
antiaircraft units, the sentiments expressed by Lieutenant Colonel Moore after
he had been with the 52d for 20 months are indicative of the line of reasoning
that eventually prevailed when the Marine Corps drastically reduced its troop
strength in post-war years. He reported to the Commandant that "so long as
social conditions make segregation desirable it is believed that Negro Marines
could be more advantagously employed in almost any other type unit." He
reasoned that antiaircraft units were among the most highly technical in the
Marine Corps and needed to draw on the whole Corps for their men, men who
would have all possible schools readily available to them as they were not to
black Marines. He pointed out that the normal scattered deployment of
batteries, radars, and searchlights "defeats the purpose of segregation,"
because these small units were forced to rely on neighboring organizations for
support which would be difficult to get and might not be forthcoming "so long
as any evidence of individual racial prejudice continues to"<19>
An objective examination of the experiences of the men of the 52d Defense
Battalion, weighing all pros and cons, must conclude that despite racial
adversity they performed well collectively as Marines. The conclusion is
inescapable when one meets veterans of the 52d that both they and the Marine
Corps benefited from their service.
28
CHAPTER 4
DEPOT AND AMMUNITION COMPANIES
One of the ironies of the service of black Marines in World War II was
that the units which had been designated, trained, and publicized as combat
organizations, the 51st and 52d Defense Battalions, never saw combat. Instead,
the "labor troops," the Marine depot and ammunition companies, and the
officers' stewards were the ones who garnered the battle credits and took the
casualties suffered by black Marines during the war. The Personnel Department
at Headquarters Marine Corps in a postwar tabulation of casualties established
that nine black Marines were killed in action or died of wounds, while 78
others were wounded in action and nine suffered from combat fatigue; 35 men
died of other causes.<1> Inasmuch as the duties of the men in the depot and
ammunition companies and those of the stewards were not supposed to bring them
into direct confrontation with the Japanese, the casualty toll was not
inconsiderable.
It was quite apparent to Marine planners in the early part of the war
that the Marine Corps needed a vastly increased and improved supply system in
the Pacific, one that could support the offensive thrust of hundreds of
thousands of Marines. The need was felt not only at the rear and forward area
support bases but in combat itself in the crucial area of shore party
operations, the ship-to-shore movement of essential equipment and supplies.
And once those supplies were ashore, they had to be stockpiled, shifted,
sorted, and moved forward into the hands of the Marines battling the Japanese.
Gradually, an elaborate system did evolve which included base depots,
which received, stored, processed, and shipped supplies of all sorts to combat
units, and field depots, which were intended to be forward supply activities
in operational areas. There were other organizations too, service and supply
battalions, for instance, which performed these support activities for local
base areas. All of these organizations were primarily composed of specialist
companies which handled various types of supplies and equipment, salvaging and
repairing non-expendable items where possible. What was missing at first was
an essential element of the Marine logistical system, labor troops. All the
vast assemblage of equipment had to be moved by ship and those ships had to be
unloaded and reloaded time and again. The Marine Corps had no stevedores and
found in its early combat operations that using combat troops for the
unloading tasks was highly unsatisfactory. They were not doing the job for
which they had been trained.
When the prospective number of black Marines was greatly increased in
1943, the problem of their employment arose. Headquarters Marine Corps began
thinking about additional pioneer units, not the organic pioneer battalions of
the Marine divisions, which were engineer organizations specializing in shore
party operations, but units which would in effect serve as stevedores. The
thousands of men destined for Montford Point were a ready-made manpower
reservoir. Instead of organizing battalions or larger organizations, the
Marine Corps formed the black Marines into company-sized units that could be
deployed as soon as their ranks were filled from boot camp and shifted about
more easily as the need for their services arose.
On 8 March 1943, the 1st Marine Depot Company was activated at Montford
Point; its commander was Captain Jason M. Austin, Jr. Organized according to a
table of organization approved less than a month before, the company included
three officers and 110 enlisted men formed into a headquarters and two
platoons and lightly armed with rifles, carbines, and submachine guns.<2> All
but one of the 101 blacks in the company were privates; the other was an
assistant cook, Ulysses J. Lucas. The nine NCOs in the company were white.
Until enough black NCOs could be selected and
29
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
DEPOT AND AMMUNITION COMPANIES 1943-1995
30
DEPOT AND AMMUNITION COMPANIES
trained this was to be the pattern for the black Marine depot companies.
Eventually, black NCOs moved up through the ranks replacing the whites who
were transferred out to other organizations. On the whole, the first units to
leave the States became all black below the officer level overseas. In 1944
and 1945 depot companies leaving Montford Point had black NCOs from first
sergeant on down the line.
This policy of replacing white NCOs with blacks was in keeping with
Letter of Instruction 421 which the Commandant issued on 14 March 1943. In the
letter, in an attempt to avoid racial friction, General Holcomb stated that in
no case would there be black NCOs senior to white men in the same unit and
that it was desirable that few, if any, be of the same rank. The instructions
specifically stated that it was not the intent of the letter to hinder
promotion of blacks, in fact the Commandant indicated it was his aim that
commanders exert every effort to locate blacks "having the requisite qualities
of intelligence, education, and leadership to become noncommissioned
officers." As an example he noted that if a black corporal was qualified for
promotion to sergeant while there were still white corporals in his unit, he
would be promoted but he would be transferred to a billet where his services
could be used at the higher rank.<3> Although this letter to commanding
officers was classified "Confidential," there was no doubt in the minds of
most black Marines that such an order existed; they could see its dictums in
operation. Still others saw the letter, including the sergeant major of the
51st Defense Battalion. He later remarked, in emphasizing that men of
"intelligence, education, and leadership" had been found, that no black men in
his office had a general classification test score of less than 110.<4>
After 10 depot companies had been formed and deployed in the period
between March and September 1943, a new type of black unit came into being,
the Marine ammunition company. Conceived of as a hard-working partner of the
white ordnance companies in the base and field depots, the ammunition
companies were to load and unload, sort and stack, man-handle and guard
ammunition, moving it from ship to shore to dump, and in combat, forward to
the frontline troops and firing batteries. The 1st Marine Ammunition Company
was organized at Montford Point on 1 October 1943 with Second Lieutenant
Placido A. Gomez in command.
Where the depot companies had a minimum of training before they shipped
out, the ammunition companies usually spent at least two months at Montford
Point before going overseas. The men were given familiarization courses on
various types of ammunition and fuses, often practising moving ammunition
containers from landing craft to inshore dumps. Some potential NCOs were sent
to camouflage school and others were given special training in handling
ammunition. The staff NCO billets in the companies went to white ordnance
specialists, a condition that remained throughout the war. While the handling
of ammunition required heavy labor, it also required experienced supervision
to emphasize and enforce safety regulations.
The ammunition company was a large organization with a total strength of
eight officers and 251 enlisted men. The unit was organized into a
headquarters and four ammunition platoons with the men armed with rifles and
carbines. Unlike the depot companies which had no organic transportation, the
ammunition company rated a number of its own jeeps, trucks, and trailers.<5>
The permanent complement of white line and specialist staff NCOs in the
ammunition companies stifled Negro promotions to those ranks but the units
operated effectively despite this. In the 3d Ammunition Company, one black
veteran recalled: "The white NCOs we had was wonderful, a bunch of swell
fellows. You couldn't go wrong with them. . . we were together; we worked as a
team."<6>
From October 1943 until September 1944, one ammunition company and two
depot companies were organized every month at Montford Point. The last of 12
ammunition companies was activated on 1 September 1944, the same day that the
33d and 34th Marine Depot Companies came into being. Depot companies continued
to be formed, however, and 51 were organized, with the last four (the 46th,
47th, 48th, and 49th) activated on 1 October 1945 after the war was over.
There were actually two 5th and 6th Marine Depot Companies; the first pair
were sent out to New Caledonia in August 1943 to provide reinforcements for
the four earlier depot companies when the addition of a third platoon to the
table of organization brought each companies' total strength up to 163
officers and men.<7>
31
BLACKS IN THE MARINE CORPS
Into Service Overseas
A colorful description of the state of training of the depot companies
before they shipped out was provided by the former first sergeant of one of
them, who recalled:
. . .there was no training these Negroes was doing, such
as infantry training. The only training they had was what
they had received at boot camp. And of course they did a
hell of a lot of drilling. They were some of the
drillingest people that you'd ever seen in your life.
From his point of view all the black depot company Marine needed "was a
strong back," and "he already had that and so there was no need of training
him because that was all he was going to do, to load and unload ships and haul
ammunition and supplies into the line for the fighting troops."<8>
Like those depot units which followed it, the 1st Marine Depot Company
did not spend much time at Montford Point once it had been formed. Three weeks
after its organization, the company was on a train bound for the west coast.
When the men arrived at San Diego on 5 April 1943, the Marine Corps base
newspaper noted their arrival and reported: "after spending their first few
hours squaring their gear, the men put on a warm-up demonstration of close
order drill that left observers gaping."<9>
On 16 April, the company boarded ship, the destroyer USS HUNT (DD-674)
and two days later sailed for Noumea on New Caledonia. This was the first of
many such sailings from San Diego; other depot and ammunition companies left
the States from San Francisco and Pleasanton in California, and Norfolk,
Bayonne, and Davisville on the east coast, and from New Orleans and Gulf Port
in the south, depending on where the shipping was available.
The destination of the 1st Marine Depot Company and of the next five
companies to follow it was New Caledonia, where the 1st Base Depot was
headquartered, its responsibility the support of Marine forces in the
Solomons, where the campaign for Guadalcanal had just ended. In the same month
that the 1st Marine Depot Company left the States, a new base depot, the 4th,
was organized on New Caledonia, absorbing half the quartermaster personnel and
taking the title to half the supplies stored in 1st Base Depot facilities. In
May the new organization moved forward to the island of Banika in the Russell
Group north of Guadalcanal to be in position to support Marine combat troops
as they moved forward into the central and northern Solomons.<10> A number of
black depot and ammunition companies were to serve in both base depots while
the advance northward continued to its eventual culmination in mid-1944 with
the encirclement and neutralization of the Japanese base at Rabaul on New
Britain.
The value of the first depot company was immediately felt when it arrived
at Noumea in May. Prior to this time, the shorthanded base depot had had to
call on other Marine units for working parties, including convalescent wounded
in mobile base hospitals, to augment ship loading and unloading details. The
1st Marine Depot Company was really welcome; "these troops offered the first
solution to the depot's labor problem."<11> Other black Marine depot
companies wer