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Page 32



uring this time, he and other black officers experienced a liberal dose of the Army's brand of racism.

At Carlisle Barracks white medical officers, sharing the same barracks with blacks, told "nigger" jokes after "lights out." The jokes stopped when my father complained, but the attitude persisted.

At Fort Huachuca, off post, white G.I.s turned away from black officers to avoid having to salute them.

After driving for two days, my father and two other black officers arrived at Fort Clark hungry and tired on Christmas Eve, 1943. The Officer of the Day told them there were bed frames but no mattesses or blankets immediately available. They left to drive 120 miles farther to San Antonio, just to get a decent night's sleep.

At Fort Clark, the black-officers' barracks were at least a quarter of a mile from the mess hall, insuring long lines were formed ahead of them for meals. The mess halls were segregated for the first four weeks of my father's stay, until he and the other black officers stationed there went on strike.

As bad as conditions were for my father at the different bases where he was stationed, many black soldiers had it incalculably worse.

The black 364th Regiment fought a bloody war on Army bases and neighboring towns and cities in the American South between November 1942 and November 1943. They never made it to Europe. Because of lost, destroyed, incomplete, and/or misleading records and despite conflicting evidence, the Army in a 1999 report claimed reports of widespread deaths were unfounded. But anecdotal and circumstantial evidence suggests that possibly hundreds—some estimates indicate up to a thousand—members of the regiment were killed.

The violence began when the regiment—augmented by recent recruits from northern cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia—was stationed at Papago Park in Phoenix, Arizona. Racially motivated fighting broke out at the base on November 13th, followed by a much more serious conflict in town two weeks later on Thanksgiving night. Although details are sketchy and the body count is uncertain, what is clear is that after an initial altercation occurred off base, members of the 364th came back to base, armed themselves, and returned to participate in an all night firefight in the predominantly Negro section of the city.

In late May 1943, the regiment was transferred to Camp Van Dorn, a base in southwest Mississippi about 20 miles north of the Louisiana border. Violence began in the base and in nearby towns almost immediately.

On May 30th, while scuffling with white MPs, a black soldier was killed by the local sheriff near the camp entrance. Incited by his death, members of the slain soldier's company, along with other members of the 364th, armed themselves and headed into nearby Centreville, before rioting back at the base.

In a June 6th letter, a white Army private stated, "... they (the black soldiers) started tearing down their barracks and PXs. Finally they worked over some MPs and killed two white officers. That night they captured five officers and held them in their barracks as hostages. Two battalions of the 5th Infantry were sent in .... Our officers told us they carted 30 dead niggers to the morgue... but I don't know if that's true."

Conditions continued to worsen and more deaths ensued. How many cannot be accurately determined. The 364th's Regimental Journal shows no entries from the day the regiment arrived in Mississippi in late May 1943 until November 4, 1943, six months later. In late December, the regiment was transferred to Fort Lawson near Seattle Washington. The following month, the decimated 364th embarked on three transport ships to spend the remaining months of World War II in desolation in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.



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