There are countless reasons to be proud of America’s military achievements in WWII. One achievement that deserves more recognition than it gets is the progress the Army made during and shortly after the war in dealing with race. In 1940, the military had fewer than 2% African Americans, almost all of whom were in segregated, low-level jobs. Ten years after the war, the last all-Black units had been disbanded, and a quarter million Black men and women were intermingled with Whites in our nation’s military services. The history of this change should be a source of pride for all Americans and an inspiration for the possibility of future change. The history is not simply a story of Black-White relations, but one that involves the full range of people who have made America great.

Eighty years ago, on March 5, 1945, Lt. Col. Wyss from U.S. Chemical Warfare Headquarters in Calcutta visited Ondal Advanced Chemical Park in West Bengal, India. The purpose of his visit was to reassess the stockpile of toxic chemical bombs then being maintained at Ondal by the 771st Chemical Depot Company (Aviation). Immediately after Wyss’s visit, the soldiers of the 771st began a major project to dispose of tens of thousands of chemical bombs that were judged to be either unneeded or unusable.

By May 1944, the US had equipped four airbases near Kharagpur, India with 130 of America’s newest and largest bombers, the B-29 Superfortress….