WHAT THE ARMY LEARNED ABOUT RACE DURING WWII

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.

Soon after the draft age was lowered in late 1942 to include 18- and 19-year-olds, Solomen Moskuada Rangel completed the front of a Draft Registration Card to provide his address, date and place of birth, family contact, and employment. The back of his card was completed by a Registrar for his local board, recording her observations of his appearance. She entered Rangel’s height and weight, his “dark” complexion, the color of his eyes and hair, and her perception of his “race.” The form provided only five options for race: “White,” “Negro,” “Oriental,” “Indian,” and “Filipino.” In Rangel’s case, the Registrar was not satisfied with these options and crossed out “White” to write in “Mexican.” A copy of his card is available to the public at www.Fold3.com and elsewhere, as are millions of other draft registration cards from the period.

Discrimination based on race or national origin was real during WWII, but the Army deserves credit for being unbiased in its official treatment of Rangel and many other men who did not fit neatly into the category of “White.” In many ways, the wartime Army (which included the Army Air Forces) was far more integrated than civilian America. A very few Chinese Americans, for example, were placed in segregated units and assigned to coordinate with Chang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army, but the great majority of non-Japanese “Orientals” were assigned to predominantly White units. A few “Indians” famously became Navajo Code Talkers, but the great majority were again assigned to serve alongside White soldiers. After Rangel entered the Army on Feb. 22, 1943, he was sent to India, where he served alongside my (White) father in the 771st Chemical Depot Company (Aviation). Rangel rose to the rank of Technician Fourth Class as a toxic gas handler. His rank entitled Rangel to wear the three stripes of a sergeant and (despite his having only an 8th-grade education) to exercise authority over other men in the company. In a 2010 interview, Rangel remembered proudly that his rank meant, “I was the one out there telling them what to do" as men of the 771st worked with bombs containing mustard agent, phosgene, cyanogen chloride and other deadly toxins.

Throughout WWII, discrimination against anyone identified as “Negro” was far more severe. By 1943, there were beginning to be exceptions to the policies that generally excluded African Americans from combat, and some were allowed to serve in segregated units such as the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion. The military held fast throughout the war, however, to another core value and official policy: White soldiers should never be placed in a position where they were required to obey orders from higher-ranking Negro soldiers.

Increasingly, moral and political debates about race converged with the reality of the Army’s manpower requirements. Official policy called for African Americans to be drafted in numbers that matched their 9 to 10% share of the American population, but this policy collided with the practice of restricting their assignment almost exclusively to non-combat units. The Selective Service system had a backlog of 300,000 Black registrants who had been judged qualified for service and assigned draft priority numbers that had already been called for White registrants. These Black registrants had been passed over despite their qualifications because the Selective Service Act provided that no man could be inducted “unless and until” the military could identify an assignment for him. The greatest need for draftees in 1943 was to serve as replacements in infantry and other high-casualty combat units. Civil rights advocates (but perhaps not all Black draft registrants) were increasingly dissatisfied with the situation, as were the families of White draftees being sent into combat. Under pressure to absorb more Black inductees but unwilling to place them in combat units, the Army established more Black units in non-combat fields, particularly in the Corps of Engineers and the Quartermaster Corps. The Chemical Warfare Service ranked third among service branches in terms of creating new Black units. Some of these units had Black commissioned officers; most had White commissioned officers with Black non-commissioned officers and other enlisted men. There were no cases in which Black commissioned officers were assigned to command White soldiers.

When President Truman issued his order to desegregate the U.S. military in 1948, he was speaking to military leaders who had their share of deep racial biases. Still, those leaders were aware from their experience during WWII that the existing system of segregation was very inefficient. The order also built on wartime experience in which men with very different backgrounds had been successfully intermingled. By the end of WWII, America’s military was functioning extremely well, and it was far more integrated in terms of race, ethnicity and national origin than virtually any other large American organization—with the exception, of course, of African Americans. Even as the number of soldiers decreased after the war, the military still recognized both the need for and the value of African American manpower. It also recognized the prohibitive financial and other costs of providing separate and somewhat equal facilities for training, housing, and operations. President Eisenhower continued the work of desegregation, and it was during his presidency that the last all-Black military units were disbanded. It would require more wars and more decades to achieve today’s still-flawed racial reality within the U.S. military. Still, the seed of Truman’s order fell onto ground that had been prepared during WWII by the advocacy of civil rights groups, by the successful integration of many ethnic and national groups, and by the practical shortcomings of Black segregation.

Truman’s personal transformation was almost as dramatic as that of the military itself. He had been raised by grandparents sympathetic to the Confederacy, and he initially shared many of their values. In 1911, for example, he wrote a letter to his future wife in which he stated, “It is race prejudice I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.” Post-WWII racial violence against Black veterans and continuing pressure from Civil Rights advocates played a role in changing Truman's position, but his decision to sign Executive Order 9981 in July 1948 still stands as an act of individual courage comparable to his decision to use the atomic bombs. His order officially instructed America’s military services, “… there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”