Facing the Rising Sun

by Gerald Horne

  7

  “Brown Americans” Fight “Brown Japanese” in the Pacific War?

  As the Pacific War was grinding to a bloody conclusion, Walter White of the NAACP embarked on a four-month journey of 36,000 miles through a central arena of conflict: the Asia-Pacific basin. What stunned him was the “prejudice of some American white soldiers, particularly officers, against Negroes.” It was understandable why he would be astounded by the nagging persistence of racial chauvinism; the foe—Japan—had campaigned tirelessly among U.S. Negroes seeking to convince them that their Euro-American counterparts were incorrigible, almost congenitally incapable of diverting from a rigidly racist course. “Everywhere I went,” White wrote with disgust, “I was asked how the United States, fighting a war against the racial theories of Hitler and Japan, could send two armies—one white and one Negro—to fight such a war.”1 White was distressed to see the “efforts to plant the racial patterns of Mississippi and Georgia on foreign soil,” which, among other things, “has sown the seeds of distrust among our allies in this war,” thereby complicating the murderous conflict.2

  White could not ignore the dysfunctional racial policies that Washington had installed within the military. The publisher Claude A. Barnett was informed in 1942 that “American Indians are not separated in the United States Army. Chinese Americans are likewise taken without restrictions in both the Army and the Navy. There is a separate Philippino [sic] Battalion now being trained in California.” The wider point was that the United States had eased the path for Tokyo’s propaganda appeals to Negroes by singling them out for a more atrocious mistreatment.3

  This led to predictable results. After the war, L. D. Reddick, one of the earliest advisors to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said that during the conflict, U.S. enemies were once able to batter U.S. cordons at one juncture because the “white American troops and the Negro American troops of our then segregated army were so preoccupied in watching each other that they failed to keep their eyes on the enemy.”4 National security would be perpetually jeopardized unless the more egregious aspects of Jim Crow were somehow softened.

  In short, it is evident that Washington had not contemplated all of the manifold consequences of seeking to maintain white supremacy while combating a foe that portrayed itself as “champion of the darker races” and, besides, made a special appeal to U.S. Negroes. Something had to give—and it did. Following the war, there was a concerted effort to erode Jim Crow.

  ***

  White supremacy also meant that not only would the Japanese forces be underestimated but Negro troops would be disrespected too. In 1925 a report from the Army War College asserted that the Negro “is by nature subservient and believes himself inferior to the white man”; he was disfigured by “mental inferiority,” which supposedly had been displayed by “his failure in the World War.” The “lack of honesty” of the Negro was astonishing; that the Negro is “a rank coward in the dark” was received wisdom (emphasis in the original).5

  The question needs to be asked whether such views handicapped the U.S. war effort, prolonging the war, particularly against Japan, which was not above broadcasting widely what Euro-Americans thought of African Americans. And, yes, it is likely that third-class citizenship for Negroes did not predispose them to eagerly make the ultimate sacrifice for the nation responsible for this state of affairs.

  In early 1942 a Negro journalist in Kansas City seemed to take grim satisfaction when considering the racial setbacks of his homeland at the hands of Tokyo. “Jim Crow came home to roost in Manila,” he chortled, “where the race-conscious Japs ordered all white people off the streets, threatening to shoot them on sight unless they obeyed orders. It is extremely ironical that white Americans as champions of race discrimination and segregation should be the first to squawk when the tables are turned on them.” Thus, “Pearl Harbor was the first fell blow against white supremacy as foreseen by [Lothrop] Stoddard” and earlier racial theorists.6

  If this observer had looked more carefully at Japanese-occupied Manila, he would have noticed that a racial barrage had been unleashed, including hailing Joe Louis—the hero of Black America—as the “dusky champion” of boxing.7 Benigno Aquino, scion of a leading family that was to play a preeminent role after the war, was among those urging full collaboration with Tokyo, as he chose with a tinge of sarcasm to “ponder the question of why our Supreme Creator in His infinite wisdom made us Malaya-Orientals and not Europeans or Anglo-Saxons.”8 The national hero Jose Rizal was among those “impressed by Japanese life [and] culture,”9 while Filipinos were informed that the “vicious intolerance” of the Allies was “regretted”—which may have been a premature assessment of Tokyo’s opponents.10 These riveting words and actions were mirrored by certain Filipinos in the United States, then collaborating with African Americans with the goal of implementing Tokyo’s aims.

  ***

  By March 1945 Tokyo’s forces were on the run and Walter White was in Leyte in the Philippines, but it did not appear to him that U.S. forces had learned lessons from their bitter experience under Japanese occupation. One who spoke with him found confirmation of “the old remark about whites treating every dark-skinned person better than the American Negro.” White found it hard to fathom why islanders were being treated better by Euro-Americans than their African American counterparts.11

  Lin Yutang was a celebrated Chinese writer, whose homeland was then being ravaged by rampaging Japanese troops, but he took the time to tell White that “as an Oriental observer of American life, the most shocking thing to me, one that completely surprises me, is not your bathing costumes but the racial discrimination that actually still exists.” The hypocrisy was alarmingly distressing since “many people who believe that the white people are superior to the colored people are only accusing themselves when they accuse Hitler.”12 Even as Japan’s defeat was assured, Euro-Americans would often enter various sites, then growl in disgust, “What are those niggers doing here?”13

  This multi-front war unveiled contradictions and snares that Jim Crow found difficult to elude. A Negro soldier, George Watson, found that “one thing stayed in my mind while I was at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia waiting to go overseas. German prisoners of war served us food every time we went to the mess hall [dining room] to eat.”14 The folkways of Dixie dictated that serving food across racial lines should not unfold in the way that Watson experienced it: the Negro was supposed to be the server.

  ***

  It has been estimated that 2.5 million Negroes registered for the military during the war, and for the first time nearly 20,000 of them served as U.S. Marines. This suggested that perhaps the Negro seditionists’ appeal to shun the military fell on deaf ears—or their prosecution acted corrosively against those same appeals (or, as Malcolm Little intended, Negroes chose to enlist and protest loudly upon donning the uniform).

  These ebony troops provided a target for Japanese propagandists aiming to influence African Americans. One Negro marine recalled the figure known as Tokyo Rose, who “would come on the radio at six o’clock every evening and say, ‘We are your friends, not your enemy.’ Her show would often be aimed directly at the black troops and would encourage them to turn against their own country.” Yet these targeted troops were instrumental in the pivotal battle at Iwo Jima. Arthur Peterson, a Negro who fought there, recalled that “if it had not been for us[,] our situation would have been worse.” Yet Negro marine Sam Green recalled sharing foxholes and intimate integration at Iwo Jima—then returning to Jim Crow in Fort Smith, Arkansas.15 U.S. military officials well knew that Tokyo was engaged in propaganda thrusts, but apparently felt that a Jim Crow army could prevail against this adversary or, alternatively, that preserving Jim Crow was more important than victory.16

  The 24th Infantry Regiment was the first all-Negro combat unit to face Japanese forces when it landed in the Solomon Islands two days before the pivotal Battle of the Coral Sea; roughly 200,000 Negro soldiers were scattered throughout this vicinity an
d westward into Asia during the war. They were essential in the defeat of Japan—and knew it—and were loathe to accept Jim Crow as a result, least of all at home upon their return. That Tokyo was making ever more strident racial appeals to them all the while served to stiffen their resolve.17

  Since there were so many Black soldiers serving in this theater of conflict, Negro reporters flocked there too. Enoch Waters of Chicago was among the latter, though official objections delayed his obtaining credentials. Washington had reason to believe that what these scribes were interested in or might find could be embarrassing—or worse—to the state. “I spent almost three years in the Pacific theatre of war as a war correspondent beginning on June 3, 1943,” he declared. “Negro GIs would tell me that they would rather be at home fighting Jim Crow than in the jungle fighting the Japanese.” In Papua New Guinea he found that Negro soldiers objected to editorials stating they should be “placed in combat units” rather than “service units.” The consensus among these soldiers was “Why should we volunteer to sacrifice our lives for a Jim Crow country?”18 Waters did not record whether those he interviewed had encountered or known about the New Guinean figure known as Embogi, who supported Japan because of a promise to liberate Pacific Islanders from “white” control.19

  Australia, which then was pursuing a state-sponsored policy drenched in racialism, was a noticeable object of concern for African American soldiers. White found that “anti-Negro propaganda by many of the Americans who have poured” in there “has had a decidedly harmful effect.”20 Australia was a base from which the U.S. military engaged in hopping from island to island as it tightened the noose around its ultimate target, Japan. Richard Minor Brooks, a PMEW member and avid reader of the Negro press, had a brother in the military in Australia, which was hardly unusual. This presumed seditionist was said to have remarked that, despite Washington’s strenuous effort, “The Japanese will take this country [the United States] anyway.”21 It was unclear whether special intelligence from his brother informed this inflammatory opinion.

  The importance of the island continent had not eluded the attention of columnist Gordon Hancock, who was struck by this “erstwhile white man’s land where the [sign] ‘For Whites Only’ has become proverbial.”22 Just back from “down under,” Los Angeles’s Robert Hayes in 1942 recounted how remnants of the 1920s racial bar that banned Negro bands and prize fighters from Melbourne continued to have “influence.” What struck him, however, was the mistreatment of the indigenous of Fiji, New Caledonia, and neighboring islands pursuant to the reigning philosophy of white supremacy, an ideology that was undermining the war against Japan.23

  However, Negroes tended to believe—like White—that Australians were not responsible for whatever difficulties African Americans encountered in the South Seas. As one commentator put it, “Australians want to treat Negroes as equals but Army leaders insist on Dixie Jim Crow and give lectures on race inferiority.” This was playing with fire and, it was concluded forebodingly, “unless something is done and done quickly, a war is going to be fought on Australian soil in which no Japanese shall participate.”24

  As U.S. Negro soldiers detected how horribly these indigenes of the South Seas were treated, it often broadened their view of racism, feeding the philosophy that the “darker races,” as Tokyo put it, were at odds with Washington itself. Not unlike the war earlier in the century in the Philippines, where commonalities too were found early on, Negro convergences with Pacific Islanders were quickly ascertained and cemented, which helped to convince African Americans returning home that they were not alone and should strive for liberty in the same way that Asians and Pacific Islanders were to do. There were “thousands of Negro soldiers stationed in these islands,” it was reported in 1943, and “there is little difference between the Polynesians, Melanesians and Negroes” to the point where “many of the Americans have stated they intend to settle down on these islands after the war and several have married native women.”25 One Negro journalist marveled that “the native of New Guinea and other Pacific islands . . . needs only a haircut and a suit of clothes to make him look like a Harlemite”; thus, “the coming of educated, efficient Negro Americans to this part of the world has stimulated and inspired the native people generally.”26

  Hundreds of miles westward, in India, Negro troops started a “stomp band” that a reporter found to be appealing to “Indian Nagas” who took “to the beat of a boogie-woogie band like a bee takes to honey.”27 The noted historian Thant Myint-U, describing those who built the major military roads leading from Myanmar to India and China, noted that “most of the soldiers involved were African American.” This was so evident, he said, that “for a while the local Naga tribesmen assumed that all Americans were black.”28

  Leon S. Bryan, born in Conway, South Carolina, in 1909 and a former student at both the segregationist Citadel and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, was in a unique position to assess the racial dynamics of the Pacific theater. Interracial friction was conspicuous, he said. “Night before last,” he wrote in June 1945, “some white sailors were in a café eating & drinking with a bottle of whiskey sitting on the table when a few Negro sailors wearing 45s [pistols] came in & tried to take their spirits. A free-for-all started,” one of many during the war: “one Negro was shot thru the abdomen by the shore patrol.”29 He sensed that what was fueling this black-white drama was the overriding racial conflict with Japan. “Our Marines have become just as dirty as the Japs,” he said, “when it comes to torture & that a favorite collector’s item is Jap teeth and that they are easier to collect if knocked out while the Jap is still alive so he can spit them out. The favorite tool for extraction is a rifle butt.”30 Such deeds did little to assuage the fear expressed by many Negroes that their white peers had less than benign racial convictions and the torturous tactics they used against Japanese could just as easily be applied to them upon their return home.

  ***

  By 1945 the Associated Negro Press was reporting that with the war in Europe winding down, “brown Americans will continue to engage brown Japs in the air but in greater numbers.”31 However, the ability of Negro pilots to be trained was made more difficult because of the objection to their presence in various communities.32 “The location of the majority of air bases in the southern part of the United States, in order to profit by as much good flying weather as possible,” was seen by an official Air Force report as being an impediment to training these “brown Americans” so they could engage brown Japanese. As was the case with the armed forces generally, “heightened racial tensions” resulted when “Northern Negroes were assigned in the South” for air training.33

  Of course, racial chauvinism profoundly hindered the U.S. ability to subdue Japan. The color bar blocked the flying career of James Peck, who had flown for the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War and thus had more experience than most.34 Though Negroes had developed a penchant for aviation virtually from the time of the Wright brothers,35 the Air Corps routinely refused their applications in the prelude to war.36 “Because I am a Negro,” wrote Carl Hurd to President Roosevelt, “I have been barred from the Air Corps.”37 It seemed that it was crucial for white supremacists to keep Negroes away from aviation, which was part and parcel of a larger strategy of consigning them to the bottom rung of society.

  The military’s use of aviation stretched back at least to the Civil War and the deployment of balloons, used again in 1898. There was official recognition of military aeronautics as a discrete field by 1911, as Congress voted funding specifically for this area; the first military airplane was produced in 1912. The planes were deployed against Mexico by 1916 and by the time of the Pacific War, the plane was seen as a winning weapon.38 The problem for the United States was that by 1918 Japan was becoming possibly the second air power in the world—second only to France39—though by 1920 a U.S. periodical reported that the “next war will be fought in the air.”40 By 1942 this factor, combined with its propaganda edge in the racial
realm, was thought to provide Tokyo with the ultimate winning weapon.

  Major General H. H. Arnold felt that “it takes from 5 to 7 years to train a good crew chief and 5 to 9 years to train a good line or hangar chief,” but the exigency of war meant that this now leisurely pace would have to be sped up tremendously.41 But there was a problem. William Hastie, the Negro attorney close to the NAACP, demanded an end to racist segregation in aviation units, but the response from on high was blunt: “There must be and will be segregation.”42

  The NAACP protested the establishment of what it termed a “Jim Crow Squadron” in Tuskegee, but other Negroes dissented.43 In early 1941 Lester Granger of the National Urban League was informed that it was “quite obvious that the facilities for training a Negro Air Corps group at Tuskegee will be inferior to those existing at other Government training fields, such as Kelly Field in Texas and McChord Field in the state of Washington.”44

  ***

  Just before the war started, Brigadier General G. C. Brant was contemplating sending a group of Negroes to a new flying school in San Angelo, Texas. But he worried that the city had “very few Negroes” and that “recreational facilities” were “non-existent for colored soldiers.” There was “only one cafeteria system mess” that was “provided for the entire garrison. The messing problem will be considerably complicated unless a separate mess is provided,” which required funds better devoted to lethal projectiles for war. Besides, “the City Bus Company operating the bus line to the field will not pick up Negroes unless the buses are almost empty.”45

  Though Houston was more urban and, presumably, more enlightened, this was not exactly the case in the sphere of Jim Crow. Ellington Field was “difficult for both housing and bathroom facilities” for Negroes, said General Brant. “While the city of Houston provides recreational facilities for Negroes,” he said, “the trip of eighteen (18) miles from the field to the city is too far.” Besides, there was “considerable feeling among the people of the city of Houston against the stationing of colored troops at Ellington Field because of the 1917 race riot,” a reference to an uprising of Negro soldiers that proved to be quite troublesome: “it can end only in trouble,” so forget this metropolis, he advised.46