Were there any black soldiers in the US Army during WW2?

Hi! I just viewed for the second time the excellent serie "Band of Brothers". After seeing it, I notice that I don't remember seeing any black soldier during all the series.

Were there any black man fighting for the US during World War II? Thanks for your help!

 

You beat me to it. That is not an easy read but an excellent one.

 

Of course there were. The most famous ones were the Tuskegee airmen .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Airmen












and if you saw a P-51 with a red tail .......

 

You wouldn't have seen them in Band of Brothers as black units were segregated, with the exception of some with white officers. This changed immediately postwar, with the Armed Forces integration, but the 506th PIR would not have had blacks in it. In WWII there was only one black airborne unit, the 555th Battalion, and it never left CONUS.

 

Ok thanks guys and what about the infantry? Any black soldiers there or not at all?

 

There were many more blacks in support roles such as "Quarter Master" units; driving trucks (Europe- Red Ball Express) or Graves Registration and Ordnance units in the Pacific (Marine Corps). Many more all black units were left in the US.

Here is very interesting story that is touched on anecdotally in "The Pacific":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster

 

The 92nd Infantry Division saw action in the Italian campaign's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/92nd_Infantry_Division_%28United_States%29 Also: http://92ndinfantry.org/

The 3rd Platoon, Company C of the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion earned a Distinguished Unit Citation. http://tankdestroyer.net/units/battalions600s/208-614th-tank-destroyer-battalion

Lt. Charles Thomas of Company C, 614th TD Bn, was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross which was later upgraded to the Medal Of Honor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_L._Thomas

Info on the 333rd Field Artillery Unit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/333rd_Field_Artillery_Battalion_%28United_States%29

The 89th ID was a white unit.

edit: Yes. I was half asleep. will do better next time - Slipdigit

 

Is there any information if black US soldiers were treated differently if got POW? I can't remember reading anything about this, but it's not difficult to imagine what SS would've done to them...

Btw, there was this movie called Red Tails made couple of years ago about Tuskegee air men. Great story, horrible movie.

 

Hellwarior in case you don't know , the Nisei were Japanese American volunteers in the U.S Army.

 

The Red Ball Express was manned and staffed mainly with African Americans as well.

 

There were two black infantry divisions: the aforementioned 92nd "Buffalo" Division saw action in Italy; the 93rd Infantry Division fought in the SW Pacific, primarily in the Solomons and New Guinea.

 

The Wereth Massacre is an example of what SS guys did to African American POW's...

http://www.wereth.org/en/home

 

The drivers of the vehicles which took the band of brothers to Bastogne included mang black soldiers. There is a story about a truck stopped by a sceptical sentry checking for Germans in uniform. The driver can't answer the baseball questions but asks the sentry how many black Nazis he has seen.

 

The 333 (?) FAB whose gunners were victims in the Werth massacre ended up in Bastogne. They were part of the artillery support for the 101st.

 

The 2nd Cavalry Division was an all-Black formation. It was shipped to the Mediterrnanean but never saw combat, being broken up and converted to labor duties in what I regard as a prize waste of combat-trained manpower.

In the last 6 months of the war in Europe, the US forces in NWE were so short of infantry that black rifle platoons and rifle companies were attached to white infantry units. They performed well, and this ultimately helped convince the army that black soldiers could indeed be as good as white.