Re: Race Relations and Korea

[Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>]

At 09:13 PM 4/12/2000 -0400, Ben Frank wrote:
>Hopefully this ends the question of whether there were blacks in the
>Marines in Korea. BMF

Thanks for the informative posting, Ben, but, no, this doesn't end it.  We
have had a posting from an actual combat Marine who was there and who says
this wasn't so.  Why don't you work it out with him off-line and get back
to us?  Apparently, the DC Eyewash still works, but those who were on the
ground disagree.  Truth counts, not Gummit Tabulations.  From your Bio, you
were not in Korea as a combat sort and, when you did arrive, rather much
later, you were a headquarters type.  The other poster WAS there as a
rifleman, in the front lines, and has great credibility as a result.  

Ben, it just sounds like you are spouting a line which the facts will not
bear.  Please, give me some citations proving that 10% of the Marine Corps
riflemen in Korea in the autumn of 1950 were black.  Otherwise, the Corps
failed to obey Truman's dictate for absolute integration.  I don't think
ANY service did this before or during Korea, though I think all had done it
as Korea ended.  Wasn't it Ridgway who said that the "Army entered Korea as
a pretty lousy force, and left it a pretty good force".  Why not admit that
the Marine made mistakes along the way?  They did.  Want to get into Sandy
Patch's analysis of the Corps' performance on Guadalcanal?  I would think not!

I admire you, Ben, but to contend that the Marines were integrated as
Truman had ordered, two years earlier, by the time of Korea is to challenge
every fact in the book.

Marc



Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!