Re: Race Relations and Korea

["A.M.J. Bielakowski" <abielak@yahoo.com>]

--- Ben Frank <ben.frank@tcs.wap.org> wrote:
> As I have said earlier, Black Marines were in evidence and served in
> the
> Korean War. In 1968, the History and Museums Division of the Marine
> Corps
> published a monograph, "Blacks in the Marine Corps," by Henry I.
> Shaw, Jr.,
> and Ralph W. Donnelly. Chapter 6, "A Decade of Integration," It
> begins: "On
> 30 June 1950, immediately following the outbreak of the Korean War,
> there
> were 1,502 black Marines on active duty, 1,075 on general duty
> assignments
> and 427 serving as stewards. In overall strength the Marine Corps
> stood at
> 74,279, its post-World War II low. Three years later, as the was was
> drawing to a close, 14,731 black Marine were on active duty,only 538
> of
> whom were stewards. The overall strength of the Marine Corps was
> 249,219,
> its peak for the Korean War. The growth in the number of black
> Marines from
> two percent of the Corps; strength to six percen accurately reflected
> the
> end of segregation. Certainly the manpower demands of the war
> hastened the
> change, but the combat prformance of black Marines in integrated
> units did
> nothing to lessen the pace."
> 
> The mongraph quotes the comments of the Marine combat leaders in the
> war.
> In one of the interview sessions I had with General O.P. Smith, who
> commanded the 1st Marine Division from the Inchon landing until a
> year or
> more later, he told me: "Oh, yes, I had a thousand Negroes, and we
> had no
> racial troubles. The men did whatever they were qualiied to do. There
> were
> communicators, there were cooks, there were turck drivers, there were
> plain
> infantry--they did everything, and they did a good job because they
> were
> integrated, and they were with good people....Two of these Negroes
> got the
> Navy Cross. There was no fooling: they were real citations, and there
> were
> plenty of Silver Stars and Bronze Stars, and what have you. And I had
> no
> complaint on their performaces of duty.:
> 
> Hopefully this ends the question of whether there were blacks in the
> Marines in Korea. BMF

Ben,

I don't believe the debate was ever whether or not there were blacks in
the USMC during the Korean War, but rather how many and when.  If
anything, the quote that you provided seems to me to reinforce the
notions set forth by several USMC Korean War vets on this list.  By
this I mean that early in the war there there were almost no black
marines (your numbers mean that only 1.4% of combat marines could have
been black at the beginning of the war, and I doubt that every one of
the non-steward black marines were in combat units) and that it took
the Korean War to accomplish full integration of the USMC.

Alex

=====
Alexander M. Bielakowski
Ph.D. Candidate
Kansas State University
abielak@ksu.edu

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