One of the bravest sights I’ve seen, was on Iwo where a Black driver of a duck .... the nickname of a vehicle that was half boat and half truck. Time and time again, delivered much needed ammunition to Marines fighting at the foot of Suribachi, where that flag was raised. The Japanese shot two trucks out from under him, but he came back everytime.

Battle hardened Marines cheered him from their foxholes.

Black Marines assigned to Iwo Jima ... were like Black Marines everywhere else ... They were segregated from day one.

The story began in the summer of 1941. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had by “Executive Order” declared that men, regardless of color, were to be inducted into the Marine Corps.

Old-line Marines, all white of course, screamed to high heaven that didn’t want “Negroes” in the Corps. That “Negroes” could never be trained in the manner “real Marines” of the world-famed organization were trained and that induction of Negroes into the Corps would “hurt the progress of Marines as they moved from one bloody island, to another, in the Pacific war against Japan...”

But, President Roosevelt’s decision was final, and he struck down all excuses from Marine Corps officers, generals to lieutenants. Roosevelt had not asked for “integration” of the military. That came 7 years later, 1948, under President Harry S. Truman. So, the Marine Corps brass, informed the President (Roosevelt) that they needed time to “build a camp where Black Marines would be trained” ...

And so from July 1941 to August 1942, they stalled, but they had completed on the Southern end of Camp Lejuene, North Carolina, a place called Montford Point, complete with “all the facilities of the white camps. “

Good barracks, dining halls, churches, medical facilities, entertainment and movie halls, camp stores, barbershops, training areas, and rifle-ranges (where they would train the Black Marines to shoot) ... and all other facilities, on a par with ‘white’ facilities.

Read the compleat story and other information inside this web sight.