In July 1944, the U.S. Army and Marines recaptured Guam from the Japanese at a cost of 1,783 Americans killed and ~6000 men wounded. ~18,000 Japanese died. After the battle, the Allies developed five airfields on Guam to attack targets in the Western Pacific and on mainland Japan.
Occupying Guam, racial tensions developed among enlisted U.S. Marines when an all-black supply depot company arrived. White Marines, trying to prevent blacks from socializing with Guamanian women, shouted racial slurs, threw rocks and occasional smoke grenades into the depot area.
Tension escalated when a white sailor killed a black Marine in a fight over a woman; and a black sentry fatally wounded a white Marine who was harassing him. Subsequently, each of these men was court-martialed for manslaughter.
On Christmas Eve 1944, with rumors circulating among black and white Marines that one of their own had been injured or killed, truckloads of angry Marines harassed each other’s turf without injuries. On Christmas day, two black Marines were killed in separate incidents by drunken whites.
On December 26, a jeep of white Marines fired on the black Marine depot, injuring a white MP. A group of armed blacks chasing the whites’ jeep, were stopped at a roadblock and charged with unlawful assembly, theft of government property and attempted murder.
43 Marines (including a few whites) were court-martialed and given prison terms of several years each. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People later successfully campaigned to have the guilty verdicts overturned and the black marines were released from prison in 1946.
Ignorant bias. The picture of the Marine with a Confederate battle flag was not on Guam. This is Captain Julius Dusenberg and this is a picture of him raising this flag after the Battle of Okinawa after they took Shuri Castle. They sang “Dixie” afterwards. You associated the flag with a story on race that had nothing to do with it. The 5th Marine Regiment went to Guam in 1947. That’s 3 years after your story. Remove his picture and the picture of the flag!!
Thank you, Sam Boyd, for pointing out the image of a WWII American soldier raising a Confederate flag was on Okinawa, not Guam. I have removed the photo and replaced it with a cartoon that expresses the emotion I intended.
~19,168 African Americans joined the U.S. Marine Corps during WWII, about 4% of USMC strength. ~8,000 black USMC stevedores and ammunition handlers served under enemy fire during offensive operations in the Pacific.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_in_the_United_States_Marine_Corps#World_War_II
In April 1945, the 6th and 1st Marine Divisions, including ~2,000 black Marines stormed ashore alongside two Army divisions at Okinawa
Perhaps Captain Dusenberg’s display of the Confederate flag after the heroic capture of Shuri castle by the 5th U.S.Marine Division resulted in little reaction other than good-natured gibes from the white northerners in the battle. I wonder, however, if any Black Marines would have been offended by display of the Confederate flag had they been at Shuri castle?
Regardless of these asides, the actions of some enlisted men of the 3rd U.S. Marine Division on Guam after the island was captured from the Japanese can only be described as despicably racist.