Interracial bayonet brawl Philippines vost-VJ Day

I recall reading in THE INVISIBLE SOLDIER (comp. Mary Motley), which was a collection of oral hists by African-American servicemen re their experiences during WWII, 1 recollection by a black soldier who served with the 93rd (BLOODY HAND) Div in the Pacific, who stated that just after VJ Day IIRC his unit was stationed in the Philippines for garrison duty, alongside good ol' boys from the 31st DIXIE Div which comprised white Southerners from most of the Deep South states (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida NG). Both these outfits had seen only relatively limited action in the course of their deployment to the Pacific, being utilised largely in insignificant mopping-up operations on islands like Bougainville and Morotai. In his account, things got so bad between the 2 outfits, with rivalries over access to local Filipina women, that 1 day soldiers from both divs got their rifles, fixed bayonets, formed into battle-lines, and were gonna all have it out against each other. At the last minute, the officers of both divs, outraged at their men's behaviour, were able to cajole both black and white soldiers out of such a largescale racial fight, and the 93rd and 31st men dispersed without further incident. How would hist have been affected though had such a race riot occurred at this stage of the war with such a level of organisation and armament on both sides ?
 

Mifletz

Banned
The film "Death of a Soldier" (1986)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092858/
depicts an apparently true story of a GI psychopathic killer murdering sheilas in Australia during WW2. When his American identity gets out, there's a good scene of a full gun battle between Australians and US GIs at a train station, with many being killed on both sides. Did this event happen?
 
Eddie Leonski

Mifletz, you're very off topic here with your newest post, but yeah, I've seen that movie (although this was over 10 yrs ago now), and apparently this incident of a gun battle between US and Aust servicemen in Qld did occur in the aftermath of Eddie Leonski's 'Brownout Murders' strangling of about 1/2 a doz young Aust women in Melbourne in 1942. I've also read about other incidents such as with about 4 or 5 African-American servicemen being convicted and sentenced to death for raping and murdering 2 white nurses in New Guinea.
 
How public was the whole affair? If at all possible, I'd expect the ARmy to try keep things like that under wraps (like they did that incredibly embarrassing incident when German E-Boats managed to infiltrate a landing craft exercise off Britain - can't recall the name right now). Thus, no change, except if it blows up into some kind of monstrous conspiracy theory (apparently, some Brits saw the bodies of black GIs from that landing exercise being prepped for burial and thoe whole thing grew in the telling into 'a racist massacre perpetrated by American troops on their own on British soil'. I met people who still firmly believe several hundred black GIs were summarily executed on that beach by KKK-member officers for 'crimes against the race')

If it blows open I'd say ouch. I doubt the Chicago Defender or Washington Post had correspondents in the Philippines at that time, and just about every other paper would assume it's the black troops' fault. There might well be a summary trial of several hundred of them for disorderly conduct, mutiny and assault, murder if anyone dies. Even if the military is even-handed enough to consider both units at fault (at the time I'd say a 50-50 chance), that's not likely how it will play at home. Just imagine the climate this could help create "They backstabbed our boys in the Pacific, and now the government is going to let thousands of murderous, lecherous, trained-to-kill n*****s back onto our streets! No Southern woman will be safe!".

And I wouldn't put it past some northern black community leaders to organise a heroes' welcome for the unit in Harlem or South Side. Just to getup the rednecks' collective noses.
 
Slapton Sands

Carlton, I believe that the whole affair was very hush-hush indeed, I've found no other sources thus far to corroborate that black 93rd ID vet's account of this potential racial skirmish in the Philippines.

Your reference to the Slapton Sands incident in April 1944 is very strange in this context, I must say, since AFAIK the only American soldiers killed when the E-Boats got thru and sank a few landing-craft during Exercise 'Tiger' were combat troops of the 4th IVY LEAVES Div, all of whom were white since the armed forces were still so racially segregated at that time (that's 1 reason why for those who don't know, no blacks portrayed in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN)- some 400-600 lost their lives, and I've never ever come across any info re Slapton Sands/Exercise 'Tiger' indicating there was any sorta racially-based conspiracy involving the murder of black soldiers. You sure you haven't confused Slapton Sands with some other incident such as the 1943 Camp Van Dorn incident in Mississippi or the Bamber Bridge disturbance in England ? The greatest significance of the Exercise 'Tiger' foulup was the possibility that 'Bigots', or officers privy to intimate details of OVERLORD, might've been captured by the Germans, and thus the invasion of France possibly jeopardised. AFAIK, this episode never had any racially-associated connotations at all. Could you provide more info on where you got these conspiracy theory ideas ?
 
Melvin Loh said:
Carlton, I believe that the whole affair was very hush-hush indeed, I've found no other sources thus far to corroborate that black 93rd ID vet's account of this potential racial skirmish in the Philippines.

Your reference to the Slapton Sands incident in April 1944 is very strange in this context, I must say, since AFAIK the only American soldiers killed when the E-Boats got thru and sank a few landing-craft during Exercise 'Tiger' were combat troops of the 4th IVY LEAVES Div, all of whom were white since the armed forces were still so racially segregated at that time (that's 1 reason why for those who don't know, no blacks portrayed in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN)- some 400-600 lost their lives, and I've never ever come across any info re Slapton Sands/Exercise 'Tiger' indicating there was any sorta racially-based conspiracy involving the murder of black soldiers. You sure you haven't confused Slapton Sands with some other incident such as the 1943 Camp Van Dorn incident in Mississippi or the Bamber Bridge disturbance in England ? The greatest significance of the Exercise 'Tiger' foulup was the possibility that 'Bigots', or officers privy to intimate details of OVERLORD, might've been captured by the Germans, and thus the invasion of France possibly jeopardised. AFAIK, this episode never had any racially-associated connotations at all. Could you provide more info on where you got these conspiracy theory ideas ?

It's strictly oral history, I'm afraid., A story I was told (independently) by two students at Trinity College, Dublin, when I spent a year there. Neither was much of a historian, but both were very staunchly anti-British and anti-US. Slapton Sands it was, and I'm not surprised at all no black troops were involved.

I know that there was real racially motivated violence among US troops in Britain, but hey, whenyou can tell a story of hundreds of innocent murder victims...

(BTW, that's why I think secrecy is not a good policy in many cases. What people imagine is almost invariably much worse than what really happened)
 
carlton_bach said:
It's strictly oral history, I'm afraid., A story I was told (independently) by two students at Trinity College, Dublin, when I spent a year there. Neither was much of a historian, but both were very staunchly anti-British and anti-US. Slapton Sands it was, and I'm not surprised at all no black troops were involved.

I know that there was real racially motivated violence among US troops in Britain, but hey, whenyou can tell a story of hundreds of innocent murder victims...

(BTW, that's why I think secrecy is not a good policy in many cases. What people imagine is almost invariably much worse than what really happened)

Possibly somebody saw bodies that had been recovered from the water and had turned black and bloated like bodies sometimes do (you see a lot of that in pictures from the Civil War battlefields, for example) and that is how the story of a "black massacre" got started?
 
robertp6165 said:
Possibly somebody saw bodies that had been recovered from the water and had turned black and bloated like bodies sometimes do (you see a lot of that in pictures from the Civil War battlefields, for example) and that is how the story of a "black massacre" got started?

Could be. It's equally possible the dead became black in the telling as it makes a much more satisfying story. A similar example are the four victims of an attack in Iraq on Monday. They were working for a Christian relief organisation (in Kirkuk IIRC), but once the story hit the less respectable transmission paths they became 'missionaries'.

Oral history is a good source - for the time it is recorded in :D
 

Ian the Admin

Administrator
Donor
Mifletz, please stop posting off-topic links to conspiracy sites.

Or should I say "Dunash", since it seems a bit unusual that two unconnected conspiracy nuts are posting from the same internet provider in Italy.
 
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