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I watch a lot of WW2 movies and noticed they almost never show minorities , it's always all caucasian soldiers with NYC accents, seems everybody is from Brooklyn? or the Bronx? or maybe Texas
in the movie FURY starring Brad Pitt, they do show one hispanic tank crew member
and in one scene they show a Black soldier, I thought black soldiers were segregated during WW2?
I read somewhere that most asians and minorities were not trained for combat jobs, they were mostly used in food service or supply, or maybe truck drivers
because it was thought they were not suitable to do Fighting / Infantry type jobs?
except for the Tuskagee airmen or the 442 Nisei regiment, most are never givin any credit for their service, at least not in the old WW2 movies.
in most old war movies the black soldier or asian is always the guy that works in the kitchen or as a servant / waiter.
Mostly labor troops, although there was one black infantry unit, the Harlem Hellfighters(?) in WWI. There were also the Buffalo Soldiers (nickname came from the hair, of course) who were Indian fighters in the post-ACW West.
The enlisted ranks of the USN were fully integrated from the ACW to the Spanish-American War, IIRC.
Dorie Miller, who won a silver star at Pearl Harbor for manning and successfully using a machine gun he'd never fired while under enemy fire, was a Steward, basically an officers' servant.
Basically in limited numbers Blacks held all positions except Naval aviation. The first quarter of Chinese heritage draftees were sent to the China Burma India theatre mostly as engineers building the Burma Road or supporting that effort when the Army concluded that segregation did nothing to help on the road and disrupted the Army as a whole. The smaller population size when you count immigration restrictions and Japanese heritage being pulled out of the pool reflects why th GI squad rarely shows an Asian in film or news reel
Ben Kuroki was an American of Japanese ancestry who enlisted in the Army but was only used for menial jobs. He managed to persuade his commanding officer to allow him to accompany his unit when it was shipped over to Europe, and then he somehow managed to take aerial gunnery training. It took forever before finally there was a plane that needed a gunner, and the captain took Kuroki instead of grounding the plane. Kuroki proved himself and he served in many missions, including the low-level Ploesti raid.
Later on, he was shipped to the Pacific. His ancestry was not necessarily an advantage to him there, and his comrades had to accompany him to the latrine at night, lest he be mistaken for an enemy spy and shot. He ended up flying a number of raids over Japan.
A lot of service support and labor type jobs. A lot of Black sailors were mess men or stewards. In addition to the combat units mentioned above, there was the 761 Tank Battalion, which was an independent battalion composed of Black soldiers that fought under Patton.
One thing to keep in mind that besides the US Navy mess stewards Black troops did not serve as servants for whites, they were segregated into their own units they cooked for themselves and supporting soldiers staff. Not for the white unit next door. Only Blacks and Japanese were segregated. There was no policy to put Hispanics, Native Americans or other groups only in units to paraphrase General Patton, from his stump speech that opened the movie that spent the war shoveling excrement in Louisiana
After the 99th Pursuit Squadron and 332 Fighter Group of the Tuskeegee Airmen and the Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team the most noteworthy Black, thus segregated, combat units were:
761st Tank Battalion, Kareem Abdul-Jabber even wrote a recent boot about then Jackie Robinson was a Lieutenant with them stateside until he was court martial'd for refusing to go to the back of the bus behind White enlisted soldiers
92nd US Infantry Division in Italy to which troops from African allied nations along with the segregated (Japanese American) 442nd Regimental Combat Team was usually assigned. In the movie Go For Broke about the 442nd they were attached to a Texas National Guard Division movie makers were not ready for the truth, even by 1951.
Montford Point Marines, the 51st and 52nd Defense Battalions were technically combat units but the support Marines hauling ammunition at places like Iwo Jima were in much heavier direct combat.
827th Tank Destroyer battalion, similar to 761st but Tank Destroyers were not as well known as tank units.
333rd Field Artillery, many were captured during the battle of The Bulge and were the victims of a Waffen SS atrocity as 11 were tortured and executed.
USS Mason, a Black crewed and officered Destroyer Escort
555th parachute Infantry Battalion was used as smoke jumpers putting out fires from Japanese ballon bombs and probably would have been in the invasion of Japan
Tuskegee Airmen 477th Bomber Group was preparing for the invasion of Japan.
93rd Infantry Division in New Guinea
Near the end of the Battle of the Bulge as the Army ran out of combat troops, as seen in the recent movie Fury, along with other service troops being drafted into combat arms Black troops were tested in integrated companies. Should movie makers want to showcase Blacks that would probably be the period chosen. An early attempts was the movie Home of The Brave starring Lloyd Bridges and James Edwards where a Black engineer was attached to the Alamo Scouts on a recon mission on a Pacific island. But it would be Korean War movies were you really see integration of the US Armed Forces and race played in the movies.
A movie like Red Ball Express about the mostly Black truck companies moving supplies forward in France focused on the non segregated companies, Years later when TV took a shot at the story the truckers were Black
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