What happened to Negro prisoners of war in World War 2?

Answer 1

Negros were outcast in the "prisoner communities". White POW were even used by the enemy to beat up their own black commrades.

There are reports of some black POW's of war being killed as it was much easier to kill them than to split them from the other Prisoner Camps.

Answer

In reality, there were NOT very many black US pows' The reason? Very few were front line soldiers. The vast majority were in labour battalions that built bridges and air fields, long after the fighting had moved on to another area. Others were cooks or drove transport trucks.

In the US navy blacks were restricted to only a few jobs, as cooks and mess servers. They did NOT serve on US subs, and most were relegated to rear area supply bases and were no where near any fighting.

In the USAAF, they were NOT flight crew on bombers and only one small air force unit had black pilots. Blacks in the US Military were very much "second class citizens" who did the hard work with their hands and their backs.

I know that all of this is hard for young people to understand now, but sixty years ago things were really different in the USA. Racial attitudes at that time were ridgid and the US government was racist in it's own military policies. The few Negro officers couldn't get white troops, especially those from the south to obey their orders. The few all black units had mostly white officers, who were "shunned " by the other white officers. It was impossible to mix the races in one unit, especially as most of the top NCOs' were southerners, who were career pre-war soldiers, and who hated blacks.

The USMC was all white, no black Marines at all.

I have looked at lots of WW2 POW camp photos over the years, and didn't see more than a FEW black faces. BTW I'm 59 and have been reading WW2 history for over 40 years.

Treatment of Negro POWs in WW2

The Germans generally treated U.S. and British and Commonwealth POWs more or less correctly, though there were some unfortunate exceptions. Treatment at the hand of the Italians was less consistent. The Japanese treated Allied POWs appallingly badly and committed many atrocities against them. What counted was citizenship, not race, as far as Allied POWs were concerned.

However...

It's been well-documented (by the BBC and others) that black French Colonial troops were massacred by the tens of thousands. But the Nazis weren't the only ones to treat the black Free French like second-class soldiers: when Paris was retaken by the allies, all parties worked very hard to make absolutely sure no black Free French troops were part of the liberation army seen marching into the city, even though they had done a fair portion of the work to bring about the liberation. After all, you wouldn't want those pretty white Parisian women rewarding black men, would you?

It's also been noted that black Canadian soldiers (who, unlike the case with the American military, were allowed to serve on the front lines) were far less likely to survive POW camps than their white compatriots.

Actually there WERE Black Marines in World War Two. I should know my great-uncle was one. Check out the book THE RIGHT TO FIGHT: African-American Marines in World War II by Bernard C. Nalty.

Exactly, they were called the "Montfort Point Marines" and they first appeared in 1943. Their Black NCOs mostly came from the Army.

Additionally, there WERE black POWs, many captured during the "Battle of the Bulge" when Black truck drivers of the "Red Ball Express" were captured with White soldiers.

Black sailors were also captured, given that the ship, when sunk, didn't discriminate on who was Black or White. There's a book written back in the 70s called "The Invisible soldier: the experience of the black soldier, World War II

By Mary Penick Motley

Which describes one Black sailors capture, with his surviving shipmates, at the hands of the Japanese.

Finally, the Black Army Air Corp fliers, "Tuskegee Airmern" weren't a 'small unit'. From the Tuskeegee Airmen's webpage:

"Four hundred and fifty of the pilots who were trained at TAAF served overseas in either the 99th Pursuit Squadron (later the 99th Fighter Squadron) or the 332nd Fighter Group. The 99th Fighter Squadron trained in and flew P-40 Warhawk aircraft in combat in North Africa, Sicily and Italy from April 1943 until July 1944 when they were transferred to the 332nd Fighter Group in the 15th Air Force."

So, far from a 'small unit'. In fact, they never lost a bomber they protected to enemy fire. Their reputation was such that White bombers would ASK for them.