Note (Back) — CHAPTER 7

Army Ground Forces reported that it had formed some composite units, but its largest black unit, the 25th Regimental Combat Team, had been attached to the V Corps at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, instead of being made an organic element in a division. Practically all service group headquarters reported separate black and white battalions under their control, but many of the organizations in the Army Service Forces—those under the Provost Marshal General and the Surgeon General, for example—still had no black units, let alone composite organizations. The Caribbean Defense Command, the Trinidad Base Command, and the Headquarters Base Command of the Antilles Department reported similar situations. The Mediterranean theater was using some Negroes with special skills in appropriate overhead organizations, but in the vast European Command Negroes were assigned to separate regiments and smaller units. There were two exceptions: one provisional black regiment was attached to the 1st Infantry Division, and a black field artillery battalion was attached to each of the three occupation divisions. The Alaskan Department and the Okinawa Base Command had black units, both separate and grouped with white units, but the Yokohama Base Command continued to use specially skilled Negroes in black units because of the great demand for qualified persons in those units.[7-65]