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GREENSBORO — Roland Eubanks, Joseph Walker and the thousands of other African American Marines who trained at Montford Point in eastern North Carolina did double duty during World War II.

“We fought two wars,” Walker, who settled in Winston-Salem after the fighting, said in a 2004 oral history. “We fought the Jim Crow war and the Japanese American war.”
But finally, the nation has begun to recognize their contributions and their hardships — both at home and abroad.

On Wednesday night, the Senate approved legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the nearly 20,000 African Americans who trained at Montford Point, a blacks-only area at Camp Lejeune. The House already has passed the bill.

It’s the highest civilian award bestowed by Congress. The Senate vote came in time for the 236th anniversary of the Marine Corps on Thursday and Veterans Day today.

“This legislation is 50 years overdue,” Sen. Kay Hagan, one of the original sponsors of the Senate bill, said in a statement. “The courage and dedication with which these brave men served our country, despite discrimination and intolerance, is nothing less than heroic.”

For Eubanks, knowing that he and his fellow Montford Point Marines have been honored with the same medal that was given to George Washington, Mother Teresa, the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison, made him feel like a hero.

“It made me feel like I’m somebody,” Eubanks, an 86-year-old Siler City resident, said during a visit to his daughter’s Greensboro home Thursday afternoon. “It took a long time to get to this point.”

But don’t expect a lot of war stories out of Roland Eubanks — either about the discrimination he faced in the Marines or the service he saw in the Pacific.

“He still has nightmares if he talks about it,” said Bobbie Huntley, Eubanks’ daughter. “We don’t press him.”

And he doesn’t like to talk about his training either.

Huntley said her family didn’t know their father spent time at Montford Point until a couple of years ago.

“He always said 'Camp Lejeune,’” Huntley said. “I think Montford Point may have had a stigma to it. It seemed like he never wanted to mention that name again.”

Montford Point got its start after President Franklin Roosevelt signed an order that opened the doors for the first African Americans to enlist in the Marines.

Even then, Eubanks said he had never heard of the Corps. It was 1943 and he just wanted to serve his country.

As a 16-year-old elementary school dropout, Eubanks claimed to be an orphan — which wasn’t true — and convinced an unknown white man to sign his enlistment papers.
“I think those white boys might need me over there,” Eubanks told recruiters. “I’m willing to give my life to help out.”

Somehow, he wound up in the Marines. And for African American Marine recruits, that meant Montford Point, a converted Civilian Conservation Corps camp.

The prefabricated huts that served as barracks were filled beyond capacity.

“Conditions were less than hospitable,” according to a brief Marine Corps history. “Those buildings ... were dilapidated.”

The camp produced Marines who served in support roles in places such as Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Eubanks served in an ammunition unit in Saipan and Guam. His family thinks that after the war he also may have served in Nagasaki, one of the Japanese cities where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb.

But Eubanks won’t say.

“There’s a lot I have seen that I hate I’ve seen,” he said Thursday. “There’s a lot of things I hated to look at.”

But none of it, the wartime experiences or the discrimination, has turned him against the Marines.

In August, he attended a tribute to the Montford Point Marines in Washington. But by that time, only about 120 of the black servicemen were still alive. In addition to Eubanks, 14 others live in North Carolina.

At the tribute, Eubanks met Gen. James F. Amos, the Marines commandant, and heard him acknowledge the wrongs of the past.

“Why the Marine Corps was the last one (to desegregate), I don’t know,” Amos told the Montford Point vets. “It breaks my heart.”

It was enough to make Eubanks want to re-enlist.

“I wish I were back in there,” he said. “I’d go right back today.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com