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JOHNHANCBYSpecial to Newsday

When 18-year-old ArthurWeaverreceived hisdraft noticein July 1944,

he wasn’t a bit concerned.“I didn’t think they’d take a

skinny kid like me,” recalledWeaver, now 90, with achuckle. “My mother was cry-ing, and I told her, ‘Don’t worryabout it! I’m not going any-where.’ ”

He was quite wrong aboutthat.

At 5-foot-11 and 135 pounds,Weaver — who grew up in theHamilton Heights section ofupper Manhattan — was in-deed a beanpole. But as itturned out, beanpoles were finewith Uncle Sam. At that pointin World War II, with massiveAmerican offensives turningthe tide against the Axis in bothEurope and the Pacific, almostanyone breathing was accept-able, so voracious was the wareffort’s hunger for manpower.

Weaver, fresh out of Manhat-tan Aviation High School,reported to the draft board onWhitehall Street and was sur-prised to find himself not onlyinducted but soon shipped outto the wild, nether-reaches of aplace he’d never been:

Long Island.For five days, he and other

inductees went through prelimi-nary training at Camp Upton,the former World War I campin Yaphank, and what was thenrural Suffolk County.

“I didn’t know where the hellI was!” said Weaver, who nowlives in Freeport. “It was thePine Barrens, but I had noearthly idea that’s what it wascalled.”

It was an inauspicious startto what would become a life-long career in the military. Theexperience of Weaver, who haslived in Freeport since 1986, isalso a window into what was ashameful chapter of Americanhistory and a heroic chapter inblack history. That Weaver notonly survived but flourished inthe segregated Army of WorldWar II also reminds us thatmomentous periods of historyoften look very different from

WorldWar II vet,90, recalls highs,lows serving in asegregated Army

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Arthur Weaver and his wife, Eileen, at their Freeport home. They met in 1981 at a New Year’s Eve party given by aveterans association that he headed. ] Video at newsday.com/lilife

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the eyes of those who livedthrough them.

After his brief sojourn atCamp Upton, Weaver wastransferred to the Army’s Ab-erdeen Proving Ground inMaryland. In addition to basiccombat training, he learnedsupply logistics and also wentto mechanic school. Still, therewas little chance that he wouldsee any front-line fighting. TheWar Department — influencedby an Army dominated bySouthern whites with segrega-tionist views — had decidedthat the primary role for “infe-rior” blacks would be in sup-port and supply.

After almost a year at Ab-erdeen, Weaver, by then asergeant, was shipped overseas.He arrived in the Philippines inJune 1945 as a member of anengineering aviation battalion.The island nation — then a U.S.territory — had been invadedby the Japanese early in thewar. But after the Navy virtu-ally destroyed the Japanesefleet in a series of major seabattles, the Sixth U.S. Army—under the overall command ofGen. Douglas MacArthur —landed in Leyte in October 1944and began the long process of

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Watch News 12 Long Islandtomorrow or go to News12.comfor more on Black History Month.

Behind the lines,but no less vital

Arthur Weaver, left, in1945, doing his bit in arecruiting drive on116th Street andBroadway inManhattan.

Weaver, above, as a supply depot sergeant inthe Philippines in 1945, a year after he got his“Greetings” draft notice, below.

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ON THE COVER ArthurWeaver of Freeport withbadges and medals from hismilitary service in WorldWar II and in the Reserves. W

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retaking the key island.When he arrived eight

months later, Weaver and hisunit mates were sent to QuezonCity, near Manila, to establish asupply depot as the long offen-sive continued.

“It was as big as Freeport,”Weaver said of the base. “Wehad material there — steel,plywood, corrugated tin — thatthey used to build bases, roads,airstrips.”

While he wasn’t personallyfighting the Japanese, Weaverwas playing an important rolein the war. “African-Americancompanies were labor outfits. . . support units . . . chargedwith maintaining one of thelongest supply lines in militaryhistory,” said James Campbell,award-winning author of sev-eral histories of WorldWar II,including 2012’s “The Color ofWar,” which looked at the roleof blacks in the Pacific theater.“They were absolutely criticalto the war effort.”

InWeaver’s case, ships wouldunload their cargo, which wasthen trucked to the new depotand consigned to front-lineengineering units. WhileWeaver recognizes the impor-tance of his and his comrades’work, his memories of hisWorldWar II experience aren’tabout heroics. He is not a manprone to self-aggrandizement.

It even frustrates his wife,Eileen, 84, sitting in the livingroom of their spacious home. Itis she who produces the photosof her husband in uniform; it isshe who brings out the scrap-book documenting her hus-band’s military career; it is shewho exhorts her husband totalk about some of his achieve-ments. All of which are metwith a wave of his hand, aself-deprecating “awwww” andinstead, a recounting of anotheranecdote.

Such as the time he and hisbuddieswere on theirway tohelp delivermaterials when theysaw a strange-looking planeparked at a nearby airstrip. Itwas angled downward.

“ ‘That damn plane musthave crashed,’ we said,” recalledWeaver. As they got closer, theynoticed something very odd. “Ithad no propeller!” Weaver said,his face lighting up as he retellsthe story. “That was the [Lock-

heed P-80] Shooting Star, oneof the first jets.”

Memories of V-J DayWeaver is also eager to reveal

his nickname in the Philippines.“They called me the Salt WaterCowboy,” he said, because heclaimed to have spent most ofhis days lying in the warmPhilippine waters, sunninghimself and reading paperbacknovels. Only when pressed doesWeaver add the important factthat, as the depot operated 24/7,he worked the night shift. Eventhen, he dismisses his impor-tance.

“I was basically a store-keeper,” he said, which is akinto being the manager of a gigan-tic Home Depot, operating 24/7and servicing projects of na-tional import in which thebuilders are being shot at.

When asked his memory ofV-J Day — Aug. 14, 1945, the daythe Japanese surrendered —Weaver laughs again. “Thehospital filled up overnight,” herecalled.

On the night when the fight-ing ceased? “It was celebrationtime!” Weaver said, alluding toa night of raucous partying.

Just as it begins to sound likeWeaver’s war was, in his re-telling, a sort of extendedspring break on a Pacific island,he mentions how a 17-year-oldcomrade was killed — by Fil-ipino bandits who stole theteen’s boots — and that asrevenge he and some fellowsoldiers drove their trucks intoa nearby Filipino village, smash-ing houses.

He also tells of how he brokehis right arm when a largestorage pit he was helping to

dig collapsed on him.This, Campbell says, was not

unusual. “The demands of thewar effort left virtually no timefor implementing safety stan-dards, and many African-Ameri-cans, though they weren’tallowed to fight because of themilitary’s Jim Crow policies,worked under very dangerousconditions,” Campbell said.

Enlisting in the ReservesA year after his discharge, in

1947, Weaver decided to enlistin the Reserves. “I liked theArmy life,” he said. “I liked thecamaraderie.”

He served inNewYork’shistoric 369th Infantry Regiment— immortalized inWorldWar Ias the “HarlemHellfighters”—whichwas by then an anti-air-craft unit. The 369thwasmobi-lized during theKoreanWar,

fought from 1950-53, but endedup not being deployed.Whilethings had changed (PresidentTruman ordered the integrationof themilitary in 1948), the 369thremained a proud and largelyblack regiment.

“We were considered a crackunit,” said Weaver, who was aplatoon sergeant in the 369th. “Iliked being a part of it.”

Looking at a photo of hisreserve unit from the early1950s, he points to various men,smiling as he recalls theirnames — “that’s Mason, that’sMoore, that’s Sampson” — andto the unit’s commander at thetime, who stands stiffly in thecenter of the photo. “That’sCaptain Vernon NapoleonPotter,” Weaver said, drawingout the martial-sounding name.“And you had to call him ‘Cap-tain Vernon Napoleon Potter!’

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VITAL behind the lines

As a reservist after the war, Weaver, pictured in the ‘50s, served in New York’s 369th Infantry Regiment, known as the “Harlem Hellfighters.”

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‘TheUnsungHeroes’

He used to demand our bootsshined, quote, ‘to a high degreeof luster.’ ”

Perhaps not surprisingly,given his affinity for the menand the unit, Weaver laterbecame president of the 369thVeterans Association, the unit’salumni organization. It was attheir annual New Year’s Eveparty in 1981 at the RegimentalArmory on Fifth Avenue inHarlem that he met Eileen Lee,a Barnard College graduate andfair-housing activist. They werewed in 1986. It was the secondmarriage for both; betweenthem they have six children andfour grandchildren.

Weaver worked in variousdefense-related jobs for thefederal government after thewar. He retired from his job andthe reserves the same year hewas married.

“I turned 60, I retired fromthe reserves, I retired from myfull-time government job, I gotmarried, and we moved toFreeport,” he said. “That was abig year.”

Weaver turns 91 on March 29.When asked how he spends histime as a retired nonagenarian,he smiles. “I lay around,” hesaid, provoking some eye-rolling from his wife, whopoints out that until arthritisrecently limited his mobility,her husband was a superb andactive handyman.

“He did everything,” EileenWeaver said. “Electrical work,plumbing . . . everybodybrought their cars to him forrepairs.”

Weaver describes himself as“an easygoing guy,” and thatincludes his attitude and out-look on history. “Nothing we

can do about it,” he said of themilitary’s segregation duringWorldWar II. “That was ourattitude.”

Historian Christopher PaulMoore said he can sympathizewith such a collective shrug byblack soldiers like Weaver.

“He had already experiencedit,” Moore, author of “Fightingfor America: Black Soldiers —The Unsung Heroes of WorldWar II,” said. “It wasn’t like theSouth, but there were elementsof segregation in New York.” Inthe larger scheme of Americain the 1940s, Moore added, “youwere constitutionally a second-class citizen, and these guyswere reminded of that all thetime.”

Still, there were outrages thatbrought even the affable, low-keyedWeaver to a boilingpoint. One such incident hap-pened on his way home fromthe war in 1946. The fightingand cleanup in the Philippinesover, Weaver was on a trainfrom Oakland to Fort Dix, NewJersey, where he would bedischarged. As was typical ofrailroad travel at that time, hiscar was for black soldiers only.

“The Red Cross camethrough the train at one of ourstops,” Weaver recalled. “Theywere serving coffee, and I thinkdoughnuts, too. Do you knowthey didn’t even offer us any? Ihaven’t given money to the RedCross ever since.”

For the most part, though,Weaver maintains that he notonly survived but flourished inthe service — and in the rest ofhis life — by following an Armymotto of the time that coun-seled soldiers to avoid troublewhile moving forward with thetask at hand.

“Keep low and keep coming,”Weaver said. “And that’s what Idid.”

In his 2005 book, “Fight-ing for America: BlackSoldiers — The Unsung

Heroes of World War II,”historian Christopher PaulMoore recounts the story ofthe 1.1 million African-American men and womenwho served in the militaryfrom 1941-45.

While a few units sawcombat — most notably thefamous Tuskegee Airmen ofthe Army Air Corps and theall-black 761st Tank Battal-ion — most African-Ameri-cans, like Freeport’s ArthurWeaver, were restricted tosupport and maintenance.

“But it’s important main-tenance,” said Moore, whois also historian and curatoremeritus of the New YorkPublic Library’s SchomburgCenter for Research inBlack Culture in Harlem.“These guys were buildingroads, airstrips. They werevery important to the wareffort.”

In the European theater,Moore said, the supplyeffort of American forces asthey made their way fromthe beaches of France to theheart of Germany in 1944and 1945 was a major key tovictory. The flow of ma-teriel, fuel and ammunitionwas transported by a fleetof trucks famously knownas “The Red Ball Express,”manned largely by African-Americans.

“The surprise to Hitlerwas not the D-Day invasion,but that they could sustainit,” Moore said. “The laborthat followed was unbeliev-able, and that labor waspredominantly black.”

The black support units’contribution to the war’sPacific theater, whereWeaver served, is oftenoverlooked. “They did atremendous amount ofcleanup,” Moore said, point-ing out that almost everyairfield in the island-hop-ping campaign that gradu-ally pushed back the Japa-nese advances made earlyin the war had to be rebuiltand maintained.

Back at home, manyblack leaders and organiza-tions argued that African-Americans should have alarger role in the fight. Andthere was violence at somepoints, between black andwhite troops or residents,particularly at militarycamps in the South. Still,Moore understands whymany veterans like Weaverreturned to the military insome capacity after the war,attracted by the pay, thebenefits, the camaraderie.

“It was not a bad option,”he said.

But while the fight forjustice at home continuedafter the war (and the paceof change would acceleratewhen President HarryTruman ordered the integra-tion of armed forces in1948), Moore, who inter-viewed 142 black veteransfor his book, said that thosewho served in World War IIultimately fought for thesame reason as white sol-diers.

“They were proud,” hesaid. “Despite the horrorsof their treatment, theywere proud Americans.”

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Arthur Weaver, second from left, in 1946 with Army buddies all home safe after the war: BernardBerry, left, Robert Steele, George Ward, Joseph Scott and Bernard Alford.

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A crew of the 761st Tank Battalion, one of the few blackcombat units allowed to fight in World War II.

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Weaver at a 2010 event for veterans held at what was then theSt. Alban’s Naval Hospital in Queens.

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