Were there any Black soldiers in World War II? Not according to Clint Eastwood and that portion of Hollywood that he represents.


Black movie director, Spike Lee is slamming Clint Eastwood over his two recent Iwo Jima movies, saying the filmmaker overlooked the role of Black soldiers during World War II.

Spike Lee has made a new film. Due to be released this fall, is is entitled “Miracle at St. Anna,” the story of an all-Black U.S. division fighting in Italy during the World War II.

Spike Lee said Eastwood’s 2006 movies “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima” were whites-only affairs.

“He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one Black soldier in both of those films,” Spike Lee said 20 May at the French Cannes Film Festival, where he was a judge in an online short-film competition.

“Many veterans, African-Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood. In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that. I have a different version,” Spike Lee said.

Eastwood was in Cannes for his missing-child drama “Changeling,”. At a news conference for the film, a reporter tried to ask for Eastwood reaction to Spike Lee’s criticism, but the moderator cut her off and told journalists to limit questions to Eastwood’s own movie.

Due in U.S. theaters in October, “Miracle at St. Anna” centers on four Americans — played by Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller — in the Buffalo Soldiers division in Tuscany, Italy.

Sixty-three years after U.S. forces vanquished the Japanese and planted their flag on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi, the remote outpost in the Volcano Islands is the focus of another pitched battle. Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee are engaging in verbal warfare over the verisimilitude of Eastwood's two films about the epic clash, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Lee has claimed that by soft-pedaling African-American contributions to the battle, Eastwood is misrepresenting history.

Eastwood's counter: "Has he ever studied history? [African-American soldiers] didn't raise the flag," he said. "If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, they'd say, "This guy's lost his mind.'" Eastwood also told Lee to "shut his face," prompting Lee to amplify the racism charge: "[Eastwood] is not my father and we're not on a plantation, either," he fumed. "I'm not making this up. I know history."

"If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I'd like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist," Lee continued. "I'm not making this up. I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II

History, as it turns out, is on both their sides. Lee is correct that African-Americans played an instrumental role in World War II, in which more than 1 million black servicemen helped defeat the Axis Powers. Those efforts include significant contributions to the fight for Iwo Jima. An estimated 700 to 900 African-American soldiers participated in the epic island battle, many of whom were Marines trained in segregated boot camps at Montford Point, within Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Those soldiers were restricted from front-line combat duty, but they played integral noncombat roles. Under enemy fire, they piloted amphibious truck units during perilous shore landings, unloaded and shuttled ammunition to the front lines, helped bury the dead, and weathered Japanese onslaughts on their positions even after the island had been declared secure. According to Christopher Moore, the author of a book about African-Americans' myriad contributions during World War II, "thousands" more helped fashion the airstrips from which U.S. B-29 aircrafts could launch and return from air assaults on Tokyo, about 760 miles northwest. Hosting that air base, Moore says, was Iwo Jima's primary strategic importance.

Eastwood's portrayal of the specific battle is, if narrow, also essentially accurate. Flags Of Our Fathers zeroes in on the soldiers who hoisted the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, and nobody disputes that this task, memorialized in a famous staged photograph, was accomplished by white servicemen. (His other entry in the Iwo Jima category, Letters from Iwo Jima, is told largely from the perspective of Japanese soldiers.)

Eastwood is also correct that Black soldiers represented a small fraction of the total force deployed on the island. That argument doesn't placate Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of a book about African-American veterans. Black soldiers "had the most dangerous job," she says. "If you were going to show the soldiers' landing, you'd need to show [African-Americans] on the beach." In Flags of Our Fathers, which shows the landing in significant detail, African-Americans appear only in fleeting cutaway shots and in a photograph during the film's closing credits.

Moore lauds Eastwood's rendering of the battle, but laments the limited role accorded to African-Americans. "Without Black labor," he says, "we would've seen a much different ending to the war."

Rear Admiral Manson K. Brown.

The Change of Command ceremony for RADM Manson K. Brown on 8 May 2008 at the Coast Guard Maintenance and Logistics Command Pacific, Alameda, California signaled a PROMISE of what can be, or what might be, and how great the Coast Guard can be. I experienced a sense of promise and a sense of hope in the future of the Coast Guard. My hope is inspired by RADM Brown's promotion, transfer, and the fact that he is on track to become the Coast Guard's first African American Commandant.

As I sat in the audience at the Change of Command ceremony I saw what had become of the braniac high school senior that I had recruited out of Saint John's Prep School in Washington, DC in 1973 for the Academy class entering in 1974. When he was sworn into the Class of 1978 it signaled a new day for the Coast Guard Academy and the United States Coast Guard.

What I saw on 8 May 2008 surpassed my wildest expectations. I saw a Coast Guard admiral of cosmopolitan intellectualism and oratorical eloquence. With his image and the power of his words, he embodies the type of leader that the Coast Guard will need in the next few years. RADM Brown projected a youthful vigor and indescribable charisma. There was an inherent decency and sincerity in his pleasant face and smile.

I like to read Alexis de Tocqueville. He was a 19th Century French statesman and writer who liked to travel around America and make comments about what he observed in the American body politic. On one occasion he noted a characteristic in the American spirit that he felt boded well for America; that is, America's "capacity for self-correction".

I believe that the Coast Guard also has a capacity for self-correction. It is time for a change. Change is in the air. It is time to move on. It is time for healing. It is time to embrace change. I pray that the Americans occupying the most senior positions in the United States Coast Guard will exhibit that sense of self-correction and get back on course.

A mid-course correction could be accomplished by a change at the top, by a single act of bold and daring leadership. Selecting Manson K. Brown as the next Coast Guard Commandant would be such an act of bold and daring leadership.



An Award, The Legion of Merit.

Sir, I stand relieved as CO of Maintenance and Logistics Command, Alameda, Ca.

A promotion to Two-Stars.

A Power Couple, Admiral and Mrs Manson K Brown return to Hawaii.


Class of '68 (Tozzi, Steverson, and Sharp) celebrates with The Star of Class of '78.


Q-dogs, Coleman and Collins, share your happiness. Bow-wow.

Admiral John Tozzi, USCG (Ret.) loves a Change of Command.


The Golden Gate Bridge from the National Naval Officers' Association.


Sir Robert Brown, son of Admiral and Mrs M. K. Brown.






After the ceremony and the general reception, I was fortunate to be able to chat with a retired Naval admiral. He was Rear Admiral Robert L. Toney, U.S. Navy (Ret.).

Admiral Toney's experience in the Navy featured leadership and management positions afloat and ashore, including Naval Base Commander in San Francisco, where he managed more than 60,000 people from Monterey to the Northern California border, with a payroll of $2.6 billion.

Admiral Toney was born on August 30, 1934 in Monroe, Louisiana and moved to Oakland at the age of eight. He attended Youngstown State University (Ohio) from 1962 and 1954, and graduated from California State University, Chico in 1957 with a bachelor of arts degree. He was commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve on October 31, 1957. He completed NATO Defense College in Rome in 1977 and the National and International Security Course at Harvard in 1990.

Admiral Toney has served on the board of directors of The United Way, World Affairs Council, Commonwealth Club, Volunteers of America, and the Oakland Boys and Girls Club.

He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Humane Letters from National Defense University in October 1988, and from Golden Gate University in June 1994.
The recipient of many awards and decorations for meritorious service during his years in the Navy, Toney has two daughters and one son. He currently resides in Oakland.

(Admiral Robert Toney, USN, Ret., see bald head with glasses in 2nd row)


Change is inevitable no matter who is selected to be the next Commandant. Thad Allen came in with such high expectations, but he has not delivered. His superb job during and after Hurricane Katrina led many to expect more from ADM Allen, but his tenure has been marked by a series of blunders and missteps. From the Cadet Webster Smith court-martial to the Deepwater fiasco and his failure to provide proper supervision of the Coast Guard Office of Civil Rights, ADM Allen's performance has earned him unflattering comments from the Congressmen and Senators who oversee his areas of responsibility.

The "noose incidents" occurred on his watch. He appears to have done nothing about them. The investigations were ineffectual. It was left to the Governor of Connecticut to take decisive action. The Connecticut State General Assembly was taking the lead in an area where initiative and strong leadership are drastically needed.
On 25 March 2008, the Legislature's Judiciary Committee voted 43-0 in favor of a bill that makes it a hate crime to hang a noose on public or private property, without permission of the property owner, and with the intent to harass or intimidate.
As Thomas Jackson said at the time, "The noose story is not the epicenter of Coast Guard Civil Rights issues. Equal Civil Rights are the story. The Coast Guard must and we think they will come to terms with this issue and others confronting the service. Leadership is the key to unlocking binds that hold progress in Equal Civil Rights back. Admiral Thad Allen is searching for the key with all his energy, but his staff expends ten times the energy hiding the key in a new location each time he gets close.

When asked about the Webster Smith court-martial, ADM Allen replied that the "process" had worked just as it was supposed to and just as he expected. On the otherhand, in an attempt to remove the albatross from the neck of the Coast Guard, it was ADM Robert Papp who took steps to remove ADM James Van Sice from office. ADM Van Sice and CAPT Doug Wisniewski were the architects of the Webster Smith travesty. It would appear that while ADM Thad Allen has his head in the clouds, it is ADM Robert Papp who has his feet on the ground. It kind of reminds one of the differences between George Patton and Omar Bradley. One was all talk and the other was mostly silent action.

With his new job as Atlantic Area Commander, VADM Papp is a step closer to the top job, but Manson Brown would be a better choice. His experience is broader, and he preceeded Barack Obama to Iraq by several years. The details of that duty are classified. There was a time when he was the special envoy of SEC-DOT Norman Mineta. The Selection Board for Commandant will have all of the relevant facts. While either Brown or Papp would be a better Commandant than Allen, VADM Manson K. Brown would be the wiser choice. History would smile on such a choice.

Naval Academy field house was dedicated in honor of the first African American graduate.

The new sports complex at the U.S. Naval Academy was dedicated Saturday 10 May 2008 in honor of the academy’s first African American graduate.

Retired Navy LCDR Wesley Brown graduated in 1949 and now lives in Washington. LCDR Brown was celebrated as a pioneer of racial justice as the Naval Academy opened the 140,000-square-foot sports complex.

The 81 year old resident of Washington, D.C. said using his name for the new $45 million field house is symbolic and indicates the Navy’s dedication to diversity. He said that the honor was “the most wonderful moment” of his life.

About 4 percent of the academy’s 4,000 current midshipmen are Black. The naming of the field house coincides with efforts to boost minority enrollment.

The $50 million Wesley A. Brown Field House is the new home of the Naval Academy’s track and field teams. It also will serve as the practice space for the football and women’s volleyball teams.

LCDR Brown is a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and served in the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps.
(Navy Times)