Black artillery regiment from Harlem set up camp in Oswego in 1941
Retired Army Gen. George Jones clearly remembers the first time he set foot in Oswego.
It was January 1941. He was a 17-year-old sergeant in the 369th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment out of Harlem, and he and about 1,800 other black soldiers had been shipped to Fort Ontario for training.
“We came out of New York City and were all excited,” said Jones, 88, of Long Island. “Then we stepped off the train (in Oswego) and the first guy out, we lost him in a mound of snow. It was cold, that was what I remember most.”
The United States had yet to enter World War II, but this unit of black Americans from New York City was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan to prepare troops as world events continued to turn ugly.
Adolf Hitler continued his march across Europe. The Japanese firmly occupied French Indo-China and had just signed the Tripartite Pact, joining Germany and Italy in the Axis.
The 369th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment — sometimes called the 369th Coast Artillery Regiment — had a storied, proud past. In World War I, it was an infantry unit called the Harlem Hellfighters, a group that received high recognition for fighting prowess and heroism.
Between World War I and World War II, the unit was part of the New York National Guard. But with war looming, the men were thrust into active service again, albeit in a supporting role.
Paul Lear, manager of Fort Ontario, said discrimination was such that the all-black 369th didn’t rate a frontline combat position in World War II.
Such was the case in World War I. The unit was kept from fighting alongside other Americans, so it joined with French soldiers. The 369th performed so well that France bestowed the Croix de Guerre, or the War Cross, on the regiment. It was the first American unit ever to be accorded the honor. Many unit members also received the Distinguished Service Cross, the U.S. Army’s second-highest award for valor.
It was not until 1948 that the military was racially integrated, including for combat assignments. That came by order of President Harry Truman.
Before World War II began, the 369th spent eight months at Fort Ontario in Oswego. The men practiced anti-artillery drills at the Johnson Farm, an abandoned area east of the fort. It is now the site of the Nine Mile Point I nuclear plant.
“They would set up positions for the anti-artillery guns and they’d shoot at targets towed by airplanes,” Lear said.
During a recent interview, Jones recalled how he was part of the unit’s searchlight battery, which lit up the sky so the other men could shoot at incoming enemy planes.
“About March or April, we noticed that our (searchlight) positions had (been) moved,” Jones said.
The lights had been set up on frozen Lake Ontario. As the ice thawed, the positions had to be moved. “We were thankful we found that out or the equipment would have been inundated in water,” he said.
In 1972, James J. Cummings, an honors program history student at the State University College at Oswego, researched and wrote about the 369th.
He told of how the unit arrived and settled into 30 barracks, part of 65 buildings in all that were built for $600,000. The area included a new theater, barbershop, canteen and recreation hall.
When the men weren’t working, many went into Oswego, to buy goods at local shops and eat at local restaurants. They also took the Syracuse-Oswego Bus Line to Syracuse, where they were entertained at the Dunbar Social Center, Cummings said. The unit’s basketball team competed regularly at the Dunbar Center.
Adding nearly 1,800 black soldiers to the population changed the demographic makeup of Oswego. In a county of more than 71,000 residents, 55 were black before the soldiers arrived, according to the U.S. Census in 1940. By contrast, Harlem — where most of the men were from — had an 89 percent black population, the 1940 Census shows.
“Outside of Harlem, the issue of race became more immediate for the 369th,” a 1993 article in the Journal of Social History says. “Oswego was, in the words of one member of the 369th, ‘lily white.’ Black troops, dependent upon the town for all their non-military needs, provoked some concerns at first, but relations were smooth overall until, in the winter of 1941, a white woman brought charges of rape against a black man.”
As part of the investigation, the whole unit was put into a lineup and “inspected for evidence,” the Journal article says. Lear, of Fort Ontario, finishes the story. One of the soldiers was arrested, but not prosecuted when the woman could not identify her alleged attacker. Following the incident, the commander of the 369th ordered his troops to boycott local businesses, Lear said.
But most of the time, relations were good between Oswego’s white population and the black soldiers, according to the 1993 article.
The most famous of the 369th soldiers at Fort Ontario was Lt. John Woodruff, also known as “Long John” Woodruff. He had won the gold medal in the 800 meters at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
Bob Stone, 87, of Oswego, got to know the soldiers through track and field events with Woodruff and when he got a job as an usher in the balcony of the Oswego Theater.
“They always sat in the balcony because it was 33 cents in the balcony and 44 cents in orchestra,” he said, noting the soldiers didn’t have a lot of money.
One of the places the soldiers frequented was on the corner of East Seventh and Seneca, about a block from the fort. Called the Savoy, it was opened by Herbert “Whitey” White, a black former boxer and bouncer at the famous Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.
Lear said White came to Oswego in 1941 and opened the tavern and dance club just for the Harlem soldiers. He already was famous in Harlem for his Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, famous dancers doing the Lindy Hop, or Jitterbug, at the Savoy Ballroom, Cotton Club and in various movies.
“We used to talk to the guys and they’d tell us about Army life and we gave them information on Oswego,” Stone said. “They were terrific guys.”
The 369th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment was at Fort Ontario from Jan. 15 through September, when they shipped out to Massachusetts and then to Hawaii.
During World War II, they engaged in defensive and tactical operations on new Georgia Island, Emirau, Los Negros Island, Admiralty Island, Biak Island, Sansapor New Guinea, Middleburg Island and Morotai Island, all in the Papua New Guinea area of southeast Asia.
Contact Debra J. Groom at dgroom@syracuse.com, 315-470-3254 or 251-5586.