What Did He See?

The Early Life and Military Career of T/4 Isaac Woodard

By Andrew H. Myres

Article published on: April 29, 2026 in the Winter 2026 edition of Army History

Read Time: < 56 mins

Left: T/4 Isaac Woodard Jr., after the war (University of Pennsylvania Library)
Background: African American troops unload barrels of oil on the beach of Biak Island off the northwest coast of New Guinea, ca. August 1944. (National Archives)

T/4 Isaac Woodard Jr., an African American World War II veteran, played a seminal role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.1The story of his blinding at the hands of a White South Carolina policeman on 12 February 1946, which resulted in the loss of both eyeballs, received widespread publicity in newspapers across the United States and on an American Broadcasting Company news radio show hosted by Orson Welles. It moved Woody Guthrie to compose a song. It set in motion a series of events that contributed to President Harry S. Truman’s 1948 decision to issue Executive Order 9981, which desegregated the armed forces. It changed the racial views of Judge J. Waties Waring, a Southerner whose 1952 dissent in the case Briggs v. Eliott foreshadowed Brown v. Board of Education by marking the first time a federal jurist declared segregation to be inherently unequal.2

Accounts of the incident involving Woodard appeared in dozens of subsequent histories. The story was turned into a 2010 off-Broadway play.3It drew national attention in 2019 when a historical highway marker was dedicated at the site of the blinding.4It received book-length treatment that same year when Federal District Judge Richard Gergel published Unexampled Courage.5In 2021, it became the central subject of a two-hour, nationally broadcast film on the series American Experience.6It was also a main topic in a widely streamed 2022 documentary about Orson Welles.7

Despite this attention, little is known about Woodard’s background or what he did during the war. He told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1946 that he had spent fifteen months in New Guinea and the Philippines with the 429th Port Battalion and earned a battle star.8His discharge paperwork from Camp Gordon, Georgia, says that he had undergone basic training as an antiaircraft artillery gunner; that he served overseas as a military longshoreman; that he was authorized a single battle star for the New Guinea Campaign; and that he received the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Asia–Pacific Theater Campaign Medal.9

An image from the children’s book I Am Sergeant Isaac Woodard, Jr.: How My Story Changed America by Laura M. Williams, illustrated by Victor Tavares Courtesy of Laura M. Williams

Earlier books stuck reasonably close to this basic information. Lee Nichols described him in 1953 as a “Negro veteran of Pacific jungle fighting,” and Richard M. Dalfiume in 1969 called him a “newly discharged veteran.” 10 In their respective volumes on armed forces integration and Black service members, published in 1981 and 1986, Department of Defense historians Morris J. MacGregor Jr. and Bernard C. Nalty each mentioned Woodard’s fifteen months of Pacific service, but neither elaborated further. 11 Tinsley E. Yarborough said in 1987 that the veteran was a “black” who “was discharged from the Army at Camp Gordon.” 12 In 1994, John Egerton called him a “combat veteran” who was “just back from fifteen months in the South Pacific.” 13 Kari Frederickson said in 2001 that Woodard “had served fifteen months in the Pacific” and that “he had earned a battle star.” 14 Robert F. Jefferson Jr., who earlier had written about African American infantry soldiers in the Pacific, provided arguably the most concise, accurate summary of Woodard’s career in his 2019 book.15

Woodard never claimed to have been anything more than an ordinary soldier. “I am a man just like you,” he had told the bus driver in 1946 on the night of his blinding.16With the exception of Jefferson, however, contemporary works often provide unnecessarily vague, inaccurate, or misleading details as to what he did during the war. Many hail him as a “decorated war veteran” without specifying what awards he received or what he did to merit them.17A children’s book portrays him as a “forgotten, decorated, African American Hero” and contains a drawing of him with the rank of private helping to evacuate a wounded soldier from a battlefield.18His character in the off-Broadway show wears a Combat Infantryman Badge. Richard Gergel says in Unexampled Courage that “Isaac Woodard was part of a segregated support unit during the major New Guinea maritime landing operations, and his unit took intense enemy fire and casualties as they performed critical operations,” when, in reality, all the American landings on the island had ended months before Woodard arrived.19A 2022 book claims that Woodard “served in the Philippines, a member of a segregated support unit during New Guinea maritime landing operations.”20Given that the United States did not invade the former until it established a foothold in the latter, such action in enemy-held territory would have been an impressive feat had it occurred.

The narrator for the 2021 documentary says that Woodard earned a “battle star for bravery under fire.”21The film then shows a graphically enhanced photograph in which an artist has drawn onto the soldier’s uniform a campaign ribbon with two battle stars instead of one. Compounding this error, the ribbon depicted is the one given for service in Europe, Africa, or the Mediterranean rather than the one for Asia or the Pacific. The artist also added a ribbon for a Good Conduct Medal that was not on Woodard’s discharge paperwork.22

Although Gergel says correctly in the film’s voiceover that Woodard served with a port unit, the accompanying visual footage shows African American soldiers firing artillery, preparing for infantry operations, piloting aircraft, lugging machine guns, carrying casualties, and liberating towns. None of them depict Black soldiers loading or offloading ships, even though clips of these activities easily could have been taken from the 1944 documentary The Negro Soldier. This film is in the public domain and has been available for decades on videotape cassettes, digital video disks, and streaming services.

An artwork of Woodard displayed on the off icial Public Broadcasting Service companion website for the 2021 documentary implies that he received the Bronze Star Medal.23The 2022 documentary contains numerous errors of fact, including a statement that Woodard “earned four medals— one was a battle star—for unloading battleships under enemy fire.”24These efforts to enhance Woodard’s career are somewhat explainable. Military history as a field of study has declined precipitously at civilian institutions of higher learning despite its broad popularity elsewhere. In addition, most academics have never spent time in uniform. The result is that relatively few historians have much understanding of the structure and culture of the armed forces.

Moreover, during the initial years of the twenty-first century, a scholar stymied research into the details of Woodard’s life by paying money to his adopted son for exclusive access to information. The person then did not finish the project. The son, who became frustrated that his father’s full story was not being told, died in 2009 without having the opportunity to share what he knew.25What records he possessed were lost.26

Retrospective efforts to burnish Woodard’s record are legacies of a conflict that arose during World War II between military policymakers and civil rights leaders. The former questioned the courage and competency of African Americans under fire and sought to exclude them from the combat arms. The latter believed that service on the frontlines would help undermine civilian segregation and pushed for the establishment of all-Black fighting organizations like the Tuskegee Airmen, the 761st Tank Battalion, and the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. The struggle between these two ideological forces contributed to a perception that soldiers who worked on the docks and drove trucks were menial laborers who made lesser contributions to the war. Historians, filmmakers, playwrights, and others have perpetuated, if not also strengthened, this distorted notion.27

More than a million African Americans joined the armed forces during World War II. The vast majority were assigned to support units. They included people like the Reverend Hosea L. Williams, who drew upon the logistical skills he learned as a sergeant in the Quartermaster Corps to plan the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.28National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leader Medgar W. Evers took pride in having driven a truck as a sergeant assigned to a port battalion in Europe. He gained inspiration from this experience to attend college and fight segregation in his home state of Mississippi following his return. He was buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery after his assassination in Jackson, Mississippi, in June 1963.29His brother J. Charles Evers, who served as a sergeant in the Corps of Engineers and later became the first Black person to be elected mayor of a biracial town in Mississippi, valued the opportunities he had in uniform to learn new things and travel to New Guinea and the Philippines.30

Aside from the 1946 incident, Isaac Woodard’s experiences reflected the norm for African Americans during World War II. His record needs no embellishment. Building him up as a tragic hero or making him a proxy for larger debates about Black soldiers in the combat arms dehumanizes him in ways not dissimilar to his treatment by the police officer who blinded him. As a longshoreman, Woodard enhanced the lethality of the American armed forces by having a direct hand in bringing the industrial might of the United States to bear against Japan. That he was an average soldier reinforces the point that horrific things can happen unexpectedly to anyone, especially during wartime, and even on the way home. Furthermore, an accurate recounting of his background and military career provides a useful context for understanding larger issues and events pertaining to armed forces segregation. What did he see in the years, weeks, days, and hours before he lost his eyesight?

Isaac Woodard Jr. was a native of Fairfield County, South Carolina, located about 25 miles to the north of the state capital between the Broad and Wateree Rivers. During the American Revolution, Lt. Gen. Charles, 2nd Earl Cornwallis, had established his winter quarters at its seat and central town of Winnsboro in 1780 following the Battle of Kings Mountain. The British commander is said to have given the district its name after admiring, as he described, its “fair fields.”31

A historical marker in Winnsboro, South Carolina, where General Corn-wallis and the British forces under his command spent the winter of 1780–1781 Author’s Photo

Before the Civil War, the rich soil and the labor of thousands of enslaved people helped this region of the Lower Piedmont to become a major producer of cotton. African Americans outnumbered White people by a 3:1 ratio until the 1920s and 1930s, when many of them took advantage of the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad to migrate elsewhere. Fairfield remained rural as many of the plantations grew over with trees to become commercial timber tracts.32

Woodard spent his early childhood about 8 miles to the west of Winnsboro. His family lived on a farm along Jackson Creek in the vicinity of the Lebanon Presbyterian Church.33His father, Isaac Sr., worked on land rented from a White neighbor.34He earned enough to allow his wife, Elizabeth Arnold Woodard, to stay out of the fields.35Isaac Jr. was born on 8 March 1919, only a few months after the fighting of World War I had ended and the influenza epidemic of 1918 had subsided. He had five older siblings and would have four younger ones by the end of the 1920s.

Young Isaac received an elementary education from 1925 to 1930.36Although the 1930 census lists him as having attended school, it says that he could neither read nor write. Unlike his brothers and sisters, who lived with their mother and father, he was listed in the household of his paternal grandparents, Alex Woodard and Nannie Cook Woodard.37The reason for this arrangement is unknown.

The elder Woodards were unusual among local African Americans in that they owned their land instead of renting it.38Alex stood out further because he gave an oral history to the Federal Writers’ Project in 1937. This interview was part of a New Deal effort to collect information about formerly enslaved people.39This grandfather’s memories provide a glimpse into the world of Isaac’s family.

Born before the Civil War, Alex grew up on the plantation of Robert Simonton.40This place was in Fairfield District, about 3 miles to the north of Lebanon Presbyterian Church along Dumpers Creek.41At least fifteen of the fifty people enslaved by Simonton were relatives. Alex attended services as a child at the Concord Presbyterian Church, which still stands about 8 miles away from Lebanon in the present-day community of Woodward. White people worshipped on the main floor while Black people occupied the gallery. Alex apparently joined another church later during his life because his grave is located at Sweet Prospect Baptist, about 4 miles from Lebanon.42

He had personal recollections of the left wing of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s army group passing through Fairfield District in February 1865, burning Winnsboro, and foraging for food. He told his interviewer that enslaved people persuaded the Federal soldiers not to burn down the Simonton mansion. The northerners encamped nearby on the land of Dr. Walter Brice, whose house and physician’s office also were spared. Alex said that “they made me run after chickens and I had to give up the onliest blue chicken dat I had.”43His father—Isaac’s great grandfather, who also was named Isaac—left the plantation and went with Sherman’s soldiers to Raleigh, North Carolina. He eventually returned.44

Alex explained that he and other members of his family decided to take the surname of “Woodard” when his father registered to vote in 1868 during the first year of congressional Reconstruction.45He said that “its been a kind of ‘tection [protection] to us at times, and none of our immediate family has ever dragged it in a jail or chaingang, Bless God! And I hope us never will.”46He made this statement in 1937, when the state of South Carolina operated a labor camp within the township where the Woodards lived.47In 1930, it had forty Black inmates and twenty-five White ones.48Shackled prisoners working on the roads would have been part of the everyday landscape for young Isaac. Alex lived until 1950.49It is not recorded whether he ever learned about or was aware of his grandson’s 1946 encounter with the police or the choice given to him by the judge to pay a fine or serve thirty days on the chain gang.

A sketch of U.S. Army troops burning Winnsboro, printed in Harper’s Weekly magazine on 1 April 1865 University of Michigan Library

Grandmother Nannie died in 1931, and Grandfather Alex lost ownership of his farm sometime between 1937 and 1940.50Teenaged Isaac joined the more than 7,000 African Americans who left Fairfield County during the first four decades of the twentieth century by moving to Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1934.51Other members of his family had already moved to Asheville and Charlotte, so he possibly had relatives or friends in Salisbury to welcome him.52According to one secondary source, he did construction work, installed railroad ties, and delivered milk.53

In 1939, Woodard enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).54He was assigned to Camp Alamance, located a mile northeast of Burlington, North Carolina. All the 190 workers in the company were African Americans. They had the mission of controlling erosion on local farms. Assigned tasks included building dams, terracing gullies, digging drainage ditches, seeding grass, and planting trees.55

CCC workers lived under quasi-military discipline, which meant they slept in barracks, followed a daily routine like that of soldiers, and were supervised by U.S. Army officers. Failure to follow their lieutenant’s orders meant not court martial, but being sent home and losing the thirty-dollar monthly paycheck that most of the workers desperately needed. Woodard’s commander was Lt. John Wendell Sample, a White South Carolinian who had graduated from Clemson University in 1931, received an Army Reserve commission, and taught in the public schools before entering active duty in 1935.56Segregated regiments of the Regular Army often were led by White southern officers, so Sample’s background was hardly unusual.

CCC workers typically were restricted to their encampments during off-duty hours. They played sports and learned skills like electrical wiring, carpentry, photography, typing, and woodworking. They attended meetings focusing on safety, first aid, and sanitation. In addition, they could take remedial classes to improve their reading and writing abilities. A teacher from a nearby Black high school volunteered at Camp Alamance, as did a local minister and a camp enrollee who had experience instructing math and English.

In 1940, the camp was moved about 7 miles from Burlington to a new site near Gibsonville.57Congress passed the Selective Service Act that same year, which resulted in Woodard registering for the draft on 16 October. Lieutenant Sample signed the paperwork. The word “Juniah,” written in the blank for the middle name, echoes Woodard’s spoken accent and suggests confusion with either the form or the instructions given.58

Woodard left the CCC in 1941. Returning home, he found a job as a log turner for the Doolittle Lumber Yard.59He married Rosa Scruggs, a Fairfield County native from the White Oak community.60Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawai‘i, he was drafted into the U.S. Army on 29 September 1942.61He entered service about two weeks later at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, which was about 30 miles away from Winnsboro. From there, he traveled by train or bus to a reception station at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he underwent a medical examination, was issued uniforms, swore an oath of allegiance, and took a classification test to help determine his occupational specialty. He stayed there for nine days.62

The Army did not have enough segregated training facilities or cadre to handle all the incoming African Americans. The Selective Service Act prohibited call-ups by race, and War Department policy mandated that the number of Black people in uniform reflect their proportion in the civilian population.63Priority during 1942, however, went to creating all-White combat arms divisions and preparing them for overseas deployment as rapidly as possible. Consequently, Woodard did not undergo basic training immediately but instead was assigned to Bainbridge Army Airfield.

At this installation, located in south-western Georgia, White soldiers learned the rudiments of flying airplanes.64African American soldiers worked on the support staff. They were organized into an unknown number of squadrons. Their commander, Capt. Gatewood R. Bridges, was a White Georgian who, during the 1930s, had led an all-Black CCC company in Alabama.65He apparently enjoyed good relations with his subordinates given the favorable coverage he received in the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American–owned newspaper where unflinchingly negative stories about race relations in the armed forces often appeared.66

African American members of the drum and bugle corps at Camp Bainbridge, ca. 1943 Southwest Georgia Regional Library

Camp Bainbridge celebrated its first anniversary during June 1943 while Woodard was there. In the fifteen-page pamphlet published to commemorate the occasion, White aviation cadets predominated, with photographs of them undergoing training, participating in sports, and enjoying off-duty activities. An entire page is devoted to the White women of the installation’s 6th Sub Depot. These women sewed the fabric that covered the exteriors of many World War II aircraft. African American soldiers appear in three pictures. One is of a dance, possibly at a United Services Organization facility in the town of Bainbridge. The other two show soldiers from the seventeen-member drum and bugle corps that Captain Bridges had organized to perform at base ceremonies. Their facial expressions, erect posture, crisp uniforms, and disciplined formation reflect pride in their roles.67

Precisely what Woodard did at Camp Bainbridge is unknown, but his military occupational specialty was 590 (Duty Soldier Third Class). According to the technical manual for enlisted personnel classifications, such people performed “various non-specialized and routine duties requiring no special physical qualification and little or no responsibility, skill or initiative.” These included “organizational details such as housekeeping a nd maintenance of utilities, buildings, and airdromes.” They could also serve “as helper to technicians” and do “other general unskilled laboring tasks.” Typical jobs listed in the book for this category included “airplane handler” and “base maintenance man” as well as “furnace fireman,” “bath attendant,” “dining-room orderly,” and “kitchen helper.”68Woodard presumably did this kind of work from late 1942 until early 1944.

While at Camp Bainbridge, Woodard likely had some disciplinary problems—or at least was accused of them—and was punished. His 1946 discharge paperwork says that he lost seventy-six days under Article of War 107. This meant that he did not receive credit for two-and-a-half months of enlisted service, but the paperwork does not specify when in his career he lost these days nor what the specific circumstances were. Possible explanations for his lost service time include having been placed under confinement for some sort of infraction, drunkenness that hindered performance of duties, hospitalization for an act of personal irresponsibility such as contracting a venereal disease, or being absent without leave.69Something happening at Camp Bainbridge—as opposed to later in his career—would explain why he was not promoted during this period as well as why his discharge records do not mention him receiving a Good Conduct Medal.

Troops from Company A of the all-Black 452d Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion as part of a convoy in the European theater of operations, 9 November 1944. National Archives

During the first half of 1944, Woodard was scheduled to begin basic training as a member of the 819th Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) Battalion (Automatic Weapons).70The War Department had come under increasing pressure from civil rights activists to assign African Americans to frontline combat units. Woodard transferred to Camp Stewart, Georgia, which was the Army’s primary installation for teaching soldiers how to shoot down enemy planes.71The post and the nearby city of Savannah had experienced significant unrest among the fourteen all-Black battalions stationed there during 1943, but the worst of it had subsided by the time Woodard arrived.72

The 819th AAA Battalion consisted of four batteries and a headquarters totaling 39 officers, 159 sergeants, and 637 junior enlisted soldiers. The battalion had thirty-two 40-mm. Balfour guns and thirty-two quad-mounts.73The latter weapon consisted of four .50-caliber machine guns rigged to fire in tandem. It could be aimed not only at planes in the skies, but also at human targets on the ground. Because of the latter purpose, it gained the nicknames “Krautmower” and “meatchopper” by the war’s end.74

During World War II, soldiers assigned to new units typically did their training together. They started with the initial four weeks of basic individual training, followed by a period in which they learned their specialized weapons.75In addition, they learned to identify enemy aircraft and distinguish them from friendly ones. They then practiced and conducted exercises in progressively larger groups. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Oswald J. Lacerte, was a White French Canadian who had moved to Indiana as a child. He successfully commanded another all-Black AAA battalion at Camp Stewart before taking over the 819th.76

Woodard belonged to Battery B. Had he completed the training, he would have become qualified for military occupational specialty 597 (Antiaircraft Artillery Machine Gun Crewman). His duties would have included firing the guns, loading ammunition, spotting aircraft, moving the turret, driving the vehicle, operating a radio, and conducting maintenance. However, he and the soldiers of the 819th never finished their training and never saw action because the U.S. Army redesignated the battalion in May 1944.77The soldiers were needed to unload ships.

Many civilian activists were outraged to learn that Black soldiers had been diverted from combat units and relegated to what they perceived as menial labor. This work, however, was critical to the war effort. The planned D-Day landings in Europe would require vast amounts of supplies to be moved across the English Channel to support the fighting in France. Meanwhile, in the Pacific, the Allies had made progress with the “island hopping” strategy of advancing toward Japan. General Douglas MacArthur, the theater commander, had been using cargo ships as floating warehouses. This practice resulted in a shortage of vessels, which were needed elsewhere. The general was ordered to establish logistics bases on shore.78He needed soldiers with the skills to do this important and often dangerous job.

Woodard received a new assignment to the 429th Port Company. His FBI affidavit of 1946 would say, erroneously, that he belonged to the 429th Port Battalion. By the time he became a longshoreman, however, the U.S. Army Transportation Corps had stopped creating port battalions in favor of smaller port companies.79These were given the specific tasks of loading and unloading cargo ships. Moving freight off or onto trucks or smaller watercraft was the job of soldiers in the Quartermaster or Engineer Corps.

A standard port company consisted of 213 enlisted soldiers and 6 officers, organized into a headquarters, a service section, and two operating platoons. The company commander, first sergeant, supply sergeant, mess sergeant, and their assistants made up the headquarters. The members of the service platoon included the cooks, vehicle mechanics, carpenters, welders, blacksmiths, and the executive officer. The two operating platoons had the most direct role in accomplishing the company’s mission. Each was led by two lieutenants and divided into five hatch sections. According to a Transportation Corps handbook, these ten hatch sections were “the very heart of the company.”80

The mock wharf with “land ships” used for training stevedores at Fort Indiantown Gap. National Archives

Each hatch section was broken into three crews. Positioned on the deck, the first was composed of the foreman, the winch or crane operators, and the signalman. The latter was always supposed to use his hands and never his voice because of the noisy conditions. The second crew contained four longshoremen who worked on the dock along with the assistant foreman. They kept clear the area around the winch or crane. The third crew, which did the heaviest labor, consisted of eight longshoremen. Split into two gangs, they functioned in tandem on the starboard and port sides of the ship’s hold to make certain that the cargo remained balanced and level. A checker from the platoon headquarters kept track of items on the manifest. Ideally, the soldiers of a single hatch section could move 50 to 80 tons of cargo during a ten-hour shift.

To perform these jobs safely and efficiently, Woodard underwent stevedore training at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. This post was situated in the rolling hills of the Keystone State and nowhere near the ocean. The U.S. Army Transportation Corps compensated by building a full-scale mock wharf with docks, warehouses, railroad sidings, cranes, and three “dry land” Liberty ships on which soldiers could gain hands-on experience.81

A description of Woodard’s duties as a longshoreman, taken from War Department Technical Manual 12–147, appears in his records. It says that he, “as a member of a crew, loaded and unloaded military supplies and equipment from ships. Removed hatch cover and beams and placed them on deck. Used various types of gear, lifted draft into and out of hold. Used hand signals to direct winchman. Knows knots, splices, riggings, and correct methods of stowing various types of cargo.”82Being taught these kinds of skills turned soldiers into assets while raising their sense of self-worth. Truman Gibson, a special civilian aide to the secretary of war for racial affairs, visited Fort Indiantown Gap in early 1945, about half a year after Woodard left. “The stevedore training which the men receive is very arduous,” he observed. “In talking with the enlisted men, I was impressed with their high morale. Never in the four years that I have visited Army installations have I seen more trust and confidence placed in officers by enlisted men.”83

The land ships SS Manda and SS Swatara, at the mock wharf at Fort Indiantown Gap, ca. 1942 Pennsylvania State Archives

The commander of the 429th was 1st Lt. Philip Locke, a White northerner and native of White Plains, New York. He had graduated from Dartmouth College in 1942 and attended Officer Candidate School in 1943.84His views on racial matters are unknown, but the fact that he remained with the company throughout its training in the United States and deployment overseas, that he was promoted to captain, that he subsequently was selected to become part of a war crimes tribunal, and that he left the service as a major suggests that he had a successful command.85

The post commander of Fort Indiantown Gap, a White career infantryman named Col. Forrest E. Ambrose, tried hard to foster positive race relations. He mandated that all new trainees undergo an orientation program that included briefings about the contributions of African Americans in previous wars. He met personally with each incoming group. “Prejudice, discrimination, and segregation on the basis of color at this camp will not be tolerated,” he told them, “and if there are any such cases, I personally want to know about them at once.”86Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, who came to the post with Gibson, said that “it is a great pity that the Army does not have a couple hundred more men like him.”87

Woodard’s time at Fort Indiantown Gap coincided with a larger effort by the War Department to fix problems that had led to a countrywide spate of racial unrest at places like Camp Stewart.88Policies were strengthened to stop local commanders from segregating government-run buses, service clubs, and other facilities.89Frank Capra, the famous film director who had received a commission as an Army officer and worked directly for General George C. Marshall, produced a documentary designed to raise the fighting spirit of African Americans. Titled The Negro Soldier, it was released during the spring of 1944 to military and civilian audiences.90Woodard might well have watched it as part of his orientation at Fort Indiantown Gap.91

In May 1944, the soldiers of the 429th Port Company distinguished themselves and demonstrated their military discipline when they participated in a ceremony for thirty-eight state governors who had come to the nearby town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, for a national conference.92An entry in Lieutenant Locke’s scrapbook says that his unit “received [an] award for best drilled company in review and for inspection merits received top honors.”93

After becoming qualified as a military longshoreman, Woodard was sent with the 429th to Norfolk, Virginia. He arrived on 4 July 1944.94The Transportation Corps typically assigned newly trained port companies to seaboard installations like the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation, where they had opportunities to practice working together as a unit before deploying overseas. Proximity to the ocean also permitted training in tasks like conducting beach landings using Higgins boats.95At some point, possibly earlier in Pennsylvania or in Georgia, Woodard would have learned how to fire an individual weapon, the M1 carbine, which typically was issued instead of long rifles to stevedores because of its lighter weight and greater usefulness at close quarters should fighting become necessary aboard a ship or dockside.96

A unit photo of the 429th Port Company taken at Norfolk, Virginia, ca. October 1944. Woodard is in the second row from the top, just to the right of the second window. Courtesy of the Woodard Family

Closeup of Woodard in the unit photo.

Woodard’s time in the Norfolk area coincided with the second anniversary of the Transportation Corps, which had been created on 31 July 1942, and was headquartered at nearby Fort Eustis, Virginia. A parade was held that summer to celebrate the role this organization played in the war effort. One of the floats featured “demonstrations of many training phases, including port company work, loading and unloading ships, and handling of equipment.”97As with the orientation efforts made at Fort Indiantown Gap, this event stressed that African American longshoremen did important jobs.

On 5 October 1944, Woodward and the rest of the 429th began moving across the United States from Virginia to California.98He almost certainly made the journey by railroad on a troop train. Enlisted soldiers typically rode in modified steel boxcars manufactured especially for the armed forces by the Pullman Company. Each one had ten rows of bunks stacked three high. The lower two beds could be converted to daytime seating. Ten windows on each side of the car provided light and ventilation when the blackout shades were not in use. Bathrooms with hot-and cold-water taps were located at the ends. Each car accommodated twenty-nine soldiers and a porter. They entered and exited from doors at the center. Meals came from kitchen cars. This arrangement permitted the train to move twenty-four hours per day if necessary.99

As the timetables permitted, troop trains stopped to allow the soldiers chances to stretch, exercise, or bathe while the steam locomotive was refueled and filled with water. They could eat meals at nearby restaurants or have doughnuts and coffee provided by volunteers from the local Red Cross or United Services Organization. In the South, these amenities usually were offered only to White soldiers, including German and Italian prisoners-of-war in transit, while at the same time denied to African Americans. Bitter stories about this kind of disparate treatment would become common among Black veterans.100Whether Woodard suffered such indignities is unknown. Given, however, that the only Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad lines leading out of Norfolk went through Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky, he would have made stops at segregated stations.101

The trip westward exposed Woodard to a landscape alien to anything he had seen east of the Appalachians. He crossed the Mississippi River—more than a quarter-mile wide at this point—at St. Louis. Following mainlines of the Union Pacific, he viewed the vast prairies of the Great Plains in Kansas or Nebraska and then the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. One of the most interesting human-made sights he would have encountered in Utah—depending, of course, on the time of day when his train went over it—was a 12-mile-long trestle spanning the Great Salt Lake. He then followed the Humbolt River, which never reaches the ocean, before passing over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and through the valleys of the American and Sacramento Rivers to his destination at the edge of San Francisco Bay.

A troop train hauling specially designed sleeper cars travels through mountainous terrain. Woodard would have traveled on a similar train while moving to California with his unit. National Archives

Woodard spent three weeks in California. He likely stayed at the Oakland Army Base, which was the main port of embarkation for soldiers heading to the Pacific theater.102Port company soldiers sometimes had the opportunity here to receive specialized training from experienced civilian stevedores, but records do not say if he did.103For certain, Woodard arrived during a period of heightened racial tensions brought about by the courts martial of African American dockworkers at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Concord, California. On 26 July 1944, an accidental explosion there had obliterated one ship and torn a second into pieces. Of the 320 people killed, 202 had been Black sailors engaged in loading bombs and other ammunition from the dock. Many of the survivors blamed the disaster on unsafe working conditions and, in August, they refused to load sea mines onto another ship. Fifty of them—all Black—were charged with mutiny, which carried a possible death penalty. The courts martial began on 14 September and ended with convictions for all of them on 26 October.104Whether Woodard had any awareness of these events is unknown. Given that Port Chicago was only 20 miles away from Oakland, that the proceedings received widespread publicity, and that the sailors shared similar duties with him, he probably knew.

The USS Haskell anchored off San Francisco in late 1945 Southwest Georgia Regional Library

Woodard did not remain in California long enough to learn what sentences the sailors would receive.105On 27 October, he boarded the USS Haskell (APA–117). This vessel was the first attack transport ship of its class. Armed with ten 20-mm. and eight 40-mm. guns, it had a crew complement of 536 sailors and a troop capacity of 1,561.106It had just completed its shakedown cruise. For its maiden voyage across the Pacific, it carried the 427th and 429th Port Companies as well as the 1315th Engineering Construction Battalion.107One of the White naval officers who made the trip said that the ship was overloaded with 2,500 passengers, almost all of them Black. “They were stacked four or five high,” he remembered. “White people were stacked only three high in the hold—they were the permanent people. The mess people were all colored people and a couple of Filipino.”108The tropical heat and lack of air conditioning made the cramped quarters even more miserable. (No U.S. Navy ship had air conditioning until 1947.)

An aerial view of the dock area at Biak Island, where Woodard and other soldiers of the 429th Port Company loaded and unloaded ships National Archives

The ship began its voyage on 28 October, steaming past Alcatraz Prison and beneath the Golden Gate Bridge before heading into open waters. It encountered a storm near the Hawai‘ian Islands, so the hatches were battened down for days as the Haskell pitched back and forth. Many soldiers became ill. The officer said that “there was an inch of vomit in the colored people’s compartments the full length of the ship.” A White crewman wrote in his diary that “those troops puked all over the ship, passageways, ladders It smelled like hell, making the crew sick.”109The soldiers also endured a lack of fresh vegetables. A moment of levity occurred on 6 November when they crossed the equator. The sailors celebrated in accordance with maritime tradition by paying homage to Neptune (the Roman god of the sea) and hazing comrades who never had ventured into the southern hemisphere. Lieutenant Locke was inducted into the “Ancient Order of the Deep,” but whether Woodard or any of the soldiers participated in or watched the ritual is unknown.110On 13 November, the lights flickered, bells clanged, and sailors went to battle stations after an underwater explosion shook the ship. Some people thought a Japanese torpedo had struck. Everyone learned later that a depth charge had been dropped after a reported sighting of an enemy submarine.

The Haskell spent nineteen days at sea before reaching Finschhafen, on the island of New Guinea, on 15 November.111Some of the soldiers debarked there. Woodard and the other members of his company continued sailing westward for another four days until they anchored near Biak Island in Geelvink (now Cenderawasih) Bay on 19 November. The U.S. Army had captured this place in August after three months of fighting. The 950-square-mile island was significant because its airfields, port facilities, and proximity made it a staging point for invading the Philippines. It became the site of Supply Base H. By February 1945, according to the official Transportation Corps history, it had a total of “five Liberty docks, seven jetties, four small dry docks, two 30-ton floating cranes, six 5-ton shore cranes, sixteen landing craft, two refrigerated barges, and 80,000 cubic feet of refrigerated space.”112It could accommodate 70,000 people.113

Living quarters on Biak for the 429th Port Company Courtesy of Philip Locke’s grandson, Philip Shear

Philip Locke, shown here as a captain Courtesy of Philip Shear

Japanese naval and air forces no longer had the ability to support large-scale ground operations on Biak. On 22 March 1945, however, they mounted a bombing and strafing raid on the island’s Sorido Airfield that killed forty people.114In addition, scattered groups of enemy soldiers hid in caves. Stranded and starving, these battle-hardened survivors posed lethal threats when they emerged on occasion to steal food.115Parts of the all-Black 93d Infantry Division had been tasked to work alongside the port companies as stevedores, but a small detachment received the mission of patrolling the surrounding cliffs and ridges to root out their remaining opponents. During the period of November 1944 to March 1945, the African American infantry soldiers on Biak killed 74 Japanese and captured 34.116As one of the sergeants observed in a 1945 interview, “We killed quite a few on Biak . . . and it was declared secured before we got there.”117

Woodard did not go on foot patrols, but he did face other dangers. Many of the ships, arriving from places like Port Chicago, carried explosives and fuel. A disturbing example of what could happen occurred on 29 January 1945 at Guadalcanal when the USS Serpens was blown apart after 5,000 tons of ammunition in its hold accidentally exploded. Nothing recognizable of the ship remained except the bow. The explosion killed more than 200 sailors and 50 stevedores.118

The natural environment posed continual problems. Daily high temperatures averaged 110°F throughout the year, and the rays of the sun at one degree from the equator were direct and intense.119Biak had a limited water supply. Precipitation fell frequently, but the overflow drained into underground tunnels instead of collecting in streams or lakes. These circumstances forced soldiers to ration what they drank and to use salt water for bathing and laundry. Sufficient surface liquids did remain, however, to breed mosquitos and spread malaria. Also widespread were mites whose larvae—commonly called chiggers—infested the undergrowth and carried a lethal disease called scrub typhus.

Two soldiers in a jeep from the 429th Port Company. The H below the windscreen indicates that they are on Supply Base H. Courtesy of Philip Shear

“Climatic conditions can be a big headache, as the men who served in the southwest Pacific will attest to,” said a Transportation Corps handbook. “During the rainy season all work was greatly hampered, both aboard ship and on the shore.” Muddy road conditions and blocked beaches “caused a bottleneck” that slowed work “to almost a standstill.” In addition, “heat and humidity caused much damage, sometimes more than enemy action. Another thing that worried the men handling cargo was mildew.”120

According to photographs preserved by Lieutenant Locke, Woodard and the other soldiers spent their off-duty hours and slept on cots in wood-framed longhouses with raised platforms for floors, massive sheets of canvas for roofs, and netting stretched down the sides for ventilation and protection from mosquitos. Screened doors at the ends permitted entry and exit. The buildings were situated on sandy soil with limited shade. Another photograph indicates that the company had at least one jeep for transportation and that the soldiers wore standard issue, herringbone twill coveralls made of cotton.121

The local inhabitants of Biak lived in primitive huts, fished from outrigger canoes, and wore scant clothing. According to Charles Evers, “New Guinea had no civilization. Just the bush people. And no women in sight.” He said that the “natives were almost as dark as Africans and had no education, spoke no English. So we couldn’t talk to them.” He added that “the army forbid us from fraternizing with them and told us some of them had diseases or were ‘cooperating with the Japs.’”122

Woodard and his comrades at Biak had plenty of work to keep them occupied. The invasion of the Philippines had commenced during October 1944. Bombers took off from three different airstrips to support landings in the southern part of the archipelago. Fighters from these bases patrolled the skies around New Guinea so that carrier-based aircraft could advance closer to Japan. Casualties were evacuated from the front lines for treatment at the hospital on Supply Base H. Replacement soldiers, ammunition, equipment, and other supplies arrived from the United States to be pushed forward to places like Okinawa. The relentless pace of operations continued as plans were made to invade the main islands of Japan during the fall of 1945. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August rendered this final campaign unnecessary.

Woodard must have performed his job well because he received three promotions while serving with the 429th: one to private first class, a second to technician fifth grade, and a third to technician fourth grade. He assumed greater responsibilities with each advancement.123

The USS West Point passing the Statue of Liberty, 11 July 1945. Naval History and Heritage Command

After the Japanese formally surrendered on 2 September 1945, Woodard had a lengthy wait before he could go back to the United States. The armed forces had a system based on points accumulated for determining the order by which people would return.124Service members received one point for each month in uniform; two for each month spent in a combat zone; twelve for each dependent under the age of 18; and five for each personal decoration, wound, or battle star. Those with the highest “Adjusted Service Rating Score” were supposed to go home first. The minimum total needed to go home when Germany surrendered in May 1945 was eighty-five. It dropped to fifty by the end of the year. Woodard had only forty-two points when Operation Magic Carpet, the name for the mass repatriation of U.S. military personnel from overseas theaters, commenced in the Pacific on 6 September. He would have had forty-five, but he lost three as a result of disciplinary actions taken against him, likely earlier in his service. He was not authorized five points for a battle star until February 1946 when the War Department published general orders awarding campaign credit to the 429th Port Company for operations in Western New Guinea.125Records indicate that Woodard went home not because of points, of which he had forty-seven, but because he had reached his maximum months of service.126

He moved during December from Biak to the Philippine Island of Mindanao, which placed him closer to the ship that would transport him home. According to Charles Evers, “the land looked like Florida, with beaches, palm trees, thick heavy bush.” Unlike New Guinea, “the Philippines had real cities.”127Woodard did not have much time, if any, to take advantage of his new surroundings. Early on 15 January 1946, he stepped off Mindanao’s Britania Beach to begin his journey eastward.128

He boarded the USS West Point (AP–23), the country’s largest and fastest troop transport. Known before the war as the SS America, the liner had been called for military service during 1941 and in 1946 was making its final transoceanic voyage with the armed forces. It had an exterior paint scheme of gray camouflage and carried machine guns, 5-inch artillery pieces, and weapons to defend against aircraft.129In its civilian configuration, it boasted luxurious accommodations. As a naval vessel, its furnishings featured metal bunks stacked three to five high with only 16 inches separating the occupants. It held nearly 8,500 people when it departed the Philippines.130Despite military modifications, it retained touches of its previous, streamlined elegance with many of the Modernist murals, bas-relief sculptures, and Art Deco design elements remaining on the interior walls, floors, and ceilings.131

An aerial photograph of Pearl Harbor in January 1946. The aircraft carrier USS Bennington is in the background docked, at Ford Island. Naval History and Heritage Command

The West Point traveled 4,952 miles to reach Pearl Harbor early on 29 January.132It stayed in Hawai‘i for less than a day.133If Woodard had the chance to go ashore briefly or to take in the surrounding view from a deck or through a window, he might have seen the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CV–20) moored at Ford Island, its crew preparing for a change of command ceremony.134Astern of the Essex-class flattop, occasional blobs of fuel oil floated into its berth from nearby Battleship Row. The stripped-down hulk of the USS Oklahoma (BB–37), righted after being capsized by Japanese torpedoes and with more than 400 unidentified corpses having been extracted from it, awaited towing to a West Coast scrapyard.135Although salvage crews had removed the superstructure and several turrets and guns of the USS Arizona (BB–39), enough of its wreckage remained above water for people to stand over the more than 1,000 dead sailors and marines entombed below.136No official memorials had yet been erected.

A postcard depicting the main gate and bus stop at Camp Gordon, Georgia Boston Public Library

The trip resumed that afternoon. After steaming an additional 4,723 miles over ten days, the West Point arrived off the coast of Panama on 3 February.137The ship had transited the isthmian canal multiple times—including once as the America, with two German spies aboard—but the experience was a new one for soldiers like Woodard. Passengers and crew had opportunities to admire the Central American flora and fauna and to marvel at the engineering of the locks.

The final leg of the journey took four days and covered 2,030 miles.138On 7 February, the West Point entered New York Harbor, passing by the Statue of Liberty and going up the Hudson River to moor at Pier 88 at the edge of Hell’s Kitchen between Central Park and the Empire State Building.139Woodard’s mother and father had moved to the Bronx during the early 1940s, but whether they came to greet the ship is unknown.

After debarking the West Point, Woodard boarded a troop train that carried him and the others about 40 miles to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey.140The postwar mission of this facility was to sort out incoming shiploads of soldiers and send them to separation centers located nearest to their homes. Civilian visitors were not allowed except in cases of emergency, and service members could not have passes to leave the installation, so Woodard would not have been able to spend any time with his parents in New York City. He would, however, have been able to call them by phone. At some point, possibly then, he made plans to meet his wife in South Carolina and return with her to the North.141

After two days at Camp Kilmer, Woodard traveled by train to Camp Gordon near Augusta, Georgia, for another two days of outprocessing. There, a personnel clerk typed his discharge form, which detailed his qualifications and the awards to which he was entitled. These included the World War II Victory Medal, which went to all veterans of this period, and the American Campaign Medal, which recognized the time he spent in the United States. In addition to earning the Asia-Pacific Campaign Medal for being in the overseas combat zone, he had the honor of affixing a bronze, five-pointed, three-sixteenths-of-an-inch star to its ribbon for having participated in the battle for New Guinea.142

He also settled his financial accounts. During all or part of his time in uniform, he had deposited a portion of his monthly salary into an Army-sponsored savings program. The balance had grown to $450 by 1946. In addition, he had due to him a total of $300 that the federal government had granted tax-free to departing veterans to help them resume their civilian lives. He collected another six dollars and sixty cents to cover the costs of traveling to his home of record in Winnsboro. He may have owed money for lost or damaged equipment or uniform items, because instead of $761.60, he was paid $744.73. This amount was still substantial; adjusted for inflation, it would be equivalent to $13,333.30 in December 2025. He accepted fifty dollars of the total in cash and a check for the remainder.143

A postwar photograph of Woodard and his mother Elizabeth Georgia State University

Woodard left Camp Gordon around 1800 on 12 February 1946 aboard an Army-operated bus that carried him 10 miles eastward to the city of Augusta, Georgia. There, on the eve of his fateful encounter, he would purchase ten hot dogs and a Greyhound Bus ticket.144The azaleas and dogwoods for which the local golf course would become famous had not yet blossomed, but the pine trees and sandy soil would have reminded him of home. The sun dropped below the horizon at 1810. Whether he thought to watch it set is unknown.

A few short hours later, still in uniform, Woodard was removed from his bus at a stop in Batesburg, South Carolina, for causes that remain unclear. Lynwood Shull, a local police officer, ruptured both of the soldier’s eyeballs with a blackjack during his subsequent arrest. The next day, a judge gave Woodard the choice of paying a fifty-dollar fine or spending thirty days on a chain gang. Shull later was tried in federal court for civil rights violations but was acquitted by an all-White jury.

T/4 Isaac Woodard Jr. had survived the dangers and hardships of war and had been exposed to many interesting sights along the way. Although he would live another forty-six years, he never again would see the sunrise.

Editor’s Note

The spelling in quotations from transcriptions of WPA interviews, chosen by the original transcriber(s) to represent a person’s manner of speaking, has been retained.

Notes