Agana race riot

The Agana race riot (1944) took place at Agana, Guam over the two nights of 24–25 December 1944 during the War in the Pacific and occurred between white and black members of the United States Marines.

It was one of the most serious incidents between African American military personnel and White enlisted men in the United States armed forces during the Second World War.

In July 1944, the 3rd Marine Division and 77th Infantry Division took two weeks to recapture Guam from the Japanese Army in a campaign that cost 1,783 American lives and wounded 6,010 men.

After the battle, the Allies developed Guam for use as a base of operations. Five large airfields were built by Seabees. B-29 bombers were flown from the island to attack targets in the Western Pacific and on mainland Japan. Guam continued to station enlisted men from the 3rd Marine Division. But racial tensions began in late August when the all-black Marine 25th Depot Company arrived to start loading operations at the newly constructed Naval Supply Depot. Whites of the 3rd Marines Division, some new to the area, tried to prevent black marines from visiting the city and its women.

A black Marine stationed on the island compared the military community to "a city deep down in the South" because of the bigotry he encountered. He said:

Where there are women and white and Negro men, you will find discrimination in large quantities. On Guam, discrimination against blacks involved attempted intimidation by whites who shouted racial slurs, threw rocks, and occasionally hurled smoke grenades from passing trucks into the cantonment area for black sailors of the Naval Supply Depot.

Over the next three months, such racially motivated incidents and a pervasive pattern of discrimination caused tensions to rise between the two groups. A white sailor shot and killed a "black Marine of the 25th Depot Company in a quarrel over a woman; and a sentry from the 27th Marine Depot Company reacted to harassment by fatally wounding his tormentor, a white Marine." Each of these men was eventually court-martialed for voluntary manslaughter, but a race riot erupted on Christmas Eve 1944. Rumors had gone around that another black man had been shot and killed by a white.

...
Wikipedia