As proud as he will be to receive the medal, it won’t blind Bender to history.
“The central thing about all this is that the Marine Corps didn’t really want us, didn’t believe we could do the job and grudgingly moved every step of the way,” Bender said.
There is no bitterness in his 85-year-old voice, which is straightforward.
“Follow the history of race relations, and you’ll find advances were made in wars, through marching” or some other conflict, Bender said.
Perhaps that’s because prejudice itself is such an entrenched enemy.
Bender said it was standing guard on Sept. 30, 1943, when he reported to Camp Hattiesburg, Miss.
“Where do you want to go, boy?” a white soldier asked him.
Bender said he wanted to report to the Army, and the soldier said, “‘Well, you’re in the Marine Corps.’”
That Oct. 14, he joined Company E of the 207th platoon at Montford Point.
Although he describes it as a time of “Quonset huts, rattlesnakes and heat,” Bender confesses, “I didn’t have the sense to be scared. As an 18-year-old, it was an adventure for me.”
By then, the camp had black drill instructors (DIs), although “sometimes we wished we had white ones,” Bender said.
Relentless, his DIs “were going to be darn sure” the recruits measured up as Marines, he said.
Everyone at Montford Point knew the importance of what was happening.
Bender eventually shipped out with a radar unit to the Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Largely because of lingering prejudices about blacks’ ability to perform in combat, “we were doing all that kind of grunt stuff,” Bender said.
Cooking, baking and transporting supplies were all duties that fell disproportionately on blacks.
The attitude changed only when the black troops sent to the island of Iwo Jima to carry ammunition were thrown into combat.
By then at a staging area on Enowetok, Bender recalls that “when the (fighting) really started, the fellas came through and saved the lives of many Marines, and I think that was a defining moment.”
But it did not redefine racial attitudes stateside.
“When we came back from war,” Bender said, “it was another battle — a battle for citizenship and recognition for what we did.”
He said he’s pleased the Commandant of the Marine Corps is making the Montford Point story part of the of the indoctrination for every Marine.
“I see young black Marines going around in their blues, and they don’t have any idea of what was going on,” Bender said.
“One of the beautiful things about this,” he added, is that “we laid the groundwork for the present U.S. Marine Corps,” helping to clear the way for blacks to rise to “all levels, including general.”
“If we would have failed,” Bender said, “it would have been different.”
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