Black Sand Patriots: An Untold Story from Iwo Jima
Preface
This article was researched and written with the support of the Marine Corps University Archives and Special Collections. We are deeply grateful to the USMCU archive team for their assistance and for granting access to primary documents, including Captain John Harvie’s Record of Events and the wartime memoir of Private Walter J. Moffett.
Their stewardship of these historical records ensures that the legacy of Marines — including those whose stories have too often gone untold — remains preserved for future generations.
Before the Black Sand
Before Iwo Jima was a battlefield, it was a rumor.
Before Red 2 was a landing designation, it was simply ink on a map.
Before the 36th Marine Depot Company ever stepped onto volcanic sand, many of its enlisted men stood in formation on a strip of swampy ground carved from the North Carolina coast.
Montford Point. The ground was marsh and red clay, soft enough to swallow a boot if you stepped wrong. Mosquitoes rose in thick clouds at dusk, and the air hung heavy with salt and humidity.
In 1942, under mounting political pressure, the Marine Corps opened its ranks to African American recruits — but not into integrated units. Montford Point was physically separated from Camp Lejeune. The facilities were hastily constructed, and sorely lacking. In the early months, equipment was limited. Recruits trained with borrowed rifles, barracks were basic, and infrastructure lagged.
And yet, the Marine Corps expected them to meet Marine Corps standards.
The men who reported there were volunteers.
Young. Patriotic. Determined.
They stepped forward with the same calling — service before self — a calling that took hold in the hearts of many young Americans of every background. Black and white. Men and women. All answered that call, even as they fought through very different battles at home and abroad.
The men at Montford Point understood something difficult: they were volunteering to defend a nation that had not yet decided they belonged equally within it.
They endured drill instructors. Forced marches. Weapons qualification. Field exercises.
Montford Point Marines did not just have to become Marines.
They had to justify their right to be Marines.
That is grit forged twice.
The marsh trained them.
Then, in 1944, the Marine Corps assigned a young officer named John Harvie to lead them out of it.
A Commander Arrives
In 1943, John Harvie was commissioned in the Marine Corps.
In 1944, he was assigned to Montford Point and given command of the 36th Marine Depot Company, a unit carried entirely by Black American Marines.
Depot companies were not rifle companies. They were logistics units — responsible for ammunition distribution, cargo handling, supply movement, and shore party operations in amphibious landings.
On paper, they were support.
In the Pacific, they came ashore through artillery and machine gun fire like everyone else.
Harvie did not command a symbolic unit.
He commanded men that would soon be sent into one of the most violent amphibious assaults in Marine Corps history.
Leadership in that context required more than administrative competence.
He did not stand before them as an officer assigned to a segregated command. He stood before them as a Marine responsible for other Marines — men he would depend on, and who would depend on him, when the sand and sea turned red with blood and the sky filled black with smoke.
Assigned to move ammunition through live fire, the unit would step directly into the chaos of the assault — carrying what would mean the difference between holding ground and losing it.
January 8, 1945 — Honolulu
War rarely moves in straight lines.
On January 6, embarkation orders were received for elements of the 36th Marine Depot Company. The following day, those orders were canceled. For the enlisted men, it was confusion. For Captain John Harvie, it was operational agility.
On January 8, he and 1st Lt. F. F. Ramseur Jr. rearranged billeting and coordinated a new embarkation at 1000.
But for a company commander, canceled orders do not simply disappear. They ripple — through housing, accountability, manifests, morale. Every change lands somewhere. Every correction has to be absorbed and redirected for the sake of the mission.
By mid-morning, 5 officers and 262 enlisted Marines were boarding USS LST-940 at Kewalo Basin.
From the dock, you would never know a single planned detail had been changed. Marines moving with packs. Equipment stacked. Names checked.
Order restored.
That afternoon, the ship shifted to West Loch to load ammunition. Working parties from the 36th labored through the night.
It is one thing to command a company on paper.
It is another to watch those same men haul ammunition through the dark, knowing that what they are loading will soon be carried into the heart of hell.
Leadership, at moments like this, is quiet.
It is the steadiness of not letting uncertainty show.
The discipline of absorbing change so your men do not have to.
The awareness that in a matter of weeks, the decisions made in Honolulu will echo on a beach half a world away.
Harvie did not yet know what Red 2 would look like.
But he knew this:
He was responsible for every man stepping aboard that ship.
The Crossing
At sea, life belts and gas cartridges were issued.
The passage was rough; seasickness was noted. Fresh water regulations were posted. Smoking regulations were enforced.
The ordinary discipline of shipboard life continued.
And beneath it, anticipation.
On January 15, an order was received changing the landing beach to Red 2 on Iwo Jima.
Because LST-940 could not beach due to draft, the ship’s own boats were used for debarkation.
At 2208, 133 Marines were detached by landing craft.
Rope ladders. Dark water.
Half the company disappeared into the night. A harsh reality to prepare them for what laid ahead.
The crossing was governed by schedules and regulations.
The landing would be governed by chaos.
The Assault Seen from the Front
Private Walter J. Moffett, serving in the reconnaissance platoon of the 27th Marines, later described Iwo Jima as:
“a bitter, unglorified, uphill fight at close quarters.”
He wrote of limited visibility — men unable to see more than a hundred yards. Of volcanic sand stalling movement. Of pillboxes firing from concealed angles. Of platoons reduced before advancing even fifty yards.
It was grinding. Fragmented. Brutal.
What Moffett could not see from his position were the shore party units behind him — the depot companies unloading ammunition and pushing it inland through the same sand, under the same danger.
Official Marine Corps history records that the 36th Marine Depot Company served as part of the V Amphibious Corps shore party at Iwo Jima, unloading and moving ammunition and supplies inland while braving Japanese fire.
They were not assigned to seize ridgelines.
They were assigned to make sure the Marines seizing ridgelines did not run out of ammunition.
But the conditions of war are a great equalizer. One that strips every man down to the bareness of his humanity. It does not care about rank, title, or the limits of society. And an unexpected attack was coming that would test the very men that were sent not to fight, but to supply.
March 26 — Unexpected Attack
Late in the battle, on March 26, Japanese forces launched a final infiltration attack into rear-area positions near the western beaches.
The 36th Marine Depot Company was among the units engaged.
This was not theoretical danger.
This was close-range combat in areas designated for supply and logistics.
Depot Marines fought.
Some were killed.
Two members of the 36th would receive Bronze Stars for heroic achievement during that engagement.
The distinction between “support” and “combat” dissolved under fire.
For men trained at Montford Point — men who had not been permitted to serve in rifle companies — this was not symbolic participation.
It was combat.
And it proved what had already been evident at Montford Point — these Marines met the same standard under the same fire. A concrete declaration of equality.
Patriotism Proven Twice
The Montford Point Marines had already proven something before Iwo Jima.
They had volunteered.
They had trained under segregation.
They had endured facilities below standard, equipment shortages, and separation from the main base.
At Iwo Jima, they proved something again.
They carried ammunition forward across exposed ground.
They hauled water under mortar fire.
They evacuated the wounded.
And when infiltrators broke through, they fought.
They did it in a Corps that had not yet granted them full equality.
Yet they did it anyway.
Captain John Harvie walked that battlefield as their commanding officer — responsible for their discipline, their movement, their survival.
History remembers the image on Mount Suribachi.
But may we remember the men who walked behind it.
The battle did not move forward without them.
The story of the 36th is not an exception. It is part of a larger pattern.
There have always been those whom the world underestimated — men and women told, by policy or prejudice, that their place was smaller than their courage. And yet they stepped forward. They carried the same burdens. They faced the same danger. They endured the same cost.
Recognition came later.
Sometimes much later.
Sometimes, in great tragedy, not at all.
But heroism does not wait for approval. It is a fire inside each of us that demands action, integrity, and courage, even if it seems we walk alone.
This piece is dedicated to the Marines of the 36th Marine Depot Company, and to all who have stood for what is right before the world was ready to accept it.
