Love, War, and the 96th Engineers (Colored): The World War II New Guinea Diaries of Captain Hyman Samuelson

The author of this diary was a civil engineer raised in Louisiana. The U.S. Army of WWII believed such a combination ideal for assignment to a segregated unit: white Southerners were considered better able than Northerners to ``handle'' blacks. The 96th Engineers (Colored) was a ``general service'' regiment whose missions included building docks and airfields, maintaining roads and defending its work against Japanese raiders. The 96th fought its war in the southwest Pacific, at the bottom of both the list for equipment and a racially determined pecking order. Samuelson's diary entries vividly depict the hardships of jungle war even when safely behind the front lines. They document as well a growing awareness of racial issues on the part of a young man who had previously accepted the existing order as a given. This work is a significant contribution to military history and ethnic studies. Hall is a history professor at Rutgers Univ. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)