- Bibliographical Note
-
- The bulk of the information used in
the preparation of this volume came from the records and manuscript
histories of Army agencies, units, and installations, accumulated in the two
decades before December 1941 and during American participation in World War
II. The records of Army (including Army Air Forces) agencies are described
in Federal Records of World War II, Volume II, Military Agencies,
prepared by the General Services Administration, National Archives and
Records Service, The National Archives (Washington, 1951 ), to which the
reader is referred for more detailed information about the numerous agencies
concerned and their accumulation of records.
-
- Records and manuscript histories
used and cited in this work are now mostly to be found in the collections of
four agencies. In the Washington, D.C. area, the Office of Military Archives
of the National Archives and Records Service holds most of the pre-1940
retired Army records in the main building of the National Archives; in its
World War II Reference Branch in Alexandria, Virginia, the same agency holds
most of the post-1939 retired records of Army headquarters agencies and the
operational records of Army ground combat units that saw action overseas.
Many records of the Army Air Forces, unpublished Air Forces manuscript
histories, and operational records and histories of Air units are kept by
the Air University at Maxwell Field, Alabama. Records of overseas commands
cited in the concluding chapters are currently deposited in the regional
National Archives records center at Kansas City, Missouri. Unpublished Army
historical manuscripts and some other sources of information are, as
indicated in the footnotes, in the custody of the General Reference Branch
of the Office of the Chief of Military History.
-
- The reader is referred to the
footnotes for guidance to the wide variety of record groups used, only the
most important of which are mentioned here. For both the prewar and World
War II periods, the central decimal file maintained by The Adjutant
General's Office (AG) is the most useful, but to get the full story of the
formulation and application of policy the records of the offices of the
Secretary of War and of the Chief of Staff, as well as those of the military
staffs that operated under their direction, must also be consulted. The most
important are the records of the Assistant Secretary of War (ASW), the Chief
of Staff (OCS to 1942, WDCSA thereafter), and, among the General Staff
divisions, those of the Operations Division (OPD), the Personnel Division
(G- 1) , and the Organization and Training Division (G-3) . Records of the
three major commands, the Army Ground Forces (AGF), the Army Air Forces (AAF),
and the Army Service Forces (bearing many separate symbol identifications,
since ASF had no central file) are of major value for studying the
preparation of Negro troops for service overseas. For the activities and
performance of particular Negro units in the United States and overseas, the
records and manuscript histories of individual units, both of the Negro
units concerned and of the larger units to which these were attached, have
been drawn on extensively.
-
- Printed materials used fall into
five categories. All Army historians must of necessity use official War
Department publications-Army regulations, general orders, circulars,
bulletins, memorandums, technical manuals, and so forth. For the actions and
reactions of the Congress, the Congressional Record and printed
records of Hearings of Congressional committees are obvious sources.
-
- The footnotes indicate how widely
the author has made use of information and editorial comment from
newspapers, including the major New York and Washington dailies and the
Negro press of both North and South. He has used periodicals even more
extensively than newspapers, and especially articles in service and
professional journals. The last category consists of printed works in book
form which, although rather frequently cited throughout the work, were of
distinctly minor importance in compiling this record of the experience of
the Army with Negroes, and of Negroes with the Army during World War II.
page created 15 January 2002
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