This is the story of the discrimination against Servicemen in 1941, before "Pearl Harbor", which has been covered up by The Media and by historians. I witnessed it while doing my Recruit Training and Weather Station Training at Kelly Field, outside of San Antonion, TX.

Military service men, during the Depression, had the status of tramps. And this hadn't changed, during this period before Pearl Harbor, especially in San Antonio, a town surrounded by many military installations.

They hated us! There were signs in restaurant windows and in some store windows reading, "Soldiers, Niggers, Spiks, and dogs not allowed!" Other stores had a double-price policy, charging soldiers and African-Americans and Hispanics a higher price.

Soon our Captain assembled us about the problem. Our First Sergeant had gone to town to see his visiting wife off on a train. Afterwards, he had dinner with a beer in a diner. When he stepped out, he was arrested for intoxication by some County Police. (They were paid by the number arrests they made.) The Sergeant called our Captain. Captain strapped on a gun, and, accompanied by two MPs, went to the County jail. He said he was taking the Sergeant back without paying a fine -- if he and the MPs had to shoot their way out!

Captain told us that, henceforth, we were to go to town only in groups, wearing civies, but wearing khaki ("GI") socks. "If you start anything, we'll come for you and jail you ourselves. But if a townie starts anything, fight for your lives! The MPs are there to protect you."

All that Spring, there were intense street-fights between soldiers and civilians. Wading in, an MP would pull up a brawler's pant leg to examine his socks. If not khaki, the man got clubbed. If khaki, he was pulled to safety. We read in the paper that this was happening in many towns over the country. (This shows that the harassment of African-Americans and Hispanics by some police in some parts of the country -- which continues! -- also plagued military servicemen before WW II.)

Guess what! After "Pearl Harbor", Dec. 7, 1941, the country got religion and we soldiers and sailors became "family". Have you ever read this in a history book or in a Media "look-back". I thought about this a lot when service men and women returned from Vietnam to indifference or rejection or scorn.

Today, African-Americans are profiled by police in many regions of our country. And they satirize the phrase "DWI: Driving While Drunk" by "DWB: DRIVING WHILE BLACK". The experience we GI's experienced in San Antone and other places might be jargoned as "WWU: WALKING WHILE IN UNIFORM"!