>>Another factor was race. MacArthur's invasion force would consist of armies from white nations.This
>>force would teach the Japanese a lesson about challenging the West.
This reflects very poorly on the author as it is easily proven as false.
See:
http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/ ... pter20.htm
A host of small units were employed in every theater and in almost every type of operation, forward and rear. Negro engineers were ahead of other ground and air troops in the early days at Port Moresby in New Guinea. They went in as soon as possible after the successive invasions across the broad Pacific, pushing out ahead of other ground troops at times to construct the airfields required for the planes that kept the ever-accelerating Pacific timetable on schedule. On bulldozers, in trucks, and on foot they cut their way through the frigid wilds of Canada and Alaska and through the jungles of Burma, building and improving roads for military transport. They provided a garrison for Liberia and protection for the American-built Roberts Field there. They provided antiaircraft defenses for Trinidad in the Caribbean and for the Pacific islands on the route to Australia and, later, on the route to the Philippines. Negro port and amphibious truck companies were attached to Army and Marine divisions and corps for the invasions of the Pacific islands, notably Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Port comparties manned great ports around the world, and sometimes places that were never ports before. Negro engineer, chemical, and quartermaster troops landed at Salerno and Anzio. A Negro barrage balloon unit, the only American unit of its type present, unleashed its captive balloons to protect the cross-Channel invasion fleet and the troops on the Normandy beaches from low-flying aircraft, while amphibious truck, quartermaster service, and ordnance ammunition companies there began jobs which were to last through V-E Day. Negro quartermaster truck and transport companies were more or less permanently attached to infantry and armored divisions fighting across Europe, many of them, through their long attachments, becoming almost integral parts of the divisions to which they were attached, some of them joining in the fighting as riflemen when needed. Medical ambulance companies attached to divisions and hospitals evacuated wounded to the rear and medical sanitary companies loaded evacuated patients aboard ship for return to hospitals in England. Companies of ordnance ammunition battalions stocked and dispensed ammunition along the routes of the armies. Smoke generator companies set their smoke pots and generators just behind front lines at Anzio and along European rivers, sometimes, as along the Garigliano, mingling their smoke positions with infantry outposts. In rear areas, at depots, bases, and ports, service units handled the supplies required to support the armies and the services, while quartermaster truckers sped them forward over the Red Ball Express route in Europe, the Motor Transport System in Iran, the Stilwell Road in Burma, and numberless coral roads in the Pacific..
and
The use of such units was so widespread that a detailed narrative of their contributions would require a separate volume. Most small units, their designations and functions changed as the need arose, must therefore remain anonymous in this account. The ease of shipment of these units was in direct relation to the need for them; their assignment to duty was equally a function of need, though need was at times created on the spot as a headquarters found more and more duties that could be attended to if soldiers were forthcoming to perform them. The quality of their training played a less important role in their shipment, although individual unit reputations for performance in the field were directly related to the continuing use of skills acquired in training, especially in the cases of combat support and the more technical of the service units. Units shipped "in current status of training," a phrase used generally to denote a unit that had not completed its training but which was nevertheless shipped because it was needed or because it would complete its training at its destination, often performed as well as better trained units which went out to areas that had relatively less need for them. A relatively untrained unit, therefore, was often as successfully employed when faced with a visible mission and a demonstrated need for its services as a well-trained unit employed in a routine manner. Certain units, like the engineer dump truck companies, always in demand, always used, and almost always Negro, were considered of great value by the using commands and were therefore well and fully employed; others, like chemical smoke generator companies, also with a heavy Negro representation, were less generally used for their primary missions, often being put to guarding warehouses and prisoners and operating depots. When formally converted to other missions, units developed high efficiency in their new tasks when they were convinced that these tasks were of more obvious and immediate value than their former assignments. Such was the case, for example, in two quartermaster service companies whose personnel came from disbanded units. These men learned rapidly, gaining "in efficiency until approximately seventy per cent were performing technical duties and only thirty per cent were performing general service duties."1
Two of those converted Smoke Generator companies were the 70th and 170th.
They had been converted to quartermaster companies in the SWPA and were being converted back to Smoke Generator Companies for Operation Olympic.
They were going to land with the V Marine Amphibious Corp on Kyushu and screen their beaches with smoke from Japanese Aerial Kamikaze attacks and observed artillery fire using smoke tactics developed at Anzio.
See page 402, Chapter X "Large Area Smoke Screens in the Pacific," in CHEMICALS IN COMBAT, from the US Army Green Book Series.
