KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In 2009, while reading a book on seven Black service members who’d had their heroism finally recognized with the military’s highest award for valor, Marine First Sergeant Robert Gray learned one of the men, Army Private First Class Willy James Jr. hailed from Kansas City, Missouri.
He also learned that when the World War II African American honorees received their Medals of Honor at the White House in 1997, six posthumously, PFC James was represented by his young widow and her family. His immediate family could not be located.
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PFC James had married Valencia just weeks before being sent overseas in a segregated Black unit. Discrimination, it turns out, was a part of military life too.
But troops were needed on the front lines, and PFC James was among Black soldiers who volunteered to fight. And so, they were sent to Germany to join white units as reinforcements. On April 8, 1945, PFC James volunteered again, to be a scout drawing fire so the enemy troops could be located. Then volunteered again to lead his men into a small German town to take back the village. He did, and when he tried to rescue a gravely wounded platoon leader, a German sniper cut his life short…