Moorestown Vet Receives Long-Overdue Honor

As a black man growing up in America in the first half of the 20th century, Harold Phillips was used to being recognized for the wrong reasons.

Even as a World War II Marine, Phillips, of Moorestown, was often categorized by the color of his skin, not as someone serving his country.

When Phillips reported for basic training at Montford Point, a segregated all-black Marine base outside Wilmington, NC, he had to ride on the “Jim Crow coach,” the first car on the train after the engine where pre-Civil Rights blacks were made to ride in the south.

Fast-forward more than 60 years and today, Phillips and those that remain of his Montford Point brethren are finally being recognized for their service with the Congressional Gold Medal. Phillips is one of five remaining Montford Marines in New Jersey, according to a release from U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D-NJ) office.

“It’s not something I ever expected,” said the 86-year-old Phillips, sitting in his living room on North Church Street, the table in front of him covered in photos and other keepsakes from his time in the Corps.

“We’re saying it’s about time,” his wife, Cynthia, said.

Joining a brotherhood

The past 86 years have not dulled Phillips’ memory and he still remembers much. July 1, 1943, the day he signed up for the draft, fresh out of Burlington City High School, where he grew up.

They gave him a choice: Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, he said. “Being a youngster … I said, ‘Give me the Marines.’”

Phillips was the only African-American from Burlington to join the Marines, he said.

He spent the next three years (when he wasn’t training or on leave stateside) hopping between Pacific Ocean islands, like tiny Funafuti (in the South Pacific) and the Marshall Islands, as World War II wound down. As a radar operator, Phillips said he was “always sitting in a van or somewhere, watching for planes and whatnot.”

He knew every one of the 32 African-American Marines in his platoon at Montford and became close with many of the white Marines he served with as well. For Phillips, the Marine Corps was a true brotherhood, color-blind, a refuge from the prejudices of the rest of society.

Phillips recalled an incident in which he and a couple white Marines, friends of his, were heading home on leave and stopped at a restaurant in Virginia. They entered the restaurant and sat at the counter, taboo for blacks back then. The waitress eyeballed him, but ended up taking his order and brought his food out.

As soon as the rest of the black soldiers on the bus saw Phillips get served, they rushed in to place their orders, he said. “The manager said, ‘No, no, no, no, no. You’ve got to go around back.’ … I pushed my food away. I said (to the white Marines), ‘Oh no, fellas, I can’t eat.’ They pushed their’s away too, and we left.”

That’s how it was. Every time society marginalized him, demeaned him, his fellow Marines stuck by him, Phillips said.

‘It made me the man I am today’

Though a hint of irritation may still creep into his voice when he recalls past prejudices, Phillips doesn’t seem to harbor any real resentment. He speaks fondly of his time in the Corps.

“It made me the man I am today,” he said.

When he left the Marines, he ran a cab business in Moorestown for several years before going into the insurance business, while at home he and Cynthia, who’s 85, started a family that includes two daughters (their son, a Navy officer, passed away in 1978), eight grandchildren, and three great grandchildren, with a fourth on the way.

“We have been blessed,” Cynthia said with some satisfaction, sitting across from her husband in the living room of the home they built together nearly 60 years ago.

Phillips doesn’t know much about the medal he’s supposed to be awarded. He found out about it by reading it in the paper, he said.

Lautenberg was a co-sponsor of the bill to award the Montford Marines, which was unanimously passed in both the House and Senate.

“These men were trailblazers and heroes,” said Lautenberg, an Army veteran. “During World War II, they faced hostility within their ranks and on the battlefield to defend our nation. Their bravery in the face of discrimination and danger was a remarkable tribute to the principles on which our country was founded. The Montford Point Marines from New Jersey and all across the country are well-deserving of the Congressional Gold Medal.”

Patch was unable to obtain further information from Lautenberg’s office about the time and place at which the medals would be bestowed.