Unsung Hero: Surprising Facts About a Medal of Honor Recipient Who Fought Franco, Hirohito, and Hitler

14. An Extraordinary Life

Edward Allen Carter Jr. first put on his cape and went crusading at age fifteen to fight Japanese militarism in China. He then took a whack at fascism, fighting General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Then, like a video game character working his way up to the highest level to take on the Big Boss, he capped it off by taking on Hitler’s Nazis in World War II, earning a Medal of Honor in the process. Our OG antifascist hero was born in California in 1916 to an African American father and an East Indian mother. His parents, Christian missionaries, took him with them to India, to start a church in Calcutta. It was in India that young Edward grew up, and where he first became fascinated by the military. As a child, he frequently snuck away from home to watch maneuvers at a nearby British military base.

13. An African American Raised in China

When Carter was nine, his mother abandoned the family and left him with his father. In 1927, his father moved him and his siblings to China, which back then used to be a huge magnet for missionary activities. Carter’s African American and Indian mixed background had already set him apart as quite unusual for his era. Getting raised in India and China, viewed at the time as the epitomes of the mysterious and exotic Orient, added more layers of complexity to the young man as he grew up. For all that China was the biggest attraction for Christian missionaries in those days, foreign missionaries and their families were still relatively thin on the ground there. That in of itself would have set Carter apart as he came of age in China. Blacks were even thinner on the ground in China, which would have set him apart yet even more.

12. An Unusual Upbringing

It would not be quite accurate to describe Carter as a social misfit. However, his background, the restrictions imposed by his religious parents, and the environment in which he grew up, all combined to form him in a different mold. The first major manifestation of just how different he was came when Carter was still in his teens. While there is nothing unusual about teenagers acting up, rebelling, and testing boundaries, Edward’s teenage rebellion, when it came, went beyond testing boundaries: he shattered them. No taking up smoking, drinking, drugs, or hanging out with punks and ne’er do wells: that was for poseurs and pikers, and would not do for Edward Allen Carter, Jr. Instead, he ran away at age fifteen to go fight the Imperial Japanese Army.

11. Running Away From Home as a Teenager to Fight Japanese Militarism

In 1932, Japan was reeling from the Great Depression. As countries around the world resorted to high tariffs and other trade restrictions to protect their native industries, Japan’s export based economy was hit hard. So the Japanese cast their eyes on the teeming millions of nearby China, and saw in them the perfect captive market – provided they could, literally, capture it. Diplomacy failed to convince China to adopt trade policies highly favorable to Japan, so the Japanese resorted to arms. In 1932, a red flag operation was staged, Japan falsely claimed it had been victimized by Chinese aggression, and launched a military intervention known as The Shanghai Incident. That was how Carter got his first taste of combat. When he was fifteen-years-old, he ran away from home and joined the Nationalist Chinese forces as they fought to beat off Japanese aggression.

10. An African American Lieutenant in the Chinese Army

Fighting in the ranks of the Chinese 19th Route Army, the teenaged Carter endured aerial bombing from Japanese carrier warplanes, shelling from Japanese artillery, and ferocious ground attacks from Japanese infantry. He showed a knack for combat, and somehow managed to get a brevet commission to lieutenant in the Chinese army. He did not get to enjoy his commission for long, however. The young warrior was sorely disappointed when he was yanked from the front lines and out of the Chinese military, when it was discovered that he was only fifteen. To Lieutenant Carter’s chagrin, he was discharged and returned to his father. By then, however, he had gotten his first taste of the front lines, and decided he liked it. As seen below, it would not be long before he was back in the thick of it.

9. A Military Destiny?

At some point during his brief stint fighting the Japanese in 1932, Carter came to believe that he had been visited by a martial spirit. It informed him that he would become a great warrior, but would not die in war. Convinced of his spiritual military destiny, Carter enrolled in a Chinese military school in Shanghai as soon as he was old enough. In addition to excelling in the common fare of military schools, he also learned German as a fourth language, adding it to the English, Hindi, and Mandarin Chinese he already knew, and all of which he spoke fluently. When he turned eighteen, Carter tried to join the US Army, but he was rejected because of racial prejudice. So he became an international soldier.

8. An Original Antifascist

In China, Carter became active in leftist politics, and when the Spanish Civil War erupted, it drew him like a magnet. The conflict pitted fascists led by General Francisco Franco, generously backed by the Benito Mussolini fascist Italy and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany, against an elected leftist Republican government. An antifascist to the core, Carter traveled to Europe in order to join the fight on the Republican side. He made it to Spain, and enlisted in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade – an American volunteer unit composed primarily of leftists, that fought as part of the International Brigade against the fascists during the conflict. Unfortunately, the bad guys won the Spanish Civil War, and as Franco’s fascists surged to victory and the Republican government collapsed, Carter and the rest of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were forced to flee to France in 1938. From there, he made his way to the United States.

7. A Return to the United States

Back in the US, after a lifetime overseas, Carter tried to settle down. In 1940, while World War II raged in Europe, he met and married his wife Mildred in Los Angeles. As the clouds of conflict drew closer, Carter sensed that it would not be long before America was drawn into the fighting. So he enlisted in the US Army in September, 1941, just three months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was not a great time to be African American in the country’s armed forces. Blacks had played a significant role in America’s military history, despite the limited opportunities, adversity, and open hostility that they frequently had to contend with as they tried to serve their country. Particularly from higher ups who believed that blacks were racially unsuited for leadership or combat duty, and so designed and implemented policies to deny them leadership opportunities and training.

6. Facing Racial Prejudice in the US Army

There was a widespread conviction in the US military, before and during the Second World War, that blacks were manifestly unsuited for combat. This, despite the fact that blacks had served – and often served well – in combat roles in all of the country’s conflicts, from the Revolutionary War, up to and including World War I. The latter conflict had taken place within the lifetime and service career of many American military leaders, who only two decades later in WWII, seem to have forgotten that blacks had served credibly in the First World War. Logic and facts are no barriers to racism, though, and so it was that Edward Allen Carter faced many a hurdle because of the color of his skin as he tried to serve his country in WWII.

5. An Unusual Soldier

With his background and experience, it took only months before Carter was promoted to staff sergeant. However, his background and experience also led to the opening of a counterintelligence file on him: globetrotting African Americans were rarities in those days. Globetrotting African Americas who spoke Hindi, Chinese, and German, and who had fought in the leftist Abraham Lincoln Brigade, were rarer still. The US Army did not know quite what to make of Carter. Eventually, an unknown intelligence officer deemed it advisable to put him under surveillance because his Spanish Civil War experience meant that he had “been exposed to communism“. The counterintelligence file also noted: “Subject… capable of having connections with subversive activities due to… early years (until 1938) in the Orient“.

4. A Return to Europe

Carter was shipped to the European Theater of Operations in 1944. However, with typical Army logic, he was not assigned to one of the black combat units – few as those were in the day’s racially segregated US military – but to supply duties. However, racism had to make way, at least partially, to the dictates of necessity in December of 1944, which allowed Carter yet another opportunity to engage in combat in the front lines against the bad guys. On December 16^th, the Germans launched a surprise strategic offensive that caught the Allies off guard. As the ensuing Battle of the Bulge raged and the Army desperately fought to contain the Germans, it ran short of replacement combat troops. So General Dwight D. Eisenhower instituted the volunteer Ground Force Replacement Command, comprised of rear echelon troops of all races.

3. Raring to Go at the Nazis

Staff Sergeant Carter jumped at the chance to have a go at the Nazis, and immediately volunteered for combat duty. However, while the ad hoc units cobbled up by the Ground Force Replacement Command were racially integrated, they were integrated on the basis that no black soldiers were to command white ones. To join, Carter had to accept a demotion from staff sergeant to private. Carter figured that taking a whack at the Nazis in person was worth giving up his stripes, so he accepted the demotion. On March 23^rd, 1945, near Speyer, Germany, he was riding on a tank when it was hit. What Carter did next was worthy of a Medal of Honor – which he was eventually awarded in recognition of his heroics that day, but posthumously, decades after his demise.

2. Carter’s Heroics in Germany

As Carter’s medal citation described it: “When the tank on which he was riding received heavy bazooka and small arms fire, Sergeant Carter voluntarily attempted to lead a three-man group across an open field. Within a short time, two of his men were killed and the third seriously wounded. Continuing on alone, he was wounded five times and finally forced to take cover. As eight enemy riflemen attempted to capture him, Sergeant Carter killed six of them and captured the remaining two. He then crossed the field using as a shield his two prisoners from which he obtained valuable information concerning the disposition of enemy troops“. He spent a month recovering in a hospital from his wounds. He was then restored to his rank of staff sergeant, and spent the rest of the war training troops.

1.     A Belated Medal of Honor

Carter tried to reenlist in 1949, but by then the Red Scare was on and America was gripped by anticommunist hysteria. His background in China, which had recently fallen to the communists, and in the Spanish Civil War, where he had fought in the leftist Abraham Lincoln Brigade, made him suspect. Carter’s reenlistment was rejected, and he was discharged from the Army. He resumed civilian life, worked in the tire business, and became a dedicated family man. In 1962, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which doctors attributed to wartime shrapnel still embedded in his neck. It killed him the following year. His wartime heroics had earned a recommendation for a Medal of Honor, but due to racism, it was downgraded to a Distinguished Service. The injustice was finally corrected in 1997, and Carter was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor his actions had earned him in 1945.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

California Center for Military History – Staff Sergeant Edward A. Carter, Medal of Honor Recipient

History Collection – Lesser Known Civil Rights Moments That Changed Everything

US Army Online – Medal of Honor: African American Hero Recognized Decades After Brave Act

US Department of Defense – Medal of Honor Monday: Army Sgt. 1^st Class Edward Carter Jr.

War History Online – Fought Japanese in China When 15, Then Franco in Spain, and in WWII Europe Killed 6 Germans and Took 2 POW

Weebly – Edward Allen Carter II