Honors are on the way for the country's first black Marines

At boot camp, they endured snakes, mosquitoes, substandard housing, and intense physical training.

In the South Pacific, they faced the Japanese. Yet, through World War II and beyond, these 19,000 black men also confronted segregation and racism to serve as U.S. Marines.

They are the Montford Point Marines, named for the segregated facility where they were trained in North Carolina from 1942 until 1949.

This spring, these first black Marines - about 400 who are still alive - will be honored at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center in Washington with the Congressional Gold Medal, the country's highest civilian honor for distinguished achievement. There are 10 living Montford Point Marines in the Philadelphia area, officials said.

"It makes me proud to be a part of this history, said John "Zeke" Clouser, 90, of Philadelphia, a former drill instructor, who served from 1943 to "the last day of 1965."

"Nowadays, most of the blacks in the Marine Corps, they didn't know about us. We were the pathfinders. I'm one of those who paved the way for them," Clouser said during a recent meeting of the Philadelphia chapter of the Montford Point Marine Association, a fraternal organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of the first black Marines.

Clouser was among the men who broke the color barrier in the last branch of the service to admit blacks.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that banned race-based exclusion from employment in the military and defense industries.

The measure opened the door for blacks to join the Marines, which then adopted a policy of strict racial segregation.

The next year - in the midst of World War II - the Marine Corps built a training base for blacks at Montford Point on land about five miles from all-white Camp Lejeune near Jacksonville, N.C.

The men were housed in huts made of corrugated metal on land infested with snakes and mosquitoes.

"They had green huts with no toilets. They had to walk up the street for the toilet. No running water," said Joe Geeter, national public relations officer for the Montford Point Marine Association, who lives in Limerick, Pa.