490th Civil Affairs Battalion

The ancestral unit of the 490th Civil Affairs Battalion was constituted in the Army of the United States as the Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 90th Military Government Company (also known as the 90th Military Government in some documents) and activated 25 August 1945 at the Presidio of Monterey, California, just days after Japan's surrender.^[1]

The Presidio of Monterrey served as the central mobilization and holding site for all Military Government and Civil Affairs forces from all branches of service (mainly US Navy and US Army) in response to the realization for a need to successfully manage the occupations of Europe and Japan for reconstruction. The training center was named the Civil Affairs Staging Area (CASA).^[2]

An August report from the commander of the CASA to the Civil Affairs Division (re-designated in 1960 as the Civil Affairs Branch) described physically demanding field exercises involving ruck marches, amphibious assault, scaling cliffs, and infiltration through perimeter defenses, which were "geared toward a possible invasion of Japan before military government teams could assume occupation duties."^[2]

After Japan's surrender, the preparations for invasion proved unnecessary.

In December 1945, the 90th Military Government deployed to Japan under the Headquarters, Eighth United States Army and General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP).^[3] Personnel likely wore the Eighth Army patch once they deployed to Japan.

According to an operational map of military government units in Japan as of January 1946, the 90th Military Government is designated as a company-sized element operating in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture.^[3]

In Kanazawa, personnel of the 90th Military Government supported Japanese administrators, maintained public services for the populace, and secured local artifacts and monuments (such as Kanazawa Castle) from potential looting and black market operations.^[4]

Within the first sixth months of occupation, MacArthur began to reposition and redistribute military government units to better meet the needs of the nation, as there were not enough elements in their initial configuration to cover all of the prefectures.^[3] By June 1946, all military government units in Japan were divided into newly created teams designated by their prefecture.^[3] The designations of most of the groups and companies were dropped and the team was the main military government organization deployed in Japan.^[3] With the reassignment of all of its personnel, the 90th Military Government Company effectively ceased to exist at this time. On 30 June 1946, the Army officially issued orders inactivating the 90th Military Government as a unit in the U.S. Army.^[1]

From 1946 on, prominent business, civic, and professional leaders of Abilene, Texas were involved in several Army Reserve, National Guard, and Marine Corps Reserve units. One of these units was Detachment 3, 4005th Army Reserve Area Service Unit (Station Complement). When that unit was inactivated several of the unit's prominent members worked to organize the 90th Military Government [Company] for reactivation in Abilene.^[5]

The 90th Military Government Company was re-designated 2 November 1955 as the 490th Military Government, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, allotted to the US Army Reserve, and assigned to the Fourth Army (later re-designated as the Fourth United States Army) Area and aligned under the Eighth Army Corps.^[1] The unit was activated 1 December 1955.^[1] Special Orders Number 241, 13 December 1955, Headquarters, Texas Military District, Austin, provided for the official organization of the 490th Military Government in Abilene.^[1] The soldiers of the newly formed 490th bore the Shoulder Sleeve Insignia (SSI) of the Eighth Army Corps.

The unit was again re-designated on October 15, 1956 as the 490th Civil Affairs and Military Government Company and on October 20, 1959 as the 490th Civil Affairs Company, the designation it would hold for the next three decades.^[1]

Soldiers of the 490th trained at several locations initially, including the Elks Building in downtown Abilene, but in 1958, the Army acquired a facility in south Abilene that had served an oil exploration and drilling company since its construction in 1951. The facility was located on the old Ballenger Highway (now known as South Treadaway Boulevard). This facility housed the 490th, along with several other reserve and guard forces, for the next four decades.^[6]

When President Kennedy ordered the activation of 150,00 reservists in 1961 in response to mounting tensions with the Soviet Union over Berlin, the 490th Civil Affairs Company, along with several other Army Reserve Civil Affairs units, was mobilized to Fort Gordon, Georgia to train for possible deployment. The activation of the 490th was the first call up of Reserve or Guard troops from Abilene since World War II.^[7]

While the unit was not selected to deploy and was demobilized on August 11, 1962, soldiers of the 490th who were activated later received the National Defense Service Medal (NDSM) in 1967 for their active duty during this time period.^[8] Additionally, the 490th earned the Army Reserve Superior Unit Certificate [a defunct award] during this mobilization; this would be the first of many of these awards bestowed upon the 490th while the award was still actively issued within the Army Reserve.^[6]

During the next three decades of the 490th's service in the Army Reserve, the unit trained rigorously each year, heavily involved itself in supporting Abilene and the surrounding communities, and supported Civil Affairs operations in Vietnam, Panama, and Desert Storm with food and clothing drives to support humanitarian aid.^[6] Although the 490th was never activated as a unit for these conflicts, many individual soldiers from the 490th did serve overseas with other units.^[6]

Annual training sites ranged from Fort Gordon, Georgia to Fort Chaffee (in Arkansas) to Fort Wolters (in Mineral Wells, TX); often, short term training, land navigation, and weapons qualification for the unit occurred at Camp Barkeley.^[6] The grounds of the former Camp Barkeley reverted to private property and much of the garrison was removed, but the unit used the land for decades until the owners of the land could no longer allow military exercises to occur on the grounds.^[6]

In 1963, the Army Reserve Training Center that housed the 490th and several other units was renamed the Grimes Memorial US Army Reserve Center. The name memorialized Captain Rudyard K. Grimes, an Abilene native and West Point graduate who served in the Pacific theater during World War II and was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines, facing the infamous Bataan Death March and perishing in a POW camp in 1942. From 1955 until 1971, the 490th was aligned under the Fourth United States Army until that major command was inactivated 30 June 1971. The 490th was then realigned to the Fifth United States Army.

For much of the time between 1955 and the 1980s, the 490th was assigned for command and control to the 90th Army Reserve Command (ARCOM) (now the 90th Sustainment Brigade), formerly known as the 90th Infantry Division.^[6] The soldiers of the 490th adopted the division's nickname of "Tough 'Ombres" and wore the shoulder patch of the 90th ARCOM during this era.^[6]

For a short period of time, the 490th directly reported to the 4254th Civil Affairs Group, also stationed in Abilene, until that unit was inactivated. The 490th was then transferred to the 312th Civil Affairs Group. That unit was later replaced by the 321st Civil Affairs Group in San Antonio, Texas, which was later redesignated the 321st Civil Affairs Brigade; all of these units were still organized under the 90th ARCOM and remained so until 1985.^[6]

Female soldiers from the Women's Army Corps who trained with the 490th participated with the unit in both the Solid Shield field exercise at Fort Bragg and the 1975 weapon's qualification. These were both historic firsts for these female soldiers and evidence that the Army was moving toward full integration of the "WACs" into the general ranks of the Army, with the exception of infantry units.^[9]

During the decades of the 1970s and the 1980s, personnel from the 490th often conducted annual training exercises with other US Army elements in Germany. In the late 1980s the focus for training exercises shifted to supporting the 1st Cavalry and 4th Infantry Divisions in "Warfighter" exercises at Fort Hood, Texas to help those units maintain combat readiness and civil military operational capacity.^[6]

Throughout the service of members of the 490th in Germany, Fort Hood, JRTC, and NTC, supported units continuously held the 490th in high regard, and one annual training exercise resulted in a supported unit nicknaming the 490th the "Cimic Dawgs"; the members of the 490th continued to call themselves this with pride for many years.^[6] The nickname combined the term 'Cimic' for the international designation of Civil Affairs Operations, Civil-military cooperation and 'Dawgs" for the strong work ethic the 490th soldiers exhibited, with the soldiers said to 'work like dogs'.^[6]

In 1985, the 490th and all other levels of reserve Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations, and Special Forces units were reassigned under the US Army Reserve Special Operations Command (Airborne) or USARSOC headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On 27 November 1990, the Special Forces units were realigned under a different component of the US Army Special Operations Command (Airborne) (USASOC). The command headquarters and the remaining Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations forces were re-designated as the US Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) or USACAPOC, forming one of four major subordinate commands of USASOC. Under USCAPOC, the 490th was allotted to the 353rd Civil Affairs Command, out of Staten Island, New York, and under that command remained assigned to the 321st CA Brigade.^[6]

Members of the 490th still wear the USACAPOC shoulder sleeve insignia.^[6]

Since 29 December 1989, several unit members were ordered to active duty for various operations such as Operation Just Cause in Panama and Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia.^[6] These soldiers were attached to other units or sent on individual orders for these operations but retained their sense of identity with the 490th, and both groups of soldiers, upon returning from their mobilizations, presented the battalion with plaques commemorating their service, respectively, as "Panama Dawgs" and "Desert Dawgs."^[6]

The 490th was reorganized and redesignated 16 September 1992 as Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 490th Civil Affairs Battalion, expanding the unit in size and mission. Concurrently, subordinate units General Support Detachment and Direct Support Detachment were constituted and organized (sometimes alternately known and later officially re-designated respectively as Alpha Company and Bravo Company).^[1] Direct Support was doctrinally charged with tasks now associated with civil affairs generalist operations, while General Support contained specialized teams for legal, medical, and education support of host nation governments.^[6]

The 490th provided a detachment of 23 soldiers under the flag of the 321st Civil Affairs Brigade in December 1998 to support Operation Joint Guard in Bosnia-Herzegovina.