Yep. It was an actual mistake to put “J” on the name tags. An innocent mistake that had tragic consequences. Such was that part of history.
If you are so interested in accuracy in History you should do some research. Prior to 1952 the following designation for Religious affiliation of a GI were
P = Protestant, C = Catholic, H = Hebrew (Jewish)
If a soldier had no religious affiliation this was left blank. There was never the letter 'J'. I said you were full of Crap.
However having the letter 'H' did place American Soldiers of Jewish religious affiliation serving in the European Theater of Operation in special danger.
But African American Soldiers did not need a name tag to place them in harms way if captured by the Germans which is just my point that you are full of it.
Source URL if you want to check this out Mr. Historian is below.
http://www.hakirah.org/Vol15Males.pdf
MWT related a story a while back about being Jewish in the First Gulf War . . . all the Jewish soldiers on the airbase were gathered up and issued “Protestant B” dogtags to avoid this issue.
Actually, the US military put "H" (for "Hebrew") on the Jewish servicemen's "dog tags." My father, who served in Europe during WWII, once showed my his.
I suppose there was a religion identifier for all servicemen, so that the appropriate clergyman could be called in case of death or serious injury.
The main discrimination problem for American Jewish servicemen in WWII was the Nazis extra-brutal treatment of Jewish POWs, who could often be identified by their tags.
BTW, the percentage of American-Jewish servicemen in the US military during the WWII era was slightly higher that the percentage of Jews in the general US population of that time.