War II service clubs, see Margaret Halsey's _Color
Blind: A White Woman Looks at the Negro_ (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1946). For a comprehensive
expression of the attitudes of black soldiers, see
Mary P. Motley, ed., _The Invisible Soldier: The
Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II_
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975), a
compilation of oral histories by World War II
veterans. Although these interviews were conducted
a quarter of a century after the event and in the
wake of the modern civil rights movement, they
provide useful insight to the attitude of black
soldiers toward discrimination in the services.]

[Footnote 2-61: Office of War Information, The
Negroes' Role in the War: A Study of White and
Colored Opinions (Memorandum 59, Surveys Division,
Bureau of Special Services), 8 Jul 43, in CMH.]

Some Army officials considered justification by statistics alone a
risky business. Reviewing the support for segregation revealed in the
surveys, for example, the Special Services Division commented: "Many
of the Negroes and some of the whites who favor separation in the Army
indicate by their comments that they are opposed to segregation in
principle. They favor separation in the Army to avoid trouble or
unpleasantness." Its report added that the longer a Negro remained in
the Army, the less likely he was to support segregation.[2-62] Nor did
it follow from the overwhelming support for segregation that a policy
of integration would result in massive resistance. As critics later
pointed out, the same surveys revealed that almost half the
respondents expressed a strong preference for civilian life, but the
Army did not infer that serious disorders would result if these men
were forced to remain in uniform.[2-63]

[Footnote 2-62: Special Services Division, "What the
Soldier Thinks," Number 2, August 1943, pp. 58-59,
SSD 291.2.]

[Footnote 2-63: Dollard and Young, "In the Armed
Forces," p. 68.]

By 1943 Negroes within and without the War Department had just about
exhausted arguments for a policy change. Aft