This system
in turn robbed the Army of the full services of the educated and able
black soldier, who had every reason to feel restless and rebellious.

The Army received no end of advice on its manpower policy during the
war. Civil rights spokesmen continually pointed out that segregation
itself was discriminatory, and Judge Hastie in particular hammered on
this proposition before the highest officials of the War (p. 057)
Department. In fact Hastie's recommendations, criticisms, and
arguments crystallized the demands of civil rights leaders. The Army
successfully resisted the proposition when its Advisory Committee on
Negro Troop Policies under John McCloy modified but did not
appreciably alter the segregation policy. It was a predictable course.
The Army's racial policy was more than a century old, and leaders
considered it dangerous if not impossible to revise traditional ways
during a global war involving so many citizens with pronounced and
different views on race.

What both the civil rights activists and the Army's leaders tended to
ignore during the war was that segregation was inefficient. The myriad
problems associated with segregated units, in contrast to the
efficient operation of the integrated officer candidate schools and
the integrated infantry platoons in Europe, were overlooked in the
atmosphere of charges and denials concerning segregation and
discrimination. John McCloy was an exception. He had clearly become
dissatisfied with the inefficiency of the Army's policy, and in the
week following the Japanese surrender he questioned Navy Secretary
James V. Forrestal on the Navy's experiments with integration. "It has
always seemed to me," he concluded, "that we never put enough thought
into the matter of making a real military asset out of the very large
cadre of Negro personnel we received from the country."[2-110] Although
segregation persisted, the fact that it hampered military efficiency
was the hope of those who looked for a change in the Army's policy.

[Footnote 2-110: Ltr, ASW to SecNav, 22 Aug 45, ASW
291.2 NT (Gen).]

CHAPTER 3 (p. 058)

World War II: The Navy

The period between the world wars marked the nadir of the Navy's
relations with black America. Although the exclusion of Negroes that
began with a clause introduced in enlistment regulations in 1922
lasted but a decade, b