entrated in large groups and assigned to jobs with little prestige
and few chances of promotion. They were excluded from the WAVES (Women
Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), the Nurse Corps, and the
commissioned ranks. And they were rigidly segregated.

[Footnote 3-52: "BuPersHist," p. 41.]

Although the Navy boasted that Negroes served in every rating and at
every task, in fact almost all were used in a limited range of
occupations. Denied general service assignments on warships, trained
Negroes were restricted to the relatively few billets open in the
harbor defense, district, and small craft service. Although assigning
Negroes to these duties met the President's request for variety of
opportunity, the small craft could employ only 7,700 men at most, a
minuscule part of the Navy's black strength.

Most Negroes performed humbler duties. By mid-1944 over 38,000 black
sailors were serving as mess stewards, cooks, and bakers. These jobs
remained in the Negro's eyes a symbol of his second-class citizenship
in the naval establishment. Under pressure to provide more (p. 073)
stewards to serve the officers whose number multiplied in the early
months of the war, recruiters had netted all the men they could for
that separate duty. Often recruiters took in many as stewards who were
equipped by education and training for better jobs, and when these men
were immediately put into uniforms and trained on the job at local
naval stations the result was often dismaying. The Navy thus received
poor service as well as unwelcome publicity for maintaining a
segregated servants' branch. In an effort to standardize the training
of messmen, the Bureau of Naval Personnel established a stewards
school in the spring of 1943 at Norfolk and later one at Bainbridge,
Maryland. The change in training did little to improve the standards
of the service and much to intensify the feeling of isolation among
many stewards.

[Illustration: LABORERS AT NAVAL AMMUNITION DEPOT. _Sailors passing
5-inch canisters, St. Julien's Creek, Virginia._]

Another 12,000 Negroes served as artisans and laborers at overseas
bases. Over 7,000 of these were Seabees, who, with the exception of
two regular construction battalions that served with distinction in
the Pacific, were relegated to "special" battalions stevedoring cargo
and supplies. The rest were laborers in base companies assigned to the
South Pacific area. These units were com