manded by white officers, and
almost all the petty officers were white.

Approximately half the Negroes in the Navy were detailed to shore
billets within the continental United States. Most worked as laborers
at ammunition or supply depots, at air stations, and at section (p. 074)
bases,[3-53] concentrated in large all-black groups and sometimes
commanded by incompetent white officers.[3-54]

[Footnote 3-53: Naval districts organized section
bases during the war with responsibility, among
other things, for guarding beaches, harbors, and
installations and maintaining equipment.]

[Footnote 3-54: See CNO ALNAV, 7 Aug 44, quoted in
Nelson, "Integration of the Negro," p. 46.]

[Illustration: SEABEES IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC _righting an undermined
water tank_.]

While some billets existed in practically every important rating for
graduates of the segregated specialty schools, these jobs were so few
that black specialists were often assigned instead to unskilled
laboring jobs.[3-55] Some of these men were among the best educated
Negroes in the Navy, natural leaders capable of articulating their
dissatisfaction. They resented being barred from the fighting, and
their resentment, spreading through the thousands of Negroes in the
shore establishment, was a prime cause of racial tension.

[Footnote 3-55: Memo, Actg Chief, NavPers, for Cmdts,
AlNav Districts et al., 26 Sep 44, sub: Enlisted
Personnel--Utilization of in Field for which
Specifically Trained, Pers 16-3/MM, BuPersRecs.]

No black women had been admitted to the Navy. Race was not mentioned
in the legislation establishing the WAVES in 1942, but neither was
exclusion on account of color expressly forbidden. The WAVES and the
Women's Reserve of both the Coast Guard (SPARS) and the Marine Corps
therefore celebrated their second birthday exclusively white. The Navy
Nurse Corps was also totally white. In answer to protests passed to
the service through Eleanor Roosevelt, the Navy admitted in November
1943 that it had a shortage of 500 nurses, but since another (p. 075)
500 white nurses were under indoctrination and training, the Bureau of
Medicine and Surgery explained, "the question relative to the
necessity for accepting colored personnel in this category is not
apparent."