rrestal rejected the idea of a council and
a full-time assistant, pleading that he must avoid creating another
formal organization. Instead he decided to assemble an informal
committee, which he invited Granger to join, to standardize the Navy's
handling of Negroes.[3-132]

[Footnote 3-132: Ltr, Granger to SecNav, 19 Mar 45;
Ltrs, SecNav to Granger, 26 Mar and 5 Apr 45. All
in 54-1-13, Forrestal file, GenRecsNav. The
activities of the intradepartmental committee will
be discussed in Chapter 5.]

It was obvious that Forrestal, convinced that the Navy's senior
officials had made a fundamental shift in their thinking on equal
treatment and opportunity for Negroes in the Navy, was content to let
specific reforms percolate slowly throughout the department. He would
later call the Navy's wartime reforms "a start down a long road."[3-133]
In these last months of the war, however, more barriers to equal
treatment of Negroes were quietly falling. In March 1945, after months
of prodding by Forrestal, the Surgeon General announced that the Navy
would accept a "reasonable" number of qualified black nurses and was
now recruiting for them.[3-134] In June the Bureau of Naval Personnel
ordered the integration of recruit training, assigning black general
service recruits to the nearest recruit training command "to obtain
the maximum utilization of naval training and housing facilities."[3-135]
Noting that this integration was at variance with some individual
attitudes, the bureau justified the change on the grounds of
administrative efficiency. Again at the secretary's urging, plans were
set in motion in July for the assignment of Negroes to submarine and
aviation pilot training.[3-136] At the same time Lester Granger, acting
as the secretary's personal representative, was visiting the (p. 097)
Navy's continental installations, prodding commanders and converting
them to the new policy.[3-137]

[Footnote 3-133: Ltr, Forrestal to Marshall Field III
(publisher of _PM_), 14 Jul 45, 54-1-13, Forrestal
file, GenRecsNav.]

[Footnote 3-134: Memo, SecNav for Rear Adm W. J. C.
Agnew, Asst Surg Gen, 28 Jan 45; Memo, Surg Gen for
Eugene Duffield, 19 Mar 45; both in 54-1-3,
Forrestal file, GenRecsNav. By V-J day the